Trivia / The Eternals

• Executive Meddling:
  • Jim Shooter hated Peter Gillis' scripts for the 1985 miniseries, and thus brought in Walt Simonson to rewrite the final four issues.
  • Averted with the Ret-Canon redesigns in the Eternals (2021) series following the Eternals film. Word of God is that these came from writer Kieron Gillen, to make the new series more accessible, not from Marvel execs.
• Exiled from Continuity: Following Marvel’s purchase of Malibu, Sersi ended up in The Ultraverse for a while following her time in The Avengers. Given some of the ownership disputes that followed those characters, this is unlikely to be referred to again anytime soon.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • As of March 2022, The Eternal isn’t available as a digital comic or a trade paperback, so the only way to read it is to find copies of the original comics somewhere.
  • Averted for all of the other Eternals series and, mostly, for their guest appearances elsewhere - although one or two stories (e.g. the Fantastic Four Unlimited story with the reveal of Ransak's true ancestry) can only be read by tracking down the original comics.
  • Due to its Exiled from Continuity status and ownership disputes, the stories with Sersi in The Ultraverse are also in this category.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Originally "The Eternals" was supposed to be called "The Celestials", after which Marvel changed the title to "Return of the Gods", only to change the title again in order to avoid a potential lawsuit from "Chariots of the Gods" author and known lunatic Erich von Daniken.
  • The Eternal was supposed to be about the birth of Ikaris; Ikaeden was supposed to be his father.