Eternals #2
Eternals (2021) #2 is the issue that locks in the visual and narrative grammar for Kieron Gillen and Esad Ribić's landmark revival of Jack Kirby's cosmic mythology, introducing Sersi and Phastos into the run and staging the first major set-piece of the series — a brawl between Ikaris and Thanos inside the time-maddened ruins of Titanos that establishes the Mad Titan as an immediate threat to a civilization still reeling from the murder of its Eternal Prime, Zuras. The issue also deepens Gillen's use of the Great Machine as an omniscient, quasi-unreliable narrator — a formal device that critics singled out as one of the run's most inventive structural choices. Arriving just weeks into a series that was conceived as both a self-contained cosmic epic and an on-ramp for readers drawn in by the then-upcoming MCU film, the issue demonstrated that the Gillen–Ribić run could sustain lore-dense world-building and explosive action simultaneously, setting the tone for the twelve-issue arc that would eventually feed directly into A.X.E.: Judgement Day.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
The series — and this issue with it — grew directly out of Marvel's decision to relaunch the Eternals in tandem with the MCU film then scheduled for 2021. Gillen has said publicly that he was drawn to the project as his first chance to revive dormant Marvel characters from scratch, and that the mass death of the Eternals in Jason Aaron's Avengers run gave him a clean narrative reset point from which to work. The creative team deliberately aligned character appearances with the film's cast while also committing to the deeper Kirby cosmology, threading both goals through the murder-mystery framework that drives the entire volume. Editor Darren Shan oversaw the book under senior editorial supervision that also included Tom Brevoort.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published February 10, 2021 by Marvel Comics; written by Kieron Gillen, penciled and inked by Esad Ribić, colored by Matthew Wilson, lettered by VC's Clayton Cowles, edited by Darren Shan.
- Central plot: Ikaris and Sprite confront Thanos in the ruins of Titanos — a city where time itself runs unstable — in the first major fight sequence of the Gillen–Ribić run.
- Issue serves as the in-series debut of both Sersi and Phastos within this volume, expanding the core cast beyond the Ikaris/Sprite pairing established in issue #1.
- The Great Machine — the Celestial-built resurrection engine and prison introduced in issue #1 — continues to function as an active narrative voice, a device critics identified as central to Gillen's formal ambitions for the series.
- The murder of Zuras, Eternal Prime, is the ongoing mystery thread advanced here; the issue reinforces that only another Eternal could have committed the killing.
- Four variant covers were produced: the standard Ribić cover, a 1:10 Ribić design variant, a 1:25 Phil Jimenez variant, and a Jamie McKelvie variant — McKelvie being Gillen's long-time collaborator on The Wicked + The Divine.
- The series was conceived in part as an accessible entry point for MCU audiences, with character designs updated to align with the film's cast; Gillen confirmed the mass resurrection at the start of the run was used deliberately to justify those visual changes.
- The full 12-issue run (issues #1–12, January 2021 – May 2022) was later collected in trade paperback, and the story threads initiated here fed into the 2022 A.X.E.: Judgement Day crossover event.
Full credits
Reprints
Reprinted in Eternos #2 (2021), Eternals #1 (2021), Eternals by Kieron Gillen #[nn] (2024)
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