The Eternals #1
The Eternals #1 is one of the defining Bronze Age debut issues in Marvel history — the sole creative work of Jack Kirby writing, penciling, and editing his own complete mythology from scratch, introducing the Eternals, the Deviants, and the conceptual framework of the Celestials as cosmic engineers of human evolution in a single 36-page story titled 'The Day of the Gods.' It planted the seed of an entirely new cosmological layer in the Marvel Universe, one that decades of later writers — from Roy Thomas and Mark Gruenwald to Neil Gaiman — would return to, expand, and attempt to resolve. The issue is also a cultural artifact of the mid-1970s 'ancient astronauts' moment, channeling the pop-science phenomenon of Erich von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods? into a superhero-adjacent science-fiction epic that, unusually for Marvel at the time, Kirby intended to stand apart from the existing continuity of Earth-616. Its influence reached the screen in 2021 when Chloé Zhao's MCU film brought Ikaris, Kro, and the Celestials to a global audience.
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Kirby returned to Marvel in 1976 after a creatively ambitious but commercially frustrated run at DC — where his Fourth World saga (New Gods, Forever People, Mister Miracle) had been cancelled before he could resolve its storylines — and negotiated an arrangement that let him write, draw, and edit his own projects. The Eternals went through two title changes before publication: Kirby originally called it 'The Celestials,' Marvel's marketing retitled it 'Return of the Gods' to piggyback on the Chariots of the Gods? craze (even mimicking that book's logo font), and when the legal department flagged potential conflicts — both with von Däniken's publisher and with DC's concurrent Return of the New Gods revival — the name was changed a final time to The Eternals. The series drew on multiple intellectual inspirations: von Däniken's ancient-astronaut theories, Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End (whose 'Overlord' and 'Overmind' concepts map onto the Celestials and the Uni-Mind), and Kirby's own longstanding fascination with UFOs and mythology; the issue's production credits list John Verpoorten on inks, Glynis Wein on colors, Gaspar Saladino on lettering, and Marv Wolfman as editorial co-credit alongside Kirby himself, with Archie Goodwin serving as editor-in-chief.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of Ikaris (alias Ike Harris), the Eternals as a race, Margo Damian, Brother Tode, and Vira; Kro appears here as well in what most sources treat as his first full comics appearance.
- First introduction of the Deviants as a species and the Celestials as a concept (appearing in statue/flashback form), establishing the three-branch cosmology — Humans, Eternals, Deviants — that would underpin Marvel's cosmic mythology for decades.
- Written, penciled, and self-edited entirely by Jack Kirby, making it one of the rare Bronze Age Marvel comics produced under a full creator-control arrangement; the story's title is 'The Day of the Gods.'
- The series was originally titled 'The Celestials,' then briefly 'Return of the Gods' (with cover art mimicking Erich von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods? logo), before legal concerns prompted a final rename to The Eternals.
- The storyline was originally conceived and published outside mainstream Marvel continuity — Kirby intended a self-contained cosmology — though Marvel editorial eventually folded it into Earth-616, a tension that ran through the book's entire 19-issue run.
- Captain America and the Red Skull (Steve Rogers / Johann Shmidt) appear in the issue only via a one-page in-house Hostess Twinkies advertisement — they have no role in the story itself; Shang-Chi is not documented in the story content by any source consulted.
- The issue has been reprinted extensively: in the 2006 Eternals by Jack Kirby Omnibus, the 2008 paperback series, the True Believers: Kirby 100th – Eternals one-shot (October 2017), and a Facsimile Edition (February 2020), as well as in Marvel Firsts: The 1970s Vol. 3 (2012).
- The 2021 MCU film Eternals, directed by Chloé Zhao, drew directly from the characters and mythology debuted in this issue; Richard Madden played Ikaris in the film.
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Reprints
↩ Reprints [Marvel Hostess Ads] #8 (1976)
Reprinted in Comic Reader #127 (1976), Comic Reader #129 (1976), Strange #90 (1977), Selecciones Marvel #12 (1977), Gli Eterni #1 (1978), Hulk Comic #4 (1979), Hulk Comic #5 (1979), Superaventuras Marvel #25 (1984), Eternals by Jack Kirby [The Eternals Omnibus] #[nn] (2006), Les Éternels #1 (2007), Eternals by Jack Kirby #1 (2008), Marvel Firsts: The 1970s #3 (2012), True Believers: Kirby 100th - Eternals #1 (2017), Marvel Legacy : Avengers Extra #1 (2018), Eternals: Cosmic Origins #[nn] (2020), The Eternals by Jack Kirby Monster-Size #[nn] (2020), Eternals No. 1 Facsimile Edition #[nn] (2020), Eternals by Jack Kirby: The Complete Collection #[nn] (2020), Eternals by Jack Kirby: The Complete Collection #1 (2020), The Eternals: The Complete Saga Omnibus #[nn] (2020), Biblioteca Marvel: Los Eternos #1
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