After Disney and Marvel Studios delayed the release of its live-action Eternals movie due to COVID-19, Marvel Comics made the decision to push its upcoming Eternals comic book series as well. This week, Marvel let comic retailers know that Kieron Gillen’s Eternals series was being pushed a couple of months and into 2021. Instead of its planned release in November, Eternals will now launch in January. This puts the release of the book closer to the release of the film, though the two dates are still about 10 months apart.
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Marvel hasn’t mentioned any specific issue related to the production of the new Eternals series, so it’s likely this move is strictly about launching it closer to the premiere of the film, which is set for November 2021.
“For millions of years, one hundred Eternals have roamed the Earth, secret protectors of humanity,” reads Marvel’s solicitation for Eternals #1. “Without them, we’d be smears between the teeth of the demon-like Deviants. Their war has waged for all time, echoing in our myths and nightmares. But today, Eternals face something new: change. Can they — or anyone — survive their discovery?”
Over the summer, Gillen took some time to speak with ComicBook.com about his new vision for Eternals.
“This is one of the first things I have in my bible. ‘Eternal’ doesn’t mean immortal. ‘Eternal’ means unchanging. That’s a different thing,” Gillen explained. “[Neil] Gaiman and [John] Romita Jr. very much brought this aspect out, and we’re pushing it even further. There can be something comforting about the Eternals, but there’s also something fundamentally disturbing to it. The old superhero cliché of ‘The Never-ending battle against crime’ is one of those lines which, if you take it out of context for a second and think about it, seems absolutely Sisyphean in its hopelessness. Yet, to lift a line from Camus, we must imagine Sisyphus happy – the Eternals have been doing this for so long, they must be accepting of it? Right?
“Clearly not. The irony of the book, as we show the epic history of the Eternals, this hasn’t been true. The Eternals have been having arguments about what it means to be ‘unchanging’ forever. They must remain, and their cellular programming demand they remain and continue… but it causes all manner of tensions. This ties in with the present situation in the Marvel Universe, where they’ve just had a huge shock with the reveals of Jason Aaron’s first arc of Avengers, which (er) they took badly. Their purpose is over. Yet they still continue… and it’s increasingly hard to imagine Sisyphus happy.”
Eternals is set to arrive on January 6, 2021.
