Because publishers want you to buy their product every month, comics are typically serial in nature. However, occasionally (and more often nowadays than ever before) publishers launch a comic title that is only meant to last for one issue. While ongoing series often have multiple chances to hook in new readers, the comics highlighted in this ongoing investigations only had One-Shot At Greatness!
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Cover Date: February 2000
Cover Price: $2.50
Writer: Karl Bollers & Mike Higgins
Artist: Joe Bennett with Scott Hanna
In an attempt to further cull the strong from the weak, Apocalypse has devised a plan to set all of humanity against the Deviants. To advance his plan, he’s captured the Deviant mutate, Karkas, and mutated him further into a Godzilla-sized, mindless, rampaging monster! Meanwhile, in Olympia, an Eternal has been brought back from the dead – Virako, Ikaris’ father. We’re also introduced to several, previously unseen Eternals including Suyin King, Ceyote, Aurelle, and Psykos. In order to save the planet from being ravaged by a deadly inter-species war, the Eternals have to take down their mutated friend, Karkas! And, once the threat has been neutralized, instead of revealing the nature of their species to the humans, they announce themselves as a new group of super-heroes called the New Breed. Complete with costumes and new codenames for them all: Sovereign (Ikaris), Corona (Thena), Ceasefire (Phastos), Tomorrow Hawk (Ceyote), Psyche (Psykos), Sparx (Aurelle), Chi Demon (King), Warhead (Ransak the Reject), and Mesmer (Sersi).
Initially, I was excited about this story. A battle brewing between Apocalypse and the Eternals? Sign me up! Unfortunately, we don’t get too much of that – mostly Apocalypse’s machinations. And, while it’s cool to see a giant-sized Karkas rampaging in the city, it reminds me that the creators might not have had the best interests of the characters at heart. Why do I say that? Well, for one, the mutated Karkas is green. Now, you could easily say that Apocalypse just changed his color when he altered him. That’s all well and good but, how does it explain his earlier appearance in his regular form … but still miscolored as green? OK. Yeah, that’s just a surface flaw that we can probably blame the colorist for. But, there are other things that bothered me. Like, why are Reject and Karkas living in Lemuria, the city of the Deviants … instead of with the Eternals? And, why are the Eternals setting themselves up as a public team of super-heroes? We’ve already got enough of them in the Marvel Universe … it’s clear that the writers didn’t know how to handle the Eternals mythos, so they reverted to the easiest thing, it seems.
Now, that’s not to say it’s all bad. Bringing back Virako was a great way of displaying how much has changed with the Eternals over the years. Just the fact that they allow Karkas and Reject to live among them is a shock to this “old-school” Eternal, who is used to the days when that would never be the case. And, it seems that Ghaur‘s lifeforce has been imbued into a golden statue that now rules over the Deviants. A neat idea but … where’s the Deviants’ previous leader, Kro? This one-shot sets up a new status quo for the Eternals that was thankfully never followed up on.
On Ebay: Eternals | Karl Bollers | Joe Bennett
On AtomicAvenue: Eternals