"Rock yourself a long way from sleep with Kid Eternity, the long-haired, loose-lipped adolescent from Hell"
— Vertigo Jam
Kid Eternity is a comic book superhero created by Otto Binder and Sheldon Moldoff for Quality Comics in December 1942, debuting in issue 25 of Hit Comics in addition to later having his own series that lasted for 18 issues.
A boy who died before his time, Kid Eternity was given the ability to return to Earth (with his guardian, Mr. Keeper, the angel who messed up the books) and summon historical, legendary, and mythical figures to aid him by saying the word "Eternity!"
In 1991, Grant Morrison wrote a miniseries that revamped the character, retconning that Kid Eternity was actually an oblivious agent of Hell and had actually been summoning demons that took on the forms of the historical figures he asked for, with a series by Vertigo that was written by Ann Nocenti later coming out in 1993 and running for 16 issues.
His most recent appearance was in a one-shot comic by Jeff Lemire in 2012, that was set post-Flashpoint.
General Tropes
- By the Power of Grayskull!: Kid Eternity can make himself visible to the living, summon any historical figure and send them back just by saying the word "Eternity".
- Manin White: Kid Eternity is always donned in white.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Kid Eternity was always just referred to as "(the) Kid," first by his grandfather and later everyone else. Eventually DC Comics got the rights to the property and did some Canon Welding with Shazam!, making him Freddy's brother with the real name Christopher "Kit" Freeman.
- Interrogating the Dead: Kid Eternity sometimes used his power to solve murder mysteries by interviewing the victim after they got killed or to otherwise obtain information that only a certain deceased person would know.
- Invisibility: Unless he wants to be seen and makes himself visible by saying "Eternity", Kid Eternity is invisible to mortals.
- Public Domain Character: Most of the characters the Kid summons.
- Summon Magic: Kid Eternity has the ability to summon whoever he wants.
Tropes for the 1940s comic till the 1990s
- Aesop Amnesia: A common mistake Kid Eternity made in the 1940s comics that he really should've learned from was to summon the assistance of malevolent historical figures or fictional characters like Bluebeard or Long John Silver, which more often than not ended up biting Kid Eternity in the ass when the villains he summoned either betrayed him or actively made the present crisis worse.
- Alliterative Name: Characters with names that are alliterations are frequent in the 1940s comics, with just some examples including Murder Marton, Killer Karf and Dan Doldrum.
- Art Initiates Life: The ninth issue of the 1946 series has a villain named Skir, who through black magic is able to create paintings that come to life.
- Canon Welding: Pre-Crisis, he was unrelated to the Marvels (and his real name was unrevealed), but in the 1970s, he was retconned into being Freddy Freeman's brother on account of DC inheriting the rights to both Fawcett and Quality's characters after the latter two comic publishers went out of business. They further retconned it so that Kit had died in Freddy's place.
- Cheated Death, Died Anyway: In the seventh issue of the 1946 series, convicted criminal Murder Marton survives electrocution and becomes so electrically charged that he can kill people instantly with a touch, but ends up dying after Kid Eternity summons Benjamin Franklin and has him use a lightning rod to drain Marton's body of electricity.
- Clear My Name: In the first story of issue 14 of the 1946 series, Kid Eternity has to clear his name after a criminal commits crimes while impersonating him.
- Convenient Terminal Illness: In the first story of the 1946 series' ninth issue, Joe Hodges only agrees to put his life at risk by holding the Beagle accountable for his murders after learning from his doctor that he has a heart condition reducing the remainder of his lifespan to one year. The Beagle ends up killing Hodges before he can finish writing the paper that will expose his crimes, but Hodges is fortunately able to finish the paper posthumously with Kid Eternity's help.
- Divine Misfile: The original Kid Eternity gained his powers after a freak accident of fate caused him to die over fifty years ahead of schedule. In order to restore him back to the living, the divine bureaucrats reclassified him as a superhero, which also gave him the ability to summon gods, heroes, and fictional beings.
