A.X.E.: Eternals #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
A.X.E.: ETERNALS #1
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Pasqual Ferry
Colourist: Matt Hollingsworth
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER / PAGE 1. This is the third of the A.X.E. one-shots, and the cover forms a single image with the Avengers and X-Men one-shot covers.
PAGES 2-3. Recap and credits.
PAGES 4-7. The heroes inside the Progenitor.
The group are still fighting their way through the Progenitor’s body, which is where we left them in A.X.E.: X-Men. Jean ended that issue particularly determined to destroy the Progenitor.
“The gag we used on Sinister.” As seen in A.X.E.: Judgment Day #1, when he was a prisoner.
“The First Principle.” The Eternals are compelled to follow (or at least not to contravene) three principles, the first being “Protect Celestials.” The Progenitor counts as a proper Celestial to them, and apparently that extends to its immune system. In Judgment Day #5, the Eternals deliberately allowed the mutant psychics access to their minds in order to bypass the principles via mind control.
“You failed your test.” Sersi failed in Judgment Day #5. All we saw in that issue was the Progenitor passing Ikaris and failing Sersi without explanation. Iron Man expressed surprise at the time and asked her what she had done; she dodged the question.
Iron Man seems surprisingly willing to attach weight to the Progenitor failing Sersi, bearing in mind that the Progenitor also failed Captain America. Perhaps he’s coming round to the Progenitor’s judgment after passing himself in A.X.E.: Avengers #1.
PAGE 8. Flashback: Sersi and Ikaris.
This appears to take place between pages 23 and 24 of Eternals #6 – shortly after the Eternals have discovered that a human dies every time one of them is reborn, but before Ikaris and Sersi (among others) left to live with the Deviants. In Eternals #7, Jack of Knives approaches Ikaris and threatens to kill any humans who learn of the secret. This scene reveals that he was put up to the threat by Sersi, apparently because she wanted to keep being seen as a hero.
PAGES 9-10. Back to the heroes.
“It started my judgment and then stopped.” Ajak is referring to A.X.E.: Death to the Mutants #2. The Progenitor asked Ajak and others whether they would still create him knowing what had happened. Ajak’s reply, which prompted the Progenitor to defer judgment, was: “Yes. Because we do not truly know if you are flawed. This is a time of tests. One must have faith in their gods.”
PAGE 11. Ajak’s vision of the Progenitor.
This is the Progenitor as a proper Celestial, the way they ought to look. The actual Progenitor is a reanimated corpse.
PAGES 12-14. Ajak re-enacts the deaths of everyone who has died to resurrect her.
“Remember a long time ago, when you were first created, you went and fought the prehistoric Avengers?” In the Eternals: Celestia one-shot.
“Yes. They killed me.” She more or less allowed herself to get killed in order to gather data.
“And then I died so you could come back.” Not depicted in Celestia, but the narration in that story does say that “Elsewhere on Earth, an unfortunate Deviant falls dead, not knowing why.” This is that Deviant. He’s a new character.
“Do you know why humans were existent around 1 million BC?” Humans didn’t evolve until 300,000 years ago, making the prehistoric Avengers something of a puzzle. Vart (another new characters) seems to be saying that the humans shown in stories from that period are the descendents of time travellers, rather than a fundamental departure from real-world history. Similar issues arise with the Thresholders in Marauders, who are even further back in time.
PAGES 15-21. Ajak confronts the Progenitor, who re-establishes her First Principle.
“I did not die deliberately or callously.” This is only debatably true of what we saw in Celestia, where she certainly seems pretty relaxed about getting killed. However, the Progenitor indicates that Ajak already knew about the deaths caused by Eternal resurrection, and has done for a long time (hence her “well-practiced arguments”).
“Before you created me, you summoned the ghost of the Progenitor…” That is, the original Celestial whose body was reanimated to form this Progenitor. Ajak battered the Progenitor’s ghost in Eternals #11-12.
“I served my gods faithfully until the truth of our was revealed.” Ajak learned in Eternals #12 that the Deviants were always the more important part of the Celestial plan and that the Eternals were only there to keep them in check.
PAGES 22-23. Ajak leads the group onwards.
Following her encounter with the Progenitor, Ajak is once again resistant to psychic control and so can’t be prevented from following the First Principle. However, we saw earlier that the First Principle was only engaged at the moment of actually fighting the Progenitor’s immune systems, so her actions at this point presumably aren’t dictated by it. On the other hand, she isn’t volunteering the information to her teammates either, even though doing so wouldn’t violate the Principles in itself.
PAGE 24. Trailers.
Gotta love Ajak’s growth as seen in this issue. She is much wiser than she was just a short time ago.
Haven’t read this part yet, but from these annotations it wouldn’t have been a very satisfying main issue of Judgment Day, would it? (Considering these one-shots have been talked about as previously intended to be issues 6-8 of a 9-parter).
@Dave : it’s very likely the story evolved quite a bit when the decision to go with the one shots was made, so it’s hard to tell how close this would have been to the hypothetical issue 8.
Paul> This scene reveals that he was put up to the threat by Sersi, apparently because she wanted to keep being seen as a hero.
We already knew he was put up to it by Sersi (she was seen paying Jack off after he threatened Ikaris), although the further details are new.
Dave> Haven’t read this part yet, but from these annotations it wouldn’t have been a very satisfying main issue of Judgment Day, would it?
None of the three would have been, really. This week’s Immortal X-Men at least seems more significant than any of them.
Yeah, Immortal was great.
It seems this is leading up to Ajak being the one to decide whether to destroy the Progenitor at the very end?
It seems that she would have to do that, because there’s no story if she just does the same thing she did before. But destroying the Progenitor doesn’t seem very satisfying when that’s also the same thing they keep trying.
Hmm.
According to Gillen’s newsletter the plot of these oneshots would have been about one issue of the series. So at some point in the planing (probably pretty early) they decided to break them out and flesh them out into character studies.
It would be interesting if the Progenitor ends up getting “healed” rather than destroyed, and it ends up heading off into space to find its own kind, leaving humanity safe either out of thanks or just because it can think more clearly now.
It would be a lot more fun if the Celestials came down, looked at the Progenitor, looked at the assembled AXEs, and just said “You sick, sick bastards. You made a zombie us? Why does it have a rotting arm? we don’t even have bodies under this armour, you know that right? I think it’s best if we erase this … thing, and maybe not visit Earth for a couple more epochs. (Jeez even the badoon weren’t this disgusting.)”
@K
I doubt Ajak will choose to destroy the Progenitor. It would be too direct a defiance to the First Principle. This storyline is a bit of an awakening journey for her, not so much a 180 degree turn.
Of all the surprises had, the overall fairness of the Progenitor’s judgements may well be the greatest. He is, after all, a (literal) glorified programmed zombie.
I fully expect that at the end he will declare himself out of his depth and forfeit his own judgement. Thereby proving Ajak both right and wrong, now as well as previously.
Post-theism by way of Kirby. Now that is cooking with gas.