Reader's Diary #2001- Neil Gaiman (writer), John Romita Jr (artist): Eternals

Like most fans, I was excited to hear that Marvel Studios was finally getting the rights back to their X-Men and Fantastic Four properties. However, I did have some reservations. I'd always been happy with Marvel Studios constant introducing of new characters. The Guardians of the Galaxy for instance were not household comic book names before the movies. Would a focus on the X-Men and Fantastic Four put a halt on that?

Not so, at least according to studio head Kevin Feige. In particular he seems committed to an Eternals movie. I've read a lot of Marvel comics these past few years and I was not familiar with these characters. I'm excited to see how these relatively obscure characters will come across on the big screen.

Created by Jack Kirby, I was unfortunately not able to get a hold of one of his collections. However, I did get find one from 2007 written by Neil Gaiman. Not bad.

I feel like I've gotten a good sense of the characters while still having gotten a plot beyond a simple origin story. I can see how there could be use for them in the MCU. Almost taking things back to the beginning in its mishmash of science and religion, there's room to help explain why so many aliens across the universe are humanoid and even speak the same language. Is that necessary? Probably not, as we've all taken to Thor and Guardians of the Galaxy, agreeing as it seems, to suspend our beliefs. But such explanations certainly wouldn't hurt and if they could be tied to larger, exciting stories, all the better.

I do hope, however, the casting is much more diverse than in this book. A bunch of godlike aliens from the beginning of time, and they all happen to be white? That's pretty racist.

As for John Romita Jr's art? I've always found his work to be good technically if not the most creative. This looks like a typical superhero comic. But the Eternals are not meant to be typical and I feel like this should have been more "out there."