The Eternals the Complete Collection

The Eternals: The Complete Collection

by Jack Kirby

Marvel Comics, 2022

 

In 1975 Jack Kirby quietly returned to Marvel Comics, a company he had left, with some rancor, five years previously. Kirby's efforts at DC Comics, such as 'The Demon,' 'The New Gods,' and 'OMAC,' had not brought lasting commercial success, and Kirby increasingly felt constrained by the editorial staff at DC. So, following conversations with Stan Lee, who offered Kirby the freedom to create new books at Marvel, Kirby decided to return to the company.

Lee handled Kirby's 'return of the prodigal son' with grace and consideration (something Lee's detractors have failed to acknowledge). Lee assigned Kirby to draw 'Captain America,' as well as Kirby's new title, 'The Eternals.'

'The Eternals,' which Kirby both drew and plotted, ran for 19 issues from July 1976, to January 1978, at which time Kirby, disillusioned with the comic book business, left Marvel to go work for Hanna-Barbera. 

 

'The Complete Collection,' which was published by Marvel in 2020, assembles in trade paperback format all 19 issues, plus the 1977 Eternals Annual, along with some pencil art pages, editorials, and advertisements, for a total of 400 pages.

 

Kirby took inspiration for The Eternals from the works of Erich Von Daniken and other popularizers of the 'Ancient Astronauts' theme. In Kirby's mythology, the Eternals are godlike beings created a million years ago by a race known as the Celestials. Opposing the Eternals are the Deviants, a race of monsters who dwell in the depths of the sea and inside the Earth's crust. Homo sapiens form a third humanoid type, displaying both the malevolent tendencies of the Deviants, as well as the moral and intellectual aspirations of the beneficent Eternals.

In the opening issues of the series, Kirby introduces the reader to lead characters Ikaris, an Eternal who is engineering the return of the Celestials to the Earth, and Margo Damian, a young woman who serves both as Ikaris's girlfriend, and as a sort of interlocutor between humankind and the Eternals.

As the series unfolds additional Eternals are introduced, all assisting in the fight against the machinations of the Deviants. The Celestials, depicted as beings of immense size, remain enigmatic as they appear in various places around the Earth, terrifying the populace (as well as the Deviants). 

While Kirby's artwork for The Eternals maintained his characteristic visual energy, the reality is that his writing had not advanced much at all, in terms of sophistication, during his time at DC. The dialogue and plotting in The Eternals has a simplistic, almost juvenile quality, and is markedly inferior to the caliber of writing that was commonplace in other Marvel titles of the mid-70s.

According to Sean Howe's 2012 book 'Marvel Comics: The Untold Story,' the reader mail for Kirby's titles was so relentlessly disparaging that at least one staffer admitted to fabricating letters that said favorable things about Kirby's stuff, this being the only way the letters pages could have an approbratory quality.

Also according to Howe, Kirby resisted efforts by Lee and the Marvel editorial staff to feature other Marvel universe characters in The Eternals, something Lee saw as a viable way to bring new readers to the Kirby lineup and boost circulation. 

Grudgingly, in issue 14 Kirby did include the Hulk, but it's not really the Hulk, rather, it's the 'Cosmic Hulk,' an android created by students at the 'Maryland Institute of Technology.' 

 

It's a lame storyline, with trite dialogue ("Jumpin' Jupiter -- He's a MONSTER !") and perfunctory plotting that did little to endear The Eternals to the newer generation of Marvel comic book buyers who were avidly reading 'X-Men,' and its complex plotting from Chris Claremont.

Who will want a copy of 'The Eternals: The Complete Collection' ? While Jack Kirby fans certainly will be interested in the book, I doubt modern-day comic book readers will see much in its pages that they will find appealing (particularly after the 2021 feature film based on the comics turned out to be a Woke mess that bombed at the box office). That said, I was able to find a copy of the book for under $9, so getting it is not a heavy lift for those curious about this chapter in Kirby's career.

Book Review: Hobgoblin

Book Review: 'Hobgoblin' by John Coyne

0 / 5 Stars

'Hobgoblin' was issued in 1981 in hardcover, with this Berkley Books paperback (342 pp.) published in July, 1982, with stepback cover art by Mark and Stephanie Gerber.

Author Coyne (b. 1937) published a number of horror novels in the late 1970s, and throughout the 1980s. He has a fondness for using gerunds as titles.

'Hobgoblin' refers to the fictional tabletop role-playing game (RPG) that the lead character, a tormented teen named Scott Gardiner, is obsessed with. As Grady Hendrix points out in his 2017 book 'Paperbacks from Hell,' Hobgoblin sought to capitalize on the notoriety of 'Dungeons and Dragons' in the early 1980s. 

 

Strange as it may seem to modern-day audiences, back then D&D was all over the pop culture, depicted as a pastime that suborned naive kids into practicing black magic and the dark arts. The premise of a fantasy RPG driving wholesome teens into committing acts of mayhem and depravity has a certain allure. Does 'Hobgoblin' do anything effective with this premise ? Well.......no.

