There's a reason it was called "Jack Kirby's ETERNALS". Because it's Jack Kirby's Eternals. His concept, his work, his idea, and when he left, it left. The only reason Marvel wants to produce another "Jack Kirby" product is in a vain attempt to "commemorate" the man while most likely robbing his family of any profits from those characters. I assume they're owned by the company and they can do what they want. I just don't care about the Eternals that Kirby didn't work on. It's a waste of Gaiman and Romita Jr. And this is the best title those two could be allowed to work on together? With as bad as, say, the FF is?

Um, it's a comic based on something Kirby scribbled down somewhere, I guess. I doubt anyone is going to make a big deal out of whether the Galactic Bounty Hunters turns out to be a mediocre rehash of Kirby ideas.

I've not had a chance to read the Eternals series from Simonson/Buscema back when. I want to, because it's Simonson/Buscema. There's the idea this series is "Kirby". The name is dropped. The connections are voiced, comparisons automatic.

Does the world need an Eternals comic? Or does it instead need a Gaiman/JRJR FF book? I mean, I'm not a fan of Gaiman but I'd still want to see what he could do with the FF. That means something to more than just the egos of the creators. The greatest Eternals comic Gaiman could come up with is a blip. The quality of the FF is important to the health of the industry. A great FF comic makes a difference, I feel.

I just wish Gaiman and other high-stature guys would help comics in general rather than picking over Kirby's corpse to lay claim to "improve" on his ideas. I understand the desire, but there are other ways to pay tribute to Kirby, if that's even a motivation for Gaiman. I'll give Morrison credit: at least he's willing to take on the much more difficult job of finding a great Batman than indulging in MARVEL BOY (which I still liked quite a bit). It's easy when nobody cares as opposed to something like Batman which affects and influences everything around it.

I think that one of the things that hurt Kirby's Eternals is how far away this book was from other Marvel (and DC) books of the day.  How disappointed many readers (that were looking for the standard super-hero story) must have felt when they they would buy the Eternals with Ikaris in all of his super-hero glory on the cover of every issue, but after the comic was bought, the reader could not find him in costume in the story anywhere.

This happened in issues 1, 2, 5, 7, 8 & 13.
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Agreed.

This is how I felt when I read the entire series several years back. THE ETERNALS was this big, terrific concept, yet it had a very unconventional story structure compared to the popular comics of the 1970s, including UNCANNY X-MEN. The series had a very large cast, so Jack's solution was rather than introduce them all in a single issue, he chose to introduce a few at a time and keep building the series.

Today's comics can take a year or more to introduce the principal characters in a given series (Sometimes that much time elapses before the characters even meet one another!). It's obvious that they are no longer catering to an audience of children, but rather an audience of adults (with allegedly longer attention spans).

THE ETERNALS was similar in this respect in that Kirby didn't feel too bothered to rush the story, and he was very much ahead of his time in trying write a comic book series this way, using an approach that would not be welcome for some thirty years, but the audience buying and reading THE ETERNALS weren't adults, they were children, and I can see how a kid could be disappointed by such an epic, wide-scale approach.

That leads me to believe that Kirby was given carte blanche on THE ETERNALS. If not, the editor would have probably dictated that the story structure be more conventional and that the plots be more obviously superheroic, in step with the rest of the Marvel line.

  I wouldn't be surprised if a comittment to fucking over Kirby*

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is that word really necessary here? i can find that in any board out there!