The Eternals (1976) #3 - "The Devil in New York!"

[mistersandman]

"Let us suppose that foreign astronauts visited the territory of the Sumerians thousands of years ago. Let us assume that they laid the foundations of the civilization and culture of the Sumerians and then returned to their own planet, after giving this stimulus to development. Let us postulate that curiosity drove them back to the scene of their pioneer work every hundred terrestrial years to check the results of their experiment. By the standard of our present-day expectation of life the same astronauts could easily have survived for 500 terrestrial years. The theory of relativity shows that the astronauts would only have aged about forty years during the outward and return flight in a space-ship that had traveled just under the speed of light!" --  Erich von Däniken, Chariots of the Gods, 1968

---

Last time, Ikaris and his human companions Doctor Damian and Margo fled into an Incan temple to the Celestials after the Deviant Kro declared the Deviants intentions to wage war upon the space gods once more. As the Deviants fled to their underwater base, Ikaris explained that a thousand years ago, an apocalyptic war between Deviants and Celestials destroyed the continent upon which the Deviants had built their empire. The aftermath of this war gave rise to ancient stories of a catastrophic Flood.

In the temple, Ikaris brought the Eternal Ajak out of stasis. Ajak communed with the Celestial and then Arishem, leader of the Fourth Celestial Host, descended to Earth to put the planet on trial.

Now, Ikaris wonders if Arishem's arrival heralds "the coming of disastrous times such as befell man in the distant past..."



Ajak explains that the Celestials will seal off the area for fifty years while they conduct their judgment.





Our hero, true believers.

Margo awakens on the light plane, still distraught because she will never see her father again. She is surprised to see that Ikaris is piloting the plane with his mind and has changed his clothes and even more surprised when he levitates outside the plane.

Suddenly, they are attacked by Deviants!



But Ikaris, as an Eternal, cannot die. He picks up a mental probe from Kro and the other Deviants and changes course. He originally planned to take Margo to her home in Denver, Colorado, but now they travel at great speed to New York City...





Kro and his Deviants attack New York, claiming to be space gods in hopes that humanity will fight the Celestials for them. Kro notes that since the image of the devil is a virus in the human brain, "Give the humans a real devil and they'll destroy the galaxy to be rid of him!"



Boy, so that scene with Ikaris and Margo aged badly, huh? It colors her interactions with Sersy in ways that are very sad.

The art, of course, is still on point. I love Kro's vehicle, I wonder if Tim Burton and his team took any inspiration from it ten years later for the Batman movie? I'm less in love with the character designs. Ikaris describes his costume as "simple" like the needs of the Eternals, but it feels a little busy to me.

Comments

[velacron]

Wait, so the Celestials destroyed the Deviant Empire a thousand years ago?
That would be during the Middle Ages, but it's supposed to have inspired the Flood myths of ancient cultures?

[mistersandman]

The dialogue is a bit strange. Last issue, Ikaris says, "My species, the ETERNALS, have been preparing for this for a THOUSAND of your years!"

Which triggers the outburst from Kro that the Deviants have also been preparing for a thousand years. When Ikaris goes on to tell the story of the flood, he does say it happened "when the gods appeared in those times" (emphasis mine), which allows for the possibility that the Celestial/Deviant war could have happened thousands of years ago.

Maybe the Celestials set the Deviant civilization back so far that they could only start making preparations in the last millennium? Kro could also be completely unreliable. He apparently only comes up with the idea for his false flag operation in this issue when that seems like the kind of thing that could disrupt centuries of planning.

[tinygaylaura]

Okay but the dialogue in those last two panels are amazing though

"Tremble humans

I've returned to reclaim this domain" is what every cat ever is thinking to itself in its head when it decides it's going to sit on your chair/bed and will not be moved by man or beast

I would question this woman claiming the devil has "Come back to plague us" thus implying that there's a recorded point in history where the devil was just causing trouble on earth but then I remembered this is the Marvel universe and actually there is

[tinygaylaura]

"Let us suppose that foreign astronauts visited the territory of the Sumerians thousands of years ago. Let us assume that they laid the foundations of the civilization and culture of the Sumerians and then returned to their own planet, after giving this stimulus to development. Let us postulate that curiosity drove them back to the scene of their pioneer work every hundred terrestrial years to check the results of their experiment. By the standard of our present-day expectation of life the same astronauts could easily have survived for 500 terrestrial years. The theory of relativity shows that the astronauts would only have aged about forty years during the outward and return flight in a space-ship that had traveled just under the speed of light!" -- Erich von Däniken, Chariots of the Gods, 1968

Look I don;'t know how to break this to Erich von Daniken but if you start from a place of "Let's assume this thing I say happened without any evidence for it whatsoever" that's not a theory that's the ravings of a madman

The "scientists" in Prometheus were more lucid than this