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Today, we look at how the Eternals were altered in the Marvel Universe so that they could be more similar to their Marvel Cinematic Universe counterparts.
In “Follow the Path,” I spotlight changes made to comic book characters that are based on outside media, as well as characters who entirely came from outside media. I’m sure you can think of other examples, so feel free to e-mail me at brianc@cbr.com if you want to suggest some other examples for future installments.
In the Marvel Universe, the Eternals have gone through a number of changes over the years, including most of them having been killed off and reborn multiple times. Therefore, it was not all that difficult for Marvel to then adjust the characters to make them more similar to their MCU versions, but the most recent Eternals series (which opens with them being reborn once more after they all committed mass suicide upon learning that the Celestials were uninterested in the Eternals and saw them only as sort of lab rats in pursuit of helping to cultivate humanity as part of a secretive Celestial plot) is when most of these recent chances have occurred. So let’s take a look at the major changes…
SPRITE IS “REDEEMED” AND CHANGED
Easily the trickiest out of all of these Eternals changes was the one done to Sprite, who is played by a female actor, Lia McHugh, in the Eternals film.
Sprite debuted in Eternals #9 (by Jack Kirby and Mike Royer), as basically the comic relief of the Eternals at their home base of Olympia…
However, decades later, Sprite was a key figure in the pages of Neil Gaiman and John Romita Jr.’s The Eternals, which was the last series that saw the Eternals drastically changed, as Sprite, sick of being stuck in the form of a child for countless millennia, decided to wipe everyone’s memory and have them all rebooted as humans so Sprite could finally live a normal life. Obviously, the other Eternals awoke from their human “prison” and ultimately, Zuras murdered Sprite for Sprite’s violation of the other Eternals.
So now, in Eternals #1 (by Kieron Gillen, Esad Ribic and Matthew Wilson), as the Eternals are reborn, Sprite is instead rebooted into an older version of her body as a punishment. This body, while not only female in appearance, also robs Sprite of all of Sprite’s memories of the past few hundred years or so…
Therefore, Sprite not only does remember committing a heinous crime against the other Eternals, Sprite doesn’t even remember the thought process leading UP to that decision, as it sounded completely uhttps://www.cbr.com/wp-admin/edit.phpnfamiliar to Sprite once Ikaris explained what had happened. It was a novel concept by Gillen, as now Sprite can be comic relief, of sorts, once again.
MAKKARI WENT THROUGH THE MOST CHANGES
While Sprite had the most narrative changes, Makkari likely went through the most physical differences. Makkari debuted in the pages of Eternals #5 (by Kirby and Royer), although it is interesting to note that Kirby initially spelled Makkari as Makarri.
Makkari, along with Ikaris and Sersi, soon became the most prominent members of the Eternals in the Marvel Universe, with Makkari being a regular cast member in the pages of Mark Gruenwald’s Quasar series. Later, when Neil Gaiman and John Romita Jr. rebooted the Eternals, Makkari played a promiment role in that series, as well.
However, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Makkari is played by Lauren Ridloff, a Black non-hearing female actor.
Naturally, as we just saw with Sprite, switching the appearance, in terms of gender, was simple enough (there is a good bit in Eternals #1 where Ikaris explains Sprite’s change to Iron Man as being a common thing that Eternals do, which Iron Man notes that he had never seen it happen, but Ikaris quickly retorted that it was something that would happen every 20,000 years or so), but the hearing situation is a lot different than just changing Makkari’s appearance.
This was handled in Eternals: Celestia #1 (by Gillen, Kei Zama, John Livesay and Wilson) by explaining that Makkari was trying to contact the Celestials after the Eternals were abandoned and it was in that process, that Makkari lost the ability to not only hear, but to speak and to communicate telepathically. That last one is key, because in terms of comic books, not being able to speak and being able to speak telepathically are essentially meaningless distinctions, since ALL of comic book speech is written. Therefore, that extra bit about the telepathy is necessary.
As you can see, the language is still translated so that you can understand Makkari’s words, but at least the artist has to draw Makkari signing the words.
AJAK ALSO WENT THROUGH SOME MAJOR CHANGES
Probably the saddest of all of the Eternals changes is the change that Ajak went through. Ajak was introduced in Eternals #2 (by Kirby and John Verpoorten)…
Ajak was the liaison between the Celestials and Earth, which was basically one of Ajak’s biggest character traits in the comics (that and the fact that Ajak interacted with the other long-lived Marvel characters like Thor and Hercules a lot).
In the film, Ajak is played by the female actor, Salma Hayek…
So in the comics, as shown in Eternals: Celestia #1, Ajak is now female in appearance, but more importantly, as we noted earlier, the Eternals have now effectively lost faith in their gods, the Celestials…
So what good is Ajak now, as the liaison between Earth and the gods that have abandoned the Eternals? That is a really sad place for Ajak to be as a character right now in the comics (and that is really what Celestia #1 is all about).
That’s it for this installment of Follow the Path! If anyone else has a suggestion for a comic book character changing due to TV or movies, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!
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