"What I am is intellectual property they keep trying to find ways to exploit, even as the creative teams guiding me conspire to push me further and further up my own ass. All in the hopes that something will finally resonate. My life in four colors. But I'm done. I'm done with being reimagined for another era. I'm done with the endless cycle of existential dread. Don't be afraid. This little sucker is my way out."
— Caroline Sharp
Eternity Girl is a comic-book miniseries by Magdalene Visaggio and Sonny Liew. It was published by DC Comics as part of their Young Animal line.
Many years ago, Caroline Sharp was transformed into the heroine Chrysalis, gaining powerful shapeshifting abilities but also gaining a hideous appearance. She used these powers as a member of the covert government agency ALPHA 13, defending the world from the machinations of anarchist Madame Atom.
But that's all in the past now. Madame Atom is long dead and Caroline's a washed-up washout who was forcibly retired after her increasingly-unstable powers caused an incident. Now she spends her days trying to come up with a way to kill herself once and for all. Enter Madame Atom, who is apparently alive again, and who promises to help Caroline break her curse once and for all. There's just one catch - it may end up destroying the rest of the world as well.
This minseries contains examples of:
- Alliterative Name: One of Caroline's allies in the 1956 story is named Rick Rex.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: The miniseries ends with Caroline deciding to end her world, not the world, by finally letting go of her old life and joining the Lords of Order.
- Barrier Maiden: Astrolas guards the tower that holds up reality itself.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Early in the book, Caroline addresses the reader directly, claiming that she is actually an old intellectual property that has never caught on but which the publisher refuses to allow to lapse.
- Darker and Edgier: The 1981 "ALPHA 13" series involved Chrysalis leading a secret government team of super-powered misfits against Madame Atom. In this version, Madame Atom is a mad anarchist, but ALPHA 13's members are all either conscripted or being led around by the nose. According to the narration, the series constantly struggled to find an audience.
- Deader than Dead: If Madame Atom is correct, Caroline wouldn't simply by destroying everything. Instead, Caroline will have wiped everything out so comprehensively there wouldn't even be an empty void left.
- Death Is Cheap: Nearly every other character who dies over the course of the miniseries stays dead, but Caroline doesn't.
- Death Seeker: All Caroline wants is to die. Her desperate quest to die fuels the plot of the miniseries.
- Driven to Madness: It's implied Madame Atom's desire to destroy everything, as well as her return from death, were the result of her personal reboot going wrong and making her aware of the truth of their reality.
- Earth-Shattering Kaboom: In the 1956 origin story, Caroline becomes the Formless Girl while trying to prevent Madame Atom from boring into an ancient ziggurat and unleashing the destructive magical energy within.
- Expy: Caroline is rather obviously based on Urania Blackwell, the Silver Age Element Girl, who sought to kill herself in a short story in The Sandman (1989). Magadelene Visaggio once mentioned pitching an Element Girl miniseries whose premise is similar to Eternity Girl, implying this miniseries was retooled from the earlier premise. What especially leads credence to the idea is the Element Girl back-up feature Visaggio wrote in Shade the Changing Girl which explicitly took place after Urania's death.
- Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Subverted in the 1990 Chrysalis: The Eternity Girl series, which opens with a narrator explaining that a young couple just had an abortion.
- Omnicidal Maniac: Madame Atom seeks to wipe out all of existence in order to break the seemingly endless cycle of life, death, and rebirth in which she and Caroline are locked.
- Real After All: For most of the series, Caroline's dealings with Madame Atom supposedly occur on a higher plane of existence which makes it seem like Caroline might actually be imagining them. Come the sixth issue, everyone is shocked when they see Madame Atom materialize through a doorway in Alpha 13's headquarters.
- There Are No Therapists: Averted. Caroline is shown attending therapy after her breakdown at Alpha 13, and Dani supports the idea because she saw a therapist when she transitioned.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Subverted with Madame Atom, who believes she's doing all existence a favor by trying to destroy everything so it will stop the cycle of death and rebirth.
- What Could Have Been: Rick Rex is this trope as an in-universe personification. As the Never Man, he has the power of reaching into possible universes and actualizing certain events. For example, when Caroline explodes in the third issue, the fourth issue reveals Rick stopped it by actualizing a universe where it never happened.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: Caroline's problem is she thinks her life is nightmarish and she has no desire to keep living as she is for what might be eternity. She lets go of this thinking when she stops trying to hold on to the idea of what her life used to be and becomes something different.
- You Are Not Alone: Dani eventually gets through to Caroline by stating she can create a new world for herself without destroying herself, stating Dani did the same thing when she decided to transition.