- Drama-Preserving Handicap: One of the stories in Hit Comics had a villain called Mr. Silence make the entire city devoid of sounds so that his crimes couldn't attract attention and the few bystanders and law enforcement agents who noticed would be unable to call for help. This of course prevented Kid Eternity from summoning the assistance of historical figures like he usually does until he found his way in Mr. Silence's lair, which was unaffected by his device so he could still communicate with his henchmen before they left.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The earliest stories in Hit Comics had Kid Eternity becoming the historical figures he needed the skills of rather than summoning them to aid him.
- Evil Counterpart: In the 15th issue of the 1946 series, Kid Eternity faced a villainous counterpart in Master Man. While Kid Eternity was empowered by Heaven to summon (mostly) benevolent historical figures by saying "Eternity", Master Man summoned malevolent historical figures by saying "Stygia" and was implied to be doing the bidding of Satan.
- Evil Twin: The 11th issue of the 1946 series had a story where Kid Eternity and Mr. Keeper ran afoul of Mr. Keeper's villainous identical twin brother.
- Expy: Of Captain Marvel, as both were kids granted celestial abilities. Eventually the two teamed up and Kid eventually became Freddy Freeman's brother.
- Faking the Dead: In the second story of the 1946 series' fifth issue, Kid Eternity finds himself baffled when he is unable to summon Joe after he is shot dead. After investigating what appears to be Joe's ghost refusing to come to the afterlife, he finds out in the end that Joe had worn a bulletproof vest and pretended to be dead so he could catch the criminals who shot him by surprise.
- Longer-Than-Life Sentence: In the first story of issue 3 of the 1946 series, the policeman who arrests the Count remarks that he will be about 300 years old by the time he's finished serving all his sentences.
- Miniature Senior Citizens: One of the enemies Kid Eternity faced in the original Hit Comics stories was a short, elderly conwoman named Her Highness, who subsequently branched off to having her own stories in the comic until after issue 57.
- Monster Mash: In the third story of the fourth issue of the 1946 series, Kid Eternity summons the aid of fictional characters to foil Squire Humdrum's efforts in taking the gold Mark Miller is searching for. At one point, Squire Humdrum is frightened by the sight of Count Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster and Mr. Hyde.
- Outliving One's Offspring: In the first story of the 1946 series' ninth issue, a woman named Mrs. Robicek refuses to give Joe Hodges information he can use to bring the killer the Beagle to justice because the Beagle had killed her son and she fears for the lives of her remaining children. Kid Eternity encourages Mrs. Robicek to come forward anyway when he summons famed journalist Richard Harding Davis and has him address that her refusal to squeal on the Beagle will only encourage him to murder other parents' children.
- Self-Disposing Villain: The final story in the ninth issue of the 1946 series has a painting clone of Governor Vance willingly leap to his demise after Kid Eternity confronts him and prevents him from killing the real Governor Vance.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: One story in Hit Comics had Kid Eternity try to use his powers to reconcile a husband being abused by his wife, only for his efforts to result in the man killing his wife under Bluebeard's advice, killing himself to avoid facing legal punishment for his actions and suffering his nagging wife once more in the afterlife.
- Shout-Out: Eternity's origin is a homage to Here Comes Mr. Jordan, where a hero dies before his expected death and is sent back with supernatural abilities and a guardian spirit to guide him.
- Thanatos Gambit: Kali kills his master, Savarda, and tries to rob him of a black diamond that is said to grant its owners wealth and power, but also result in a violent death. Apparently, Savarda realized said death was going to come from Kali, sold it beforehand, and left a note in the safe where Kali thought it was hidden. Kali notes that Savarda seemed perfectly willing to allow his own murder just to screw with him.
- Touch of Death: Issue seven of the 1946 series has Murder Marton, the Lightning Man, who is sentenced to the electric chair, only to survive and have his body become so charged with electrical energy that he can instantly kill people just by touching them.
- Undercover Cop Reveal: The second story in the fifth issue of the 1946 series ends with Joe turning out to be a detective working undercover to take out the gang from within.
Tropes for the 1990s Grant Morrison comic till the Flashpoint incident
- Aborted Arc: Almost all of the book's plots were Left Hanging after it was Cut Short.
