Eternals is right around the corner, so now is as good a time as any to catch up on their comic book adventures. They don't have the most storied of histories, but there are two runs that always stand out to fans: Jack Kirby's seminal work and Neil Gaiman and John Romita Jr.'s popular run.
We'd highly recommend checking out Keiron Gillen's current series, though that obviously won't have influenced what we see on screen because it only actually launched a little earlier this year.
Talking to ComicBook.com on the set of Eternals in early 2020, producer Nate Moore explained the biggest influences on the Marvel Studios movie. "Eternals as you guys probably know, is created by Jack Kirby, 1976. The most popular run, again, I'm telling you guys the things you know, was probably the Neil Gaiman run, right? And I think that's the expectation of this movie."
"We'll probably borrow out from that. But the truth is we actually are more inspired by the Kirby stuff, so we're kind of going back to the old stuff, both mythologically and how the movie lays out."
Moore added that the premise of Gaiman's run, that the Eternals were immortals who'd had their memories erased and learned they were special, was a little too similar to other iconic franchises. "That's pretty cool but that's also the plot of Harry Potter, and I'm Number Four and a lot of movies like that, The Matrix, right? Whereas we thought it would be more interesting to spend the time with the characters who knew exactly who they were, and to track those characters through in our movie, what will be 7,000 years of human history."
Explaining that the MCU's Eternals "know exactly why they're here and what they're doing," he added that "we do change some of the Kirby mythology. So our movie takes place over two time periods. It's structured, again, not in quality, but in style like Godfather II. There's a past storyline and the present storyline."
Based on what we've seen in the trailers, the movie is definitely borrowing a lot from Kirby's work. However, if there's one thing we've come to understand in this shared world, it's that Kevin Feige and company aren't necessarily interested in exact retellings of comic book storylines.
Eternals is set to be released in theaters on November 5.