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Post by brutalis on Mar 19, 2021 21:18:26 GMT -5
Have to imagine if you live for decades you indulge in EVERY opportunity which comes around providing any CHANCE of intellectual or physical stimulation. Gameplay would be a universally acceptable challenge that will provide distraction and activity that will alleviate the intensified boredom you feel.
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Post by kirby101 on Mar 20, 2021 9:43:20 GMT -5
I guess I am in the minority here and enjoying the current Eternals book. Granted the stunning artwork is a big part of that, but I find the take interesting. I don't see this as a continuation of Kirby's Eternals, rather Gillen is taking the basic premise and writing a different book. So I am not seeing a conflict with the Kirby book. He is telling a very complex story with interesting characters. It's like looking at the Tim Burton and the Christopher Nolan Batman movies. They are both Bruce Wayne Batman, but other than that...
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Post by profh0011 on Mar 20, 2021 14:17:45 GMT -5
Yeah, neither of them measure up to Adam West...
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Post by berkley on Mar 20, 2021 20:14:19 GMT -5
I guess I am in the minority here and enjoying the current Eternals book. Granted the stunning artwork is a big part of that, but I find the take interesting. I don't see this as a continuation of Kirby's Eternals, rather Gillen is taking the basic premise and writing a different book. So I am not seeing a conflict with the Kirby book. He is telling a very complex story with interesting characters. It's like looking at the Tim Burton and the Christopher Nolan Batman movies. They are both Bruce Wayne Batman, but other than that... I don't think that's quite fair, since Batman is much the same character in comparison to the changes made to the Eternals as a whole and to individual characters like Thena. Batman doesn't change from a driven man intent on his self-imposed mission, unlike Thena, who is changed from a decisive leader to a love-sick girl blinded by her romantic feelings. And making the Eternals a set of programmed machine-parts, without free-will who, when destroyed are simply replaced by a new reproduction manufactured by the greater machine of which they are functioning parts. These changes are far more basic and fundamental than the relatively minor changes in emphasis we see in the different versions of Batman.
A better comparison might be something like Battlestar Galactica, but even that isn't quite the same, since the Eternals was a very different kind of story-concept to the original BSG. And it isn't the case that Gillen is making everything up whole-cloth: he actually is taking a lot of ideas from previous versions of the Eternals - just not the Kirby one. So he's taken the idea of the Eternals as programmed constructs from Gaiman; he's taken the idea of an erratic, unreliable Thena from the 80s series; he's taken the idea of the Celestials feasting on the innocent Deviants from Gaiman, etc, etc. I think these are objectively bad choices, as I think the Kirby series is objectively far superior to all those later versions
Regardless, I'm not trying to tell anyone they're not allowed to enjoy Gillen's series - or Gaiman's, or Aaron's, etc. I don't like them myself, and I think I'd dislike them even if they were original works: to my mind, the characters are weak, the dialogue often atrocious, the basic premise(s) hackneyed - a contrived murder mystery in Gillen's case, with characters' personas and behaviour altered to fit the story, as opposed to a story that emerges from the characters; and the collective amnesia of Gaiman's Eternals, the flimsiest of plot contrivances to justify yet another wholesale reinvention since he obviously found the originals so uninspiring.
edit: Not to belabour this, but one more point: I think it's a bit misleading to say that Gillen is taking the basic premise and building something new from it, because that isn't what we're being sold. We're being sold an Eternals series and Gillen has even said in interviews that his main influences are the Gaiman series - which is both accurate and obvious; and Kirby's original - which to my mind is far from apparent.
And it isn't as if Gillen, or Gaiman before him, on his own initiative said to himself, "Oh, the Eternals, cool premise, I'd like to do something different with it." If that had been the case, then we might have seen a much better, independent work that didn't call itself the Eternals.
What did happen was that Marvel offered them this job of writing an Eternals series on their, Marvel's, terms: which were to make the Eternals a convincing part of Marvel's fictional, superhero-based universe. A job they accepted, by their own account, knowing very little about the Eternals. And I think the evidence on the page makes it clear that they found very little to inspire them in the original, and hence fell back on tried and true MU tropes and Eternals comics produced by writers other than Kirby.
However, once again, I don't want to come across as if I'm laying down the law and no one should be able to enjoy the Gillen series (or Gaiman's before him): going by online reactions, everyone loves it. Reviews are overwhelmingly positive, etc. I'm just giving my persaonl take on the whole situation.
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Post by berkley on Mar 21, 2021 1:31:46 GMT -5
I see that through no one's fault but my own, I've totally screwed up my original intention, which was to keep what I<d meant to be a celebration of Kirby's Eternals in this thread, and to put whatver criticisms I might have of Gillen's new series in a separate thread on the Modern Comics Board.
And it is my fault, because I'm the one who started talking about how awful everythng Eternals was that wasn't Kirby's Eternals.
So my question to everyone or anyone who reads this is, should we carry on as we have been doing, or should we try to restrict this thread to the Kirby Eternals and open another one in the Modern comics board for the Gillen?
