{"id":8372,"date":"2022-10-13T22:39:18","date_gmt":"2022-10-13T21:39:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8372"},"modified":"2022-10-13T22:39:18","modified_gmt":"2022-10-13T21:39:18","slug":"a-x-e-eternals-1-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8372","title":{"rendered":"A.X.E.: Eternals #1 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A.X.E.: ETERNALS #1<\/strong>
\nWriter: Kieron Gillen<\/strong>
\nArtist: Pasqual Ferry<\/strong>
\nColourist: Matt Hollingsworth<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong>
\nEditor: Tom Brevoort<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.\u00a0<\/strong>This is the third of the\u00a0A.X.E.\u00a0<\/em>one-shots, and the cover forms a single image with the\u00a0Avengers<\/em> and\u00a0X-Men<\/em> one-shot covers.<\/p>\n

PAGES 2-3.\u00a0<\/strong>Recap and credits.<\/p>\n

PAGES 4-7.\u00a0<\/strong>The heroes inside the Progenitor.<\/em><\/p>\n

The group are still fighting their way through the Progenitor’s body, which is where we left them in\u00a0A.X.E.: X-Men<\/em>. Jean ended that issue particularly determined to destroy the Progenitor.<\/p>\n

“The gag we used on Sinister.”<\/strong> As seen in\u00a0A.X.E.: Judgment Day<\/em> #1, when he was a prisoner.<\/p>\n

“The First<\/strong> Principle.”\u00a0<\/strong>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\u00a0Judgment Day<\/em> #5, the Eternals deliberately allowed the mutant psychics access to their minds in order to bypass the principles via mind control.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“You failed your test.”<\/strong> Sersi failed in\u00a0Judgment Day<\/em> #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.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0A.X.E.: Avengers<\/em> #1.<\/p>\n

PAGE 8.\u00a0<\/strong>Flashback: Sersi and Ikaris.<\/em><\/p>\n

This appears to take place between pages 23 and 24 of\u00a0Eternals<\/em> #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\u00a0Eternals<\/em> #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.<\/p>\n

PAGES 9-10. <\/strong>Back to the heroes.<\/em><\/p>\n

“It started my judgment and then stopped.”<\/strong> Ajak is referring to\u00a0A.X.E.: Death to the Mutants<\/em> #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.”<\/p>\n

PAGE 11.<\/strong>\u00a0Ajak’s vision of the Progenitor.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the Progenitor as a proper Celestial, the way they\u00a0ought<\/em> to look. The actual Progenitor is a reanimated corpse.<\/p>\n

PAGES 12-14.\u00a0<\/strong>Ajak re-enacts the deaths of everyone who has died to resurrect her.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Remember a long time ago, when you were first created, you went and fought the prehistoric Avengers?”\u00a0<\/strong>In the\u00a0Eternals: Celestia<\/em> one-shot.<\/p>\n

“Yes. They killed me.”\u00a0<\/strong>She more or less allowed herself to get killed in order to gather data.<\/p>\n

“And then I died so you could come back.”\u00a0<\/strong>Not depicted in\u00a0Celestia<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n

“Do you know why humans were existent around 1 million BC?”<\/strong> 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\u00a0Marauders<\/em>, who are even further back in time.<\/p>\n

PAGES 15-21.\u00a0<\/strong>Ajak confronts the Progenitor, who re-establishes her First Principle.<\/em><\/p>\n

“I did not die deliberately or callously.”<\/strong> This is only debatably true of what we saw in\u00a0Celestia<\/em>, 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”).<\/p>\n

“Before you created me, you summoned the ghost of the Progenitor…”<\/strong> That is, the original Celestial whose body was reanimated to form this Progenitor. Ajak battered the Progenitor’s ghost in\u00a0Eternals<\/em> #11-12.<\/p>\n

“I served my gods faithfully until the truth of our was revealed.”<\/strong>\u00a0Ajak learned in\u00a0Eternals<\/em> #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.<\/p>\n

PAGES 22-23.\u00a0<\/strong>Ajak leads the group onwards.<\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

PAGE 24.\u00a0<\/strong> Trailers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0This is the third of the\u00a0A.X.E.\u00a0one-shots, and the cover forms a single image with the\u00a0Avengers and\u00a0X-Men one-shot covers. PAGES 2-3.\u00a0Recap […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8374,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8372\/revisions\/8374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}