'Hobgoblin' is set in the Fall of 1981. As the novel opens, Scott Gardiner and his widowed mother Barbara have taken up residence in the grand estate of Ballycastle, on the Hudson River in New York state. Ballycastle is an impressive monument to egomania. Originally a castle in Ireland, in the 1920s it was dismantled stone by stone, shipped across the Atlantic, and re-erected on the grounds of property owned by an eccentric Irish-born magnate named Fergus O'Cuileannain. A foundation operates Ballycastle as a tourist attraction, and has hired Barbara to be the archivist for the estate.

Scott is a prick, and a fuckup. He's self-centered, arrogant, a mamma's boy, prone to self-pity, has attempted suicide several times, and is preoccupied with Hobgoblin to the point where he interprets the world through the lens of the game; people are judged based on their resemblances to characters from Hobgoblin. In his own mind, Scott sees himself as the ancient Irish hero Brian Boru, his avatar in the game, and Gardiner's real-world struggles are echoes of those Boru has faced in sessions of Hobgoblin.

Nothing of consequence takes place in the first 300 pages of 'Hobgoblin'. Author Coyne is determined to stuff as much padding into the narrative as he possibly can. We get lengthy passages describing the emotional conflicts between Scott and Barbara; Scott's (improbable) romance with his high school classmate, Valerie Dunn; Scott's bullying at the hands of some troglodyte football players; and Barbara's burgeoning romance with the foundation's director, Derek Brennan. There is considerable exposition on the gameplay mechanics of Hobgoblin and RPGs in general (Coyne at one point alludes to TSR founders Gary Gygax and Dave Arenson). 

There are all sorts of Ambiguously Spooky Phenomena, associated with what may have been devil-worshipping conducted on the grounds of Ballycastle by O'Cuileannain, popping up now and then to impart a feeble momentum to the narrative.

'Hobgoblin' could have redeemed itself by providing a worthy climax, but the final 40 pages read like a really bad script for a Slasher film: it seems that Scott has persuaded his teachers to allow the high school kids to have a Hobgoblin cosplay party at the castle ! Contrivances are so plentiful that they completely negate the author's efforts to impart a sense of horror and dread to the proceedings.

The verdict ? 'Hobgoblin' is one of greatest duds of the Paperbacks from Hell era, and deserving of a Zero Stars score.

The Story of the Stepback Cover

The Story of the Stepback Cover

Over at the 'Sweet Savage Flame' blog devoted to vintage paperback romance novels, an interesting series of articles about the stepback cover, a major artistic and marketing feature of old school books. Lots of pics from not just the romance genre, but Paperbacks from Hell, too !

Penthouse March 1977

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Book Review: Nightside City

Book Review: 'Nightside City' by Lawrence Watt-Evans

 

2 / 5 Stars

'Nightside City' (227 pp.) was published by Del Rey / Ballantine in April, 1989, and features a dramatic cover illustration by David Schleinkofer.

The novel is set on the planet Epimetheus, circa 2300 AD. 

 

Epimetheus isn't a particularly hospitable place. It doesn't rotate, so one half of the planet constantly is in darkness, while the other half is exposed to continuous sunlight and attendant UV radiation and heat. As luck would have it, a massive mineral deposit was discovered in the darkside, not very far from the terminator dividing the light and dark halves. The resultant mining operation has been prosperous enough to support the eponymous City, whose brothels, casinos, and tourist traps serve not just the miners, but sightseers from the wider Federation.

 

There's just one problem with Epimetheus: it turns out the planetologists were wrong, and the plant is beginning to rotate. Within the next century, the entirety of the City will come into the day side and be sterilized into a depopulated wasteland. Anyone with means is planning on going off-planet well before the sunshine overtakes the City.

As 'Nightside City' opens, we are introduced to lead character Carlisle 'Carlie' Hsing, who ekes out a living as a private eye. Born and raised in the City, Hsing has difficulty imaging living anywhere else than Epimetheus, but like many residents, she is aware that time is running out, and earning enough money for passage elsewhere increasingly is a priority.

 

Zar Pickens, the disheveled leader of a group of squatters occupying abandoned buildings on the City's westside, where perpetual sunlight is starting to touch the tips of the structures, has come to hire a private eye. It seems that someone is buying up the abandoned properties and evicting the squatters. Why would anyone spend good money to buy condemned real estate ?

Hsing, willing to take on even a minor case if there is a fee involved, decides to look into the matter. She discovers that someone with a great deal of money and power indeed is investing in the westside. Someone who believes that there is a way to stop the rotation of Epimetheus, and save Nightside City from destruction..........

