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Eternals #11

Apr 2022

Kieron Gillen, Guiu Vilanova

Story Name:

Hail Thanos - part 5

Synopsis

Eternals #11 synopsis by Rob Johnson

Rating:

Thanos has become Prime Eternal. To defeat him our main group of Eternals are seeking help from the only Celestial left on Earth - the dead 1 at the North Pole that is being used as Avengers HQ. The Eternals don't want to tell the Avengers what's going on so some of them have sneaked into the place leaving Ikaris and Thena outside as a rescue team if necessary. However Thanos isn't a true Eternal and so isn't yet fully integrated into the Great Machine. He's been torturing his Eternal parents to find out how to achieve his aim but to no avail. So his next plan is to threaten the small US town of Little Hollow with a volcanic eruption to get Mentor and Sui-San to talk. But the Machine has alerted Ikaris and Thena to that, and they've rushed off heroically. And now the Avengers security system has detected the intruders.

Last issue the very young Starbrand noticed the Eternals, but Sprite is distracting her as an animated version of her favourite toy. Sersi is keeping Sub-Mariner occupied in a hot tub, and they both choose to ignore the alarm. The priestess Ajak is still trying to get the 'ghost' of the Celestial to talk to her while fellow priestess Makkari continues racing around occupying 6 necessary spots 'simultaneously'. Last issue Kingo Sunen went to hold the Avengers off. Black Panther, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Iron Man, Phoenix (Maya Lopez) and Thor are rushing to the spot when they are suddenly confronted by someone claiming to be Skullathar The Destructorite who threatens them with dire consequences if they fight him. It's professional actor Kingo doing his stuff.

Thena teleports in to Little Hollow but Ikaris has already flown there and is now foolishly trying to move the town out of the way of the volcano 1 building at a time. But that wooden house breaks when he tries to lift it up. Then Gilgamesh the Forgotten One joins them and asks what Thena's plan is. But she hasn't got 1.

We get an interlude with Thanos and his Eternal toady Druig reminding us of the volcano plan to get his parents to cooperate. But Thanos is keeping something from Druig ...

... and we get 1 of the Machine's infodumps telling us what it is (basically by telling us the plot of the recent Eternals: The Heretic 1-shot). When Uranos and his Uranites lost the Eternal civil war he claimed that he had set a self-destruct mechanism in his hidden armoury which would destroy the Machine (and with it the Earth) if he died. So instead the Eternals imprisoned him in the Exclusion while they failed to find the armoury. However in the 1-shot Uranos gave Thanos the access codes to the armory (and presumably told him where it is). Now Thanos can destroy the Earth whenever he wants. (That is unless as some Eternals believe Uranos was bluffing.)

Meanwhile Thena has telepathically contacted Ajak and told her what's happening. She asks for some techno-theological deus ex machina. Ajak tells her she has a pocket dimension generator in her room in Celestia. Ikaris zooms there and brings it back to Thena who encases the town with it. The Machine explains (this time without an infodump) that Ajak created it to trap Makkari in when they fought (in the Eternals: Celestia 1-shot). This time it has also wrapped all the town's inhabitants in protective bubbles too, so that they come to no harm when the 3 Eternals lift the whole town-bubble into the air and move it away from the imminent eruption.

However when they put it down and take the bubble(s) away the town is still wrecked, and the people are not pleased. Even when Ikaris explains to them about the volcanic eruption he claims to have saved them from. Then the magma erupts in the distance and the people start considering whether their insurance will cover it.

Back at HQ Thor is about to smite the Destructorite with his hammer when the foe warns them about the danger to Little Hollow. Iron Man detects that he's right, and CapA sends most of the team there. He and Panther remain to deal with Skullathar who takes a blow from Cap's shield. But BP has worked out that he's really an Eternal in disguise. So Kingo is free to use his skill at multiple martial arts. However he still falls to the duo. Meanwhile priestess Ajak is angry that her god won't talk to her (when it *did* talk to the blasphemous Avengers). So she summons a weapon to attack the 'ghost' with.

The other Avengers arrive at Little Hollow to find that the Eternals have saved the town but the eruption is still a problem. Until Phoenix uses her cosmic fire to settle it down. The Avengers want the Eternals to explain what happened or they'll 'arrest' them. Thena wants to keep the Avengers distracted so she allows Ikaris to start a fight.

