There are very few writers I like more than Neil Gaiman. There are very few artists I like more than John Romita Jr. Really, it’s almost as if The Eternals was invented specifically for me.

Well, actually, no. Because if it had been invented specifically for me, the story would probably have involved Spider-Man and Superman teaming up to fight Daleks, rather than being about some old Jack Kirby characters I have little to no interest in. Of course, not being about characters one already knows or likes is hardly the biggest obstacle to a series being any good. However, being really rather dull undoubtedly is one.

The series actually started out fairly well. I reviewed issue #1 at the time, and appear to have actually really liked it (moreso than I remember, even). It’s true that it’s very well constructed as a first issue, and does a good job of pulling the unfamiliar reader into the concept – plus, of course, as I mention in that review, Gaiman’s craft is never anything less than immaculate. And it is, of course, a gorgeous-looking book from top to tail – Romita could draw the hell out of the phone book, frankly, and the Big Kirby Sci-Fi stuff suits him down to the ground.

By issue #3, however, I was less than hooked. Skimming through it now, there doesn’t seem to be a specific reason for my having given up on the series – and there are good elements to what would turn out to be the last issue I’d buy, including a good action sequence and Romita drawing Iron Man – but the fact of the matter is I wasn’t sufficiently invested in the story or characters to actively go after getting issues #4-6 of the series. Although I was fully into the habit of regularly buying comics by late 2006 – living in London and having access to a veritable cornucopia of comic shops helped – it might well be that the series just fell in those early, frugal months where I had to justify every purchase that bit more, which would probably explain dropping assorted non-essential titles (it’s from around this period that a number of gaps start to show up elsewhere in my collection, too – from times when visits to the comic shop were more than a month or two apart, and single issues or whole chunks of series would fall through the gap).

Clearly, too, despite being a Gaiman completist when it comes to his prose work, I never really felt the need to catch up on it in later months or years, either. I’d probably read it in trade if the opportunity came along (i.e. to borrow it from a library, or pick it up on the super-cheap), but it’s a sad fact that having written some of the absolute greatest comics of the ’80s and ’90s (and not just Sandman, either), and then moving on to being an absolutely brilliant novelist, Gaiman’s never quite successfully made that triumphant return to the field that made his name (probably his only truly outstanding comics work of the 2000s was Endless Nights, and even that wasn’t as good as even the weaker original Sandman books). Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? was an interesting stab at it, and I’d imagine an eventually-completed Miracleