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Eternals #10

Mar 2022
Kieron Gillen, Esad Ribic

Eternals #10 cover

Story Name:

Hail Thanos - part 4


Synopsis

Eternals #10 synopsis by Rob Johnson
Rating: 4 stars
The Eternals discovered that every time 1 of them is resurrected it is at the expense of a human life. Our main Eternals fled to the Deviant city Lemuria to learn how to live as mortals. But Thanos has become the Prime Eternal and came after Phastos who he expected could fix his damaged body and make the semi-Deviant a full Eternal. Now our Eternals want to rescues Phastos and kill Thanos. The Eternal priestess Ajak convinced them they needed the help of their Celestial Space Gods. But the only Celestial left on Earth is the dead Progenitor currently used by the Avengers as their base.

Now Ikaris and Thena are waiting as a backup rescue team outside the the 'Mountain' that is the dead Celestial at the North Pole while the rest of the team are in the tower that is the Space God's staff.

Sersi has openly knocked on the front door. Iron Man doesn't trust her and them, especially since the recent global climate problem that they say they solved (in #1-6). On the other hand Sub-Mariner is eager to take her up on her suggestion of dinner together. Namor thinks Stark is jealous because Tony and Sersi once had a fling. Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers) is amused. Namor meets Sersi in a bedroom, but he suggests that they repair to a pool he brought from Atlantis which has very refreshing and stimulating water. She agrees and they leave the room.

Sersi has left an earring on the bed. And we learn that Ajak, Kingo Sunen, Makkari and Sprite are miniaturised inside it. Now Sersi has smuggled them inside the Celestial so they can contact its mind to learn the secrets of the Deviants (created like the Eternals by the Celestials) and how to kill Thanos. They know Phastos will be holding out as Thanos tries to torture secrets out of him. But they also know he can't last long.

Thanos is indeed torturing the Eternal. The mad Titan enjoys it but is aware that it's not achieving his goal. He consults Druig who suggests they threaten some humans, which always works. Thanos doesn't want to alert the Avengers to his presence by such an overt action, but Druig says there are subtle ways available to the Prime Eternal which will seem like natural events. So Thanos shows Phastos an image of the peaceful town of Little Hollow, and a button which he can press to make the Great Machine (that is spread throughout the Earth) cause it to be devoured by a volcano. Phastos weighs the pros and cons and decides to reveal a small secret. He integrated Thanos into the Eternals' Machine as much as he could but couldn't achieve full integration. For that Thanos must ask his parents how they created him.

Thanos believes this is no help because Mentor/A'Lars and Sui-San are dead. But Druig points out that they weren't just Eternals of Titan they were Eternals of Earth and so the Great Machine resurrected them here. Where they have been imprisoned (for the crime of birthing Thanos as explained in the Eternals: Thanos Rises 1-shot). So Thanos goes to see his mother (who *he* killed, but she also tried to kill *him* at birth).

Meanwhile back in the bedroom the 4 Eternals materialise full-size. Ajak is sure that the Celestials haven't truly abandoned their creations and that the Progenitor will help them. Her fellow priestess Makkari believes this is just an empty corpse but Ajak detects a lingering soul. She asks Sprite to use her illusion power to make them invisible as they head to where the soul is.

Then we get 1 of the Machine's info-breaks, this time about the Avengers. It lists the current team as:-
Thor (an All-Father class god-being in an adolescent stage).
Captain America (surplus WWII-era weaponry held with nostalgic affection).
Iron Man (human technologist).
Black Panther (king with long-term holdings in the afterlife).
Captain Marvel (alien/human hybrid).
Phoenix (an avatar of 1 of the primordial cosmic powers of life).
Starbrand (rival planetary defence system).
Namor (Atlantean mutant king).
It says that over the millennia the Eternals have considered Avengers groups to be a potential problem. (As revealed in the Eternals: Celestia 1-shot) Ajak was sent to investigate the 1MBC Avengers. They fought and killed her. She was of course resurrected but decided to let them live. A decision which she has often regretted.

We return to Thanos who is currently torturing his father Mentor who has now died again. Druig reports that Sui-San has been resurrected again if he wants to return to her for the 6th time. Obviously he's having even less luck with them than he had with Phastos.

The 4 cloaked Eternals sneak past Captain Marvel, Phoenix (Echo) and Thor. But the current very young Starbrand (Brandy Selby) wakes from her sleep because as 1 planetary defence system she is alerted (I think by the Machine) to the presence of the other such system in the shape of Eternals.

Thanos and Druig are now in the resurrection chamber waiting for Mentor to be reborn. But Thanos admits that his hate for his parents is such that he wants them to be permanently dead. However Druig explains that Phastos discovered that the rebirth of *any* Eternal can only be delayed. To make the Machine stop it completely would destroy the Earth (I don't think we knew that already) because Machine and Earth are so tightly linked. So Thanos will just go back to torturing his parents.

Starbrand finds the invisible Eternals and calls them out. Mind-reader and illusion-caster Sprite makes *herself* visible but disguised as Brandy's favourite stuffed toy Pooble-Peebs. The pair go off to play.

Thanos is torturing both parents together. Druig opines that it'll do no good, but Thanos is satisfied with hurting the pair who caused all his pain (as he sees it). Sui-San responds that *he* is the cause of *her* pain. So he tries the Little Hollow gambit again. But Mentor says that town's death would be a better price to pay if it stops his son from being free to ravage more worlds. So Thanos pushes the button.

Another Machine info-dump describes what will happen next. It will manufacture and deploy explosives to create a fault line beneath the town allowing magma to rise from the Earth's molten core to the surface. However it will take a short while for the explosives to be made and placed.

The Machine can't disobey an order from the Prime Eternal but it still has free will. So it tells Ikaris and Thena about the imminent vent. They rush off to prevent the disaster.

The 3 remaining Eternals, now no longer hidden by Sprite, reach the site where Ajak detected the Celestial's soul. There are 6 glowing discs on the floor and priests can communicate with the Celestial by standing on them. But they need all 6 discs to be occupied. However speedster Makkari manages to fool the system into thinking she's standing on them all at the same time. Ajak speaks to the God in its own language, and an image of the Progenitor appears before them.

However at this point the Machine warns them that the Avengers' security system has detected their presence. Kingo Sunen goes to hold the team off leaving the priestesses to talk to the ghost of the Space God.


 

Review / Commentaries


Eternals #10 Review by (March 12, 2022)
There's a problem placing this issue in the chronology of the current Avengers series. In the current Death Hunters arc the Avengers' dead Celestial HQ is (almost certainly) destroyed in #53 and Starbrand changes from a definite pre-teen to a teenager in #52. So this issue must be set before those issues. However Namor is on the team and he only joined in #50 at the beginning of the arc, and the action from that part of #50 to #53 is continuous.
Also the omniscient Machine lists the Avengers as not including Ghost Rider who leaves the team as Sub-Mariner joins. But it misses out Valkyrie who joins at the same time.
Of those listed Black Panther and Captain America don't appear here.

The Great Machine in its running commentary remarks that Sersi makes a habit of dinner assignments with ulterior motives. She's also had the special earrings for a very long time, and so she was lying when she told Jack Of Knives that they were nothing special (#8). She does that a lot too.

The Machine says here that Ajak 1st died at the hands of a Starbrand. But she died when she confronted the 1MBC Avengers, and their Starbrand didn't kill her it was their Ghost Rider. However it is also true that there was a dinosaur Starbrand before the caveman version, so maybe *it* killed Ajak earlier? Or maybe the Machine (or more likely the writer) made a little mistake here.

When Sprite goes off with Brandy Selby she whispers to the other Eternals that it will turn out better trhan her last baby-sitting job. That was looking after Toby Robson for Ikaris, and then Toby died to facilitate Ikaris' resurrection (#6).



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Esad Ribic
Esad Ribic
Matthew Wilson
Esad Ribic (Cover Penciler)
Esad Ribic (Cover Inker)
Esad Ribic (Cover Colorist)
Additional Credits
Letterer: Clayton Cowles.
Editor: Darren Shan. Editor-in-chief: C. B. Cebulski.

Characters

Listed in alphabetical order. All stories.

Captain Marvel
Captain Marvel

(Carol Danvers)
Iron Man
Iron Man

(Anthony Stark)
Sub-Mariner
Sub-Mariner

(Namor McKenzie)
Thor
Thor

(Odinson)
Plus: Druig, Great Machine (Eternals AI), Kingo Sunen, Mentor (A'Lars), Phastos, Phoenix (Maya Lopez), Sprite, Starbrand (Brandy Selby), Sui-San, Thena.

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