'Nightside City' belongs to the cyberpunk - noir genre of sci-fi that started in 1986, with the publication of ‘When Gravity Fails’ by George Alec Effinger. The genre flourished well into the 1990s, with additional 'Budayeen' novels from Effinger; the 'Carlucci' trilogy from Richard Paul Russo; 'Montezuma Strip,' by Alan Dean Foster; 'Noir,' by K. W. Jeter; and 'Tower of Dreams,' by Jamil Nasir.

 

But, compared to these novels, 'Nightside' is a disappointment. While it certainly is competent in incorporating cyberpunk trappings, it suffers from the author's insistence on portraying Carlie Hsing as the antithesis of the hard-boiled, shoot-first-ask-questions-later, macho male protagonist of noir and crime fiction. However admirable it may be to have a female character who relies on 'feminine' tactics to solve cases, it makes for a dull read. 

 

Much of the novel revolves around internal monologues, in which Hsing ponders over all the permutations of what she could, and should, do. There is lots of verbal fencing between Hsing and her adversaries, designed to showcase how she uses her intuition and guile (rather than threats of violence) to acquire information. There are lots of passages in which Hsing undergoes protracted self-reflection before taking any sort of action. Indeed, not until page 112 is there any sort of tension or suspense, and this involves Hsing confronting a robot (?!). 

 

The novel's climax is lackluster, with Hsing and the bad guys using Human Resources-style negotiating tactics to achieve a bloodless but mutually satisfying resolution. It's a lukewarm payoff for dutifully following a narrative that never really takes on the edge that's present in the best noir fiction. If you like your cyberpunk contemplative and slow-paced, then you may like 'Nightside City,' but all others can pass on this title.

National Lampoon February 1974

National Lampoon

February, 1974

Let's step back in time 51 years, to February, 1974. 

 

The February 23, 1974 Billboard Top 200 album chart shows none other than Bob Dylan with the number one selling album in the USA, Planet Waves.

 

The latest issue of the National Lampoon is out on the newsstands, with the theme of 'Strange Sex.'

 

Perhaps sensing an opportune moment, Bob Dylan's record company bought some full-page advertising for Dylan's back catalogue:

 

Elvis (!) still was releasing albums, although they were mediocre, and got zero play on the album oriented rock (AOR) stations then dominating the FM airwaves. If you wanted to listen to Elvis on the radio, you went to the AM frequency and the Top Forty stations.

It was bands like ELO, 10CC, the Jackson Five, and Foghat getting attention on the AOR FM stations, and they would come to be chart-toppers as the decade wore on. Compared to them, Elvis and Dylan increasingly were old fashioned and out-of-date.......

This February issue highlights 'Strange Sex,' more of a Matty Simmons marketing come-on rather than anything really substantive. Although the Lampoon staff did do something transgressive:

 

As part of the Nostalgia Craze of the seventies, Marilyn Monroe came back into prominence, mainly through the bestselling 1973 photography book (below) authored by Norman Mailer, who was infatuated with Monroe and saw her as something of a timeless Muse and eternal avatar of female beauty and sexuality.

Satirizing the Monroe craze in a truly deviant fashion, the Lampoon staff featured a '1974 Marilyn Monroe Calendar' which consisted of a gruesome parody, artfully rendered by Melinda Bordelon, of Monroe's 1953 picture in Playboy magazine. 

 

Monroe, the Lampoon staff were telling Mailer and his fellow nostalgia enthusiasts, was dead and gone. Long dead, and long gone........!

 

 

The four-color comic insert in this February issue is 'First Lay Comics,' which features a primordial Animal House storyline from Doug Kenney and Joe Orlando. 

 

[Note to modern-day readers: David Eisenhower was the grandson of President Dwight Eisenhower, and a frequent target of derision from the Lampoon and the counterculture for two reasons; first, in 1968 he married Julie Nixon; and second, in 1970 he enlisted in the Navy Reserve, thus avoiding being called up in the draft and possibly serving in Vietnam. The counterculture saw this as a blatant act of political privilege.] 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'Boxed In,' the short story by Chris Miller, starts off as a satirical look at horny teens: Benny is hoping to score during a hot-and-heavy makeout session on the couch with the luscious Suzette Kornfeld. However, when Benny arrives at the Kornfeld home, he must endure some odd remarks from Mr. Kornfeld about his daughter, including "Do you ever...squeeze her tushie ?"

 

When Mr. Kornfeld and his wife head upstairs  to give the young couple the living room and some privacy, Benny can't help but wonder what is going on in the Kornfeld family.

 

The story takes a real turn into horror in its closing paragraphs. Another great entry from Miller, and another reason why I'm hoping that someday he can get permission from the current owners of the Lampoon property to release a compilation of his work for the magazine.

Keeping to the theme of 'strange sex' (i.e., gay) editors Tony Hendra and Sean Kelly (?) do a 'Homo Funnies.'

And we of course have the comics and cartoons that are present in every issue of the Lampoon.

 

 

 

That's what you got for your 85 cents, back in February of '74..............