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Today, we look at the slightly controversial take on whether Sersi retroactively appeared in a Silver Age Human Torch story.
This is “Foundationed Deep,” a feature where we look at particular odd/strange/interesting instances of retroactively connecting different comic book characters (for instance, Uncanny X-Men #268 retroactively established that Wolverine knew both Captain America and the Black Widow from World War II).
The case of Sersi’s retroactive first appearance is a very tricky one. You see, I have a whole other feature called “The Book of Knowledge,” that I just used earlier today for a different Eternals-related feature, that is about when comic book continuity is altered though outside media, like an Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe entry. I think that you can make the argument that that is what happened here, as well, but I think the argument is that, instead, the connection is, indeed, laid out in the comic book, it’s just a matter of reconciling said comic book with Marvel continuity. Sounds overly confusing? Well, welcome to comic book continuity!
SERSI’S DEBUT IN THE PAGES OF THE ETERNALS
As you may or may not know, the concept of the original Jack Kirby Eternals comic book series, which launched in early 1976 (soon after Jack Kirby returned to Marvel after briefly leaving to go to DC, where he launched the Fourth World along with a number of other series), is that the Celestials were returning to Earth after millennia earlier visiting the planet, where they altered humanity into three groups, the heroic, god-like Eternals, the evil, demon-like Deviants and, well, you know, humanity. So now that they were returning, the Eternals had to reveal themselves. In the opening issue, a famous archaeologist and his daughter, Margo, discovered all of this during a dig at a temple in the Andes when their cameraman revealed himself to secretly be the Eternal known as Ikaris and that their dig had discovered a cosmic beacon designed to call the Celestials back to Earth.
The Deviants, however, decided to choose this moment to turn on their creators and try to keep them from returning. Once they proved to be too late, they decided to use their weapons to fight the Celestials, even if the Earth was razed in the middle of all of this. Daniel Damian stayed at the dig, but his daughter, Margo, was taken by Ikaris and since Ikaris needed to be able to go battle against the Devaints without endangering Margo, he entrusted her in the care of one of his fellow Eternals, the mysterious Sersi, who received one of the great Jack Kirby introduction pages in The Eternals #3 (by Kirby and John Verpoorten)…
Clearly, just like Ikaris, Sersi has been around for a long time, but it wouldn’t be until the following issue that we learned more about Sersi’s specific past.
CIRCE APPEARS IN A HUMAN TORCH COMIC BOOK
One of the oddest comic books in the early days of the Marvel Age of Comics was the Human Torch feature in Strange Tales. It was very different from other Marvel comics of the time, as Jack Kirby didn’t have as much of an involvement in the plotting of the series (he still drew the feature frequently, though) and thus, it had a much more old-fashioned feel to it. After Stan Lee and Larry Lieber kicked the series off, longtime Superman writer, Robert Bernstein (one of the most notable examples of a comic book writer who just worked for every company), followed them on the series. It was much more like an old school DC comic book than a modern Marvel one.
In any event, in Strange Tales #109 (by Stan Lee, Robert Bernstein, Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers), the Human Torch faced off against an evil sorcerer who happened to have Pandora’s Box and he explained how the Greek magician, Circe, put the evils back into the box…
He then unleashed the evils himself to cause chaos in Human Torch’s hometown, just because he hated the Human Torch…
In the end, though, he was driven mad with fear by his own usage of the box and all’s well that ended well…
SERSI’S HISTORY IN THE ETERNALS COMIC BOOK
However, in Eternals #4 (by Kirby and Verpoorten), Sersi filled Margo in on Sersi’s history on Earth and, sure enough, she reveals that she was known as Circe in Ancient Greece…
The trick, though, is that Jack Kirby did not intend for The Eternals to be part of Marvel continuity, so that he did not introduce the idea that the various Eternals were the inspirations for characters from myths with the intent that it would tie into the history of the Marvel Universe. This was a whole new concept from him.
However, when Kirby left Marvel again, his characters were left free for others to use…
THE MERGER OF THE ETERNALS INTO THE MARVEL UNIVERSE
Roy Thomas then brought the Eternals into the Marvel Universe in the late 1970s and in Thor #284 (by Thomas, John Buscema and Chic Stone), we meet up again with Sersi and Margo, as Thomas is directly following up with the story that Kirby had begun, only now folded into the Marvel Universe and sure enough, Sersi makes a reference to being the Circe of Ancient Greece…
Therefore, if you follow that line of thought, then that would mean that it was Sersi who was the Circe in Strange Tales #109. That line of thought was confirmed in the pages of Marvel’s Women of Marvel handbook in 2005…
So it appears that it was CONFIRMED by a handbook, but it was already previously established by the Thor comic using the same setup as the Eternals comic, which states that Circe WAS Sersi.
If anyone else has a suggestion for a Foundationed Deep (retroactive connections between characters), feel free to drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com.
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