It’s mind blowing how mind numbing “Eternals” is. The really bad John Romita Jr. art matched with the convoluted dull story make this animated comic a task to sit through. Granted, I love the idea of normal human beings actually being engineered superheroes and completely oblivious to their powers. There’s also a moment where a party is besieged by terrorists and character Mark Curry discovers his ability to slow down time, thus allowing him to stop the bullets, and steal the guns, but has to find a way to take the bullets without burning himself or blowing them up in the air. It’s a nice sense of logic to fantasy.
That said, all of that would be wonderful if “Eternals” didn’t spend about ninety five percent of its narrative explaining everything to us. There’s explanations of its mythos, explanations of the eternals’ powers, explanation about what the Celestials (the eternals creators) are, explanation about the Eternals, and explanations about their villains the Deviants. Deviants are monstrous aliens bred to be unique and one of a kind and eventually took control of the Eternals. Eventually the Eternals realized they could fight back with their amazing powers, while the Celestials would eventually have to step in and finish the battle. Much of “Eternals” destroys any sense of whimsy and adventure, transforming the narrative in to such an unnecessarily violent and grim science fiction tale that even transforms its heroes in to sad sacks.
The heroes in the storyline are either despicable, selfish, or utterly self-loathing, while folks like Iron Man have to step in try to get them to rally around and help save the world, and their own race. I’ve always enjoyed the style of Jack Kirby’s universe, and the science fiction mechanisms, but it’s just lost under so much boring nonsense and exposition, that I just didn’t care what happened to any of these characters. It’s hard to believe being a super powered entity with amazing abilities could be so monotones, but “Eternals” pulls it off, big time. “Looking Back with John Romita Jr.” is a ten minute interview with artist John Romita Jr. who discusses the mini-series, and its origins.