"The End" Week: The Eternals #19!

I feel like I've brought this up before, and you guys maybe tarred me for it, but I didn't hate the Eternals movie. It maybe bit off more than it could chew, and I don't know if making them all mostly unlikeable space robots was a great idea; and a little friggin' color wouldn't have hurt...OK, I'm not really selling it there; but one swerve was that Druig--the moody prick with mind-control powers who seems to be living in a Jonestown kinda situation--seems like he's going to be the worst but then turns out to be right about a lot of things? I think the character was maybe a one-dimensional nutbag when first introduced, and um, still is today: he was the bad guy in Chasm: Curse of Kaine, probably as an expedient means of setting up a fight. But with all the later reveals and retcons, was Druig maybe right all along? Maybe we'll see: from 1978, the Eternals #19, "The Pyramid" Story and art by Jack Kirby, inks by Mike Royer.

Druig was one of the "Polar Eternals," and man, I always forget how many of those guys there are? It's like the Inhumans, you always maybe see the same six or eight of 'em, but there's whole cities crammed full of more you usually only see in background shots; even though in the Eternals' case even Druig's little toadie Sigmar would have been crazy powerful. This issue, with Ikaris captured, Druig is free to head out to the "Pyramid of the Winds," where he's going to kick God in the teeth. Metaphorically: he's really gunning to destroy a Celestial! Ikaris is against it, saying the other Celestials would retaliate and destroy everything. Druig uses a little ice-sled vehicle to get to the Pyramid, which I thought was weird, since the Eternals can all fly; but the sled had force-fields to protect him from the Pyramid's "killing wind" defense. Unfortunately for him, he then finds a wall of doors marked with sigils, and didn't know the right one to choose...

Ikaris manages to free himself, and cows Sigmar into helping him: Sigmar had maybe been around the last time the Celestials visited earth, or at least had the gist of what happened, and claims they had fought amongst themselves, with one fatality. The Pyramid had been left behind and secreted by the Polar Eternals, but as they fly to it, a Celestial seems to be headed that way as well. As Sigmar leads Ikaris through the back way, Druig figures out the doors: the one marked with Ikaris's symbol! He finds "a pistol made for a giant's hand," a very Kirby space-gat. Ikaris catches up, and fights Druig, who uses flame-blasts here. Ikaris is at a disadvantage, since he was unwilling to murder his cousin; but Sigmar encourages him to disentegrate that fool before he blows up everything. Perhaps as a compromise, Ikaris disentegrates the space-gun, but the release of the energy therein engulfs and seemingly kills Druig.

Carrying the defeatist Sigmar, Ikaris escapes the collapsing Pyramid, but the energy was continuing to expand and destroy. The arriving Celestial stops it; leaving Ikaris to marvel at "an unconquerable enigma--mysterious and majestic among the creatures of the cosmos!" The final caption box, seemingly from the King himself, wonders if man might eventually gain the status to stand with them, and know their secrets. Which seems optimistic as all get out, today.

Still not sure about Druig's motive for Celestial-murder (Celesticide?) from this issue, but was he maybe right? I know I read a bit of Eternal stuff in their crossover with the Avengers and X-Men, but am vague on the details now. And like we said, Druig just appeared recently: it's not a modern classic, but I did like Chasm: Curse of Kaine. Perfectly readable mid-tier superhero book; and I like the notion of broody grump Kaine having to be the adult in the room, while his nutty 'brother' and his hot goth girlfriend play us-against-the-world.