The Eternals: Everything You Need To Know

12. They're Basically Marvel's New Gods

DC The New Gods
DC Comics/Alex Ross

Comics fans won't need reminding that Jack Kirby had a fraught relationship with the House of Ideas, but whereas most will recall the writer/artist's departure from the company to join rivals DC during the early seventies, they may have forgotten his eventual return, which occurred in 1976, the same year he created The Eternals.

Kirby had a habit of interchanging between the Big Two throughout his career, and so there was a lot of crossover with his creations. Upon leaving Timely Comics in 1942, Kirby and collaborator Joe Simon created Guardian for DC, who was basically another version of Captain America. Likewise, when Kirby left for DC again at the turn of the seventies he created the New Gods - arguably his greatest work - before returning to Marvel and writing The Eternals, a book with a very similar premise.

The Eternals, much like the New Gods, focused on an eternal struggle between two paragons of good and evil, with the Eternals representing all that is good, and their enemies, the Deviants, representing all that's not. Comparisons between that premise and that of the New Gods' conflict between Apokolips and New Genesis are inevitable, and though it is true that DC have the advantage when it comes to the source material, there's plenty to love about The Eternals too.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.