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Post by brutalis on Mar 21, 2021 7:42:54 GMT -5
This makes for one stop Eternals discussion which is fine. As long as the talks of other Eternal stuff doesn't derail or hijack the focus upon Kirby's original. IMO
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Post by kirby101 on Mar 21, 2021 8:38:00 GMT -5
Agree. I don't have much further to say about the new Eternals book except I like it more than most others here.
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Post by MDG on Apr 10, 2021 15:15:44 GMT -5
I downloaded The Eternals a couple days ago and have read the first six issues pretty quickly. Really enjoying it. A few observations that may not be original with me:
The dialogue not bad--it's just as stylized as the art.
Kirby seemed to be working on the "team" for the first part of his career, and the "parallel superior civilization" for the second: Boy Commandos --> Newsboy Legion --> Boy's Ranch --> Challs --> FF Inhumans --> New Gods --> Eternals
I used to think Kamandi was Kirby's last great character; now I think it may be Sersi.
Shoehorning this into the Marvel universe makes no sense and is just wrong.
Behind the sometimes awkward words, there's a deep understanding of humanity.
Am I wrong to be reminded of Fletcher Banks when I read this?
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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 10, 2021 19:22:36 GMT -5
I downloaded The Eternals a couple days ago and have read the first six issues pretty quickly. Really enjoying it. A few observations that may not be original with me: The dialogue not bad--it's just as stylized as the art. Kirby seemed to be working on the "team" for the first part of his career, and the "parallel superior civilization" for the second: Boy Commandos --> Newsboy Legion --> Boy's Ranch --> Challs --> FF Inhumans --> New Gods --> Eternals I used to think Kamandi was Kirby's last great character; now I think it may be Sersi. Shoehorning this into the Marvel universe makes no sense and is just wrong. Behind the sometimes awkward words, there's a deep understanding of humanity. Am I wrong to be reminded of Fletcher Banks when I read this? Mark Evanier, in the big Kirby book he did, spoke of how Jack would say things to you, that you really didn't understand, but his meaning would come through later, when you least expect it and it would always be very profound. I don't think Jack got as much credit for his intellect as his creative talent and certainly not for his writing, because everyone was used to conventional comic stories. Jack wrote unconventional ones that were something unique. No he didn't have the snappy dialogue; but, when you read it later, in the right mindset, you get it and it really works. He was very much a jazz artist of comics, an impressionist and a myth maker. Sersi is fantastic and the dynamic between Thena and Kro is really ahead of its time, as was the duo of Karkas and Reject.
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Post by Cei-U! on Apr 11, 2021 10:58:13 GMT -5
Am I wrong to be reminded of Fletcher Banks when I read this? Do you mean Fletcher Hanks? 'Cause, weird a comparison as it seems on the surface, I can actually see that if you do.
Cei-U! I summon the strange bedfellows!
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Post by tarkintino on Apr 11, 2021 14:21:12 GMT -5
Hmm. Are any of Kirby's Eternals work collected with black and white art?
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Post by MDG on Apr 11, 2021 14:40:52 GMT -5
Am I wrong to be reminded of Fletcher Banks when I read this? Do you mean Fletcher Hanks? 'Cause, weird a comparison as it seems on the surface, I can actually see that if you do.
Cei-U! I summon the strange bedfellows!
Yeah, typo 'cause my tablet autocorrected. The Hanks comparison comes from the way anything seems possible--if you can conceive it, you can draw it
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Post by berkley on Apr 11, 2021 14:52:23 GMT -5
Hmm. Are any of Kirby's Eternals work collected with black and white art? Not that I know of, but it isn't something I'd look for myself so perhaps there's a black and white collection out there that I'm not aware of.
Actuall, I would be very interested in a collection of the original pencils in black and white, but not the inked art without colour.
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Post by thwhtguardian on Apr 11, 2021 16:27:43 GMT -5
Hmm. Are any of Kirby's Eternals work collected with black and white art? Not that I know of, but it isn't something I'd look for myself so perhaps there's a black and white collection out there that I'm not aware of.
Actuall, I would be very interested in a collection of the original pencils in black and white, but not the inked art without colour.
It's not black and white but they did just announce that the Eternals is getting a " Monster Sized" hardcover reproducing the pages at their original size(foot wide and almost two feet tall) which sounds pretty amazing. The price tag is a little high for me but I'd love to atleast look at it when it does come out. For the more budget conscious( like me) there will also be a standard size collection as well.
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Post by berkley on Apr 11, 2021 16:51:07 GMT -5
Not that I know of, but it isn't something I'd look for myself so perhaps there's a black and white collection out there that I'm not aware of.
Actuall, I would be very interested in a collection of the original pencils in black and white, but not the inked art without colour.
It's not black and white but they did just announce that the Eternals is getting a " Monster Sized" hardcover reproducing the pages at their original size(foot wide and almost two feet tall) which sounds pretty amazing. The price tag is a little high for me but I'd love to atleast look at it when it does come out. For the more budget conscious( like me) there will also be a standard size collection as well. That'll be very tempting but certainly I'd want to look at one first. The colouring might be a deal-killer for me, as I often dislike the way they colour these modern reprints of 70s and earlier comics.
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