With their volcanic plan thwarted Thanos and Druig revisit the Titan's father A'Lars/Mentor in his cell. They tell him they intend to invade his mind in search of the secret they believe it holds concerning Thanos' semi-Deviant nature. A'lars believes he can repel them, but Druig thinks that *his* Eternal mental skill combined with Thanos' mental power will succeed. We see them (symbolically) punching a hole through Mentor's surface consciousness to descend a stairway into his subconscious.

Now it's time for another Machine infodump about Mentor's mental defences:-
The self/other shield in the surface consciousness would normally keep out any invader, but Thanos' sheer willpower has broken through it.
A'Lars has caused a 'flood' to impede progress through his subconscious. He has deliberately unleashed his obsessions and personal demons including his self-doubt and self-loathing. These will automatically home in on their primary cause, his son Thanos.
Then they will have to negotiate the Eternal's memory looking for the info they seek. A'Lars will have turned it into a confusing maze, exacerbated by false memories created by the subconscious demons.
Lastly what they seeks has been placed in the vault of repression. But the other repressed memories therein will be another source of danger.

That's all for Thanos this issue and we return to the Avengers/Eternals face-off at Little Hollow. The fight still hasn't started and the 3 Eternals are mentally debating strategy at high-speed. Gilgamesh has to be brought up-to-date and agrees that they must fight to keep these Avengers from interfering with Ajak's task. It remains to pick opponents.

Gilgamesh has the 3 other Forgotten Ones in pocket dimensions. He very briefly unleashes them and they blast Captain Marvel. Thena throws Ajak's dimensional trap at Phoenix, and it sucks her in. Phoenix isn't Thor's best bud but he still avenges the strike at a fellow Avenger by calling down the lightning on Thena. She responds by assuring him that Maya is safe. Iron Man checks that Ikaris is virtually indestructible before calling down a satellite strike on *him*. Battle continues between the 3 pairs.

In Avengers HQ Ajak has proved that the inhibition preventing Eternals from attacking Celestials doesn't apply to their ghosts. Her weapon has injured the Progenitor's ghost and now it deigns to reply to her. But she doesn't like what it says.

Review / Commentaries

Eternals #11 Review by Rob Johnson (April 15, 2022)

In my comments on last issue I cited a problem placing this group of issues within current Avengers continuity.
Avengers HQ was apparently destroyed at the end of their #53. But since then #54 has revealed that the Progenitor's body was heavily damaged but still habitable, so in that respect this issue could be set either side of the Death Hunters arc.
But that still leaves another contradiction. Starbrand evolved from a definite pre-teen to a teenager during that arc so this Eternals arc must occur before then. But Namor is an Avenger here and he only joined the DH arc.

The Thor/Phoenix (Echo) relationship is described in this issue as strained. This is because Thor has recently been told that his true mother is the Phoenix Force, which he doesn't want to believe. Thor began the DH arc staying in Asgard because he wanted nothing to do with Maya Lopez. But in #54 they came to a truce. So their status here *could* be made to fit anywhere.

The Eternals refer to the dead Progenitor Celestial as the only Celestial on Earth. What about the equally-dead Dreaming Celestial in San Francisco?

We don't get to see Thanos and Druig wade through the tangle of Mentor's mind in this issue. So it's possible that the Machine's description of the mental defences as also describing the duo's trip through them. And next issue they'll have reached their target.

Gilgamesh, the Forgotten One, was introduced in the original Eternals series. In #1 of our series it was revealed that he was 1 of 4 Forgotten, the other 3 (Dumuza, Ishta and Utunaa) we'd never heard of before. In #5 it was explained that they were a splinter group dedicated to protecting humans from Eternals, lethally if necessary. But we never met the other 3 in those issues, and we still don't really see them this time.

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Excelsioring your collection:

KOTOBUKIYA BLACK PANTHER MOVIE BLACK PANTHER ARTFX STATUE

Holy smokes, Batman!
(The Boy Wonder)

Kieron Gillen

Guiu Vilanova

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.

Listed in alphabetical order. All stories.

Ajak

Avengers

Black Panther
(T'Challa)

Captain America
(Steven Rogers)

Captain Marvel
(Carol Danvers)

Eternals

Ikaris

Iron Man
(Anthony Stark)

Makkari

Sersi

Sub-Mariner
(Namor McKenzie)

Thanos

Thor
(Odinson)

Plus: Druig, Gilgamesh (Forgotten One), Great Machine (Eternals AI), Kingo Sunen, Mentor (A'Lars), Phoenix (Helmut Zemo), Sprite, Starbrand (Brandy Selby), Thena.

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Eternals #11

Hail Thanos - part 5

Synopsis

Review / Commentaries

Additional Credits