- Abusive Parents: Cristabelle's parents locked her for two years in a psychiatric hospital without her permission when they discovered she was dating an older african-american man.
- Ax-Crazy: The Stalker.
- Cerebus Retcon: Aside from discarding the aspect of Kid Eternity being related to Freddy Freeman, a lot of dark revisions were made to the established canon, particularly revealing that the man he died with was not his grandfather, but a child molester with ill intentions for him, as well as establishing that Kid Eternity was actually an Unwitting Pawn of the legions of Hell, with the historical figures he summoned actually being demons who merely took on the forms of the historical figures he asked for.
- Characterisation Marches On: When first introduced by Morrison, the Kid is sown to be cynical, aloof and even sometimes rude, as well as being aware of his surroundings. By the time the ongoing began, he instead became a hip eternally cheerful Nice Guy.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Mister Keeper and Dog just sort of vanish after the first half of the Nocenti run, not even appearing in the finale.
- Cyberspace: A focus of the Hemlock subplots, and a particularly bad offender.
- Darker and Edgier: Post-Crisis, Eternity had his origin changed so that he'd gone to Hell instead of Heaven, Mr. Keeper was a Lord of Chaos instead of an angel, and the "historical figures" he summoned were more demons in disguise.
- Drama-Preserving Handicap: Eternity's summoning was scaled down so that he could only summon one person/creature, for a period of 66 seconds, and it would drain his life.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Lords of Chaos are reimagined in a far more eldritch light. Their Mooks, the Shichiriron, also count.
- Doctor Pathos might be this.
- Embarrassing Damp Sheets: In Ann Nocenti's run, Kid Eternity confides to Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud that his most embarrassing experience was a time where he was in an orphanage where the headmaster humiliated him with an alarm system designed to go off whenever he wet the bed.
- Flipping the Bird: When Kid Eternity and Mr. Keeper turn against Mr. Keeper's masters at the conclusion of the 1991 miniseries, Kid Eternity makes it clear where Mr. Keeper's masters stand with him by giving them the finger.
- Green-Eyed Monster: The true motivation behind Doctor Pathos' hate of the kid: The Kid gets to have cool powers and a mission to save humanity while Pathos is implied to be forced to run an asylum.
- Hackette: Hemlock, the team's Playful Hacker.
- Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Chi Chi.
- Inconsistent Spelling: Is it Cristabel or Cristabelle?
- Life Drain: His life came to an end when he was captured by the Calculator, who forced him to bring back his dead son Marvin and kept at him till he died.
- Mission from God: Kid Eternity is tasked with elevating humanity's collective consciousness. Subverted when it's revealed it's actually a task set by the Lords of Chaos.
- Politically Incorrect Villain:
- The fourth issue of the 1993 ongoing had a white supremacist punk named Jimmy try to force a black woman out of town for having a mixed race child due to believing that interracial relations poisons the blood. Kid Eternity ends up stopping him by possessing him and disabusing him of his racist notions.
- We later meet an unnamed old soldier who is obsessed with extreme masculinity and thinks "faggots" are destroying America. He physically and psychologically tortures a kid who he thinks is "a pussy", even though we don't even find if he actually is gay, let alone In Touch with His Feminine Side.
- Psycho Psychologist: Doctor Pathos, who runs an opressive Bedlam House. Subverted in that he isn't a psycho as much as just a very boring repressive man and he is just as trapped in the asylum as the rest of the patients.
- Reality Bleed: In the 1991 miniseries by Grant Morrison, this occurs when a folklore researcher witnesses urban legends actually occur in the real world.
- Round Hippie Shades: The Kid is always wearing a pair of these. Cristabelle and Willie buy him new ones when Doctor Pathos breaks his original pair.
- Screw Destiny: What the Kid ultimately decides to do.
- Wisdom from the Gutter: Blind Willie, a cheery homeless man that Kid Eternity quickly befriends.
Tropes for the 2010s Jeff Lemire comic
- Creepy Mortician: He works at a morgue and is somewhat anti-social.
- I See Dead People: He can see and talk to the dead.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: He resurrects a dead man to find out who killed him, only to discover he was going to rape a young girl, who shot him in self-defense.
