Guide to Eternals (Early Access for ALL PATRONS) (Patreon)

Hello and happy new year, my amazing Patrons! I'm here with a brand new guide that somewhat took me by surprise, and since it's been a while and it's a Marvel guide I am sharing it with you all!

The Eternals - Definitive Guide 

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The Eternals were on my list to eventually receive a guide at some point before their movie, but I had no idea I'd be rushing to complete their guide in the first week of the new year!

As some of you may have seen, during last year's "X of Swords" crossover, I reawakened my YouTube channel to provide weekly "This Week in X" recaps of the action with my friends Fariha and Tyler. While Fariha was away in December, she nominated her comic-reading buddy Harry as a substitute.

This week, Fariha was back and we were about to say farewell to Harry for a while when he mentioned he was excited for the new Eternals book from Kieron Gillen, Esad Ribic, Matt Wilson, Clayton Cowles because he had read every Eternals comic, ever.

This was impressive to me, having read none of them. Like a moth to a flame, I'm always interested when someone has a wealth of comic knowledge similar to my obsession with X-Men continuity and collections.

Quizzing Harry about my Eternals questions turned into shooting a special "Eternals Explained" video where he responded to all of my layperson understandings of the issue and briefly outlined the complete order of the publishing history of The Eternals.

What can I say... I took some notes, did some research, and voila - 10 hours later, we have a brand new guide!

Part of what is so interesting about The Eternals is that their separation from human society in continuity is mirrored by their isolation in publishing. They rarely make guest appearances (aside from Sersi's time on Avengers), they've never had a series run more than 20 issues, and they've often gone for a half a decade or more with no series or significant appearances.

(That last bit was truly surprising to me. Even the previously obscure Inhumans and Guardians of the Galaxy had a way of turning up every few years before their fame. Not so for the Eternals - they really keep to themselves!)

That means, of all of Jack Kirby's concepts that launched at Marvel, The Eternals in their way remain one of the purest. Aside from Neil Gaiman briefly breathing new life into the group in the mid-00s, it doesn't feel like anyone has strayed especially far from his blueprint.

Yet, with the Eternals movie incoming, Marvel has been paying more attention to their progenitors - The Celestials - centering them in Jason Aaron's current Avengers run (which, by the way, kicked off with his wholesale genocide of all of the Eternals). That makes this a perfect time for Gillen and Company to revive the concept for an epic new series.

And, now you can read EVERY appearance that leads to that series - it's not hard, since they've now all been reprinted in color, and they're all on Marvel Unlimited! Nothing can stop you!

This guide takes advantages of a lot of improvements I was working on behind the scenes last year to help me produce the Green Lanterns guides. I spent a few hundred hours building an all-new continuity database and record of every Marvel and DC collection solicit ever. In more visible improvements, images are now significantly smaller, every guide has a link to purchase digitally where possible, and series on this page have links to their Marvel Unlimited page, where possible.

Of course, that means I have over a hundred old guides to review and improve with the same changes in addition to building new ones - but, that's the fun of being me!

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What's up next for comic guides?

The last few years have proven to be unpredictable when it comes to producing guide content. Every time I think I know what I'll have time to do, life seems to have some different ideas for me!

I'm hoping to get you a few new guides in the coming months, not only to get you new content but also to stress test all my new tools and processes - which, in the longer term, should start saving me a lot of time.

With a significant amount of my weekly focus on producing video and podcast content, I also might start sharing some of that here as well. It's always been intended for the $4 level, but since there's never really been a $4 level of content before I might share them with everyone for the quarter to see if folks are interested in more.

As always, I value your feedback - both on this new guide and in general. Don't hesitate to comment to let me know your thoughts - including what's on your most-wanted guides list!

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