Do Batman and Superman exist in the? Marvel Cinematic Universe? This is a less absurd notion thanks to two noticeable lines in the latest MCU movie: Eternal. Both times, characters in the film are compared to characters from the DC Comics lore. The history of comics is littered with nods, winks, and even legitimate transitions between these two competing heroic stables.
But in the context of the hugely successful, culturally defining MCU, it’s even more shocking. It raises all sorts of thorny philosophical questions, and makes one wonder if perhaps Eternals is, in its own way, a satirical look at DC’s loftier, mythological, god-like superheroes.
In this week Galaxy brains, Jonah Ray and I are joined by Polygon Comics editor Susana Polo to discuss Eternal“Subtle Superman reviews, Jack Kirby and DC and Marvel’s ever-evolving rivalry.
As always, this conversation has been edited to sound less strange.
Dave: There are two different references to DC Comics characters in Eternals. One would have had the feeling Okay, that’s a cute thing. Two Eems on purpose. Does this mean DC Comics exists within the MCU?
Susanne: Well, how else do these characters know who Batman is? The fictional character of Batman. I don’t think we can say that Batman exists as a person fighting crime in the MCU. I think the only thing we can infer from this is that Batman comics and Superman comics exist in the MCU. The question is, are they doing Batman films? Did the Snyder Cut happen in the MCU? Did DC Comics fit the Thanos Blip into their comics canon? These are the questions that made me whisper behind my mask in the theater and completely missed the rest of this scene.
Dave: Yes, I was so overwhelmed by the audacity. Not that it was a negative thing, but just like, Oh wow, you go there more than once. But the central character, Eternals creator Jack Kirby, worked for both DC and Marvel. Can you give us a little backstory and story about Jack Kirby’s importance to these two companies?
Susanne: Secure. So we hear a lot about Stan Lee and Jack Kirby is really the other side of the coin at Marvel. Stan was known for his personality, but Kirby really shaped comics through his visual style and not just the way he dressed the characters but the way he choreographed fight scenes and the size of the panels used. You go back and reread Kirby’s work and see what he’s done is like you can see the Matrix. It’s like suddenly realizing that everyone who came after this guy was trying to do the stuff this guy did because he was just so original for his time. He just pushed superhero comics in a direction that became so indelible that everyone else just tried to do it.
Dave: So Jack Kirby is the kind of forgotten son of Marvel, but then he goes to DC. He turns his back on all of these people and goes to DC as that angry person. What did he accomplish? What did he do when he was with DC?
Susanne: By 1970, Jack Kirby was really fed up with the way he was treated at Marvel. He felt like he wasn’t even given credit. Feeling like he wasn’t getting enough money, he decided to cut ties with Marvel after helping create the Fantastic Four and the X-Men. He is even said to have worked on Spider-Man. He defined the Marvel universe in the 1960s and 1970s just like Stan did. He’s really sick of it and instead works exclusively for DC.
This is of course a big coup for DC. And they are like Hey Jack, you can basically do anything. And he’s like Well, cool, I don’t want to make anyone unemployed. So give me your lowest sales title that you were about to cancel anyway. And then just give me some books so I can do whatever I want with them.
And so he uses this comic called Superman’s pal Jimmy Olsen, and he starts doing this thing called Fourth World, a series of comics that all have interlocking characters. And those characters are in what I call a Shaggy Gods story that Kirby really liked. I think, aside from his visual aesthetic and comic book language that he used, what keeps coming up in Jack Kirby’s work is that he really likes this idea of superheroes as gods, superheroes who are those immortal beings who have lives since the beginning of time. You inspired mythology and fourth world kind of comes out of it.
Fourth world was an idea he introduced to Marvel and said like: Hey, we’ve been teasing Ragnarok and Thor for ages. I want to actually realize Ragnarok, I want to kill all the Asgards and then this wave of divine energy will be unleashed. The divine energy becomes a new pantheon of gods, and these will be our new characters. So the fourth world in DC implies that these gods created in the Norse pantheon were destroyed. It’s really difficult to compare it to anything else because there’s nowhere much like the Fourth World in comics, except for the Eternals or the Inhumans, who are Kirby’s other attempts at creating these very, very old, super powerful characters that maybe figures like Medusa and Zeus and Icarus and Mercury have inspired.
Dave: So the Fourth World and the New Gods are what Kirby does at DC, and it sounds very similar to the Eternals, the Inhumans, and all of those super cosmic characters that exist above the tangible world we understand. So was there ever a point where DC and Marvel were like this Hey, that Darkseid guy … he looks familiar.
Susanne: Well it’s weird that you ask that Kirby finally returned to Marvel because Eternals was made after the New Gods and they said: OK Jack, do your own thing again. Just do something to us. And he created the Eternals, which are quite similar to the New Gods. They are like the inhumans. They have been on earth for a very long time and they all have mythological names, but they pronounced it wrong when they wrote the myth down. And the Eternals never really got going at Marvel like the Fourth World did at DC. I think in part because the Fourth World kept coming back because Darkseid became such a compelling Superman villain. Then everyone kept bringing it back. And I also think maybe because it was the only one that DC had a great Jack Kirby aesthetic that DC had to play with, and that aesthetic is just really cool and compelling and different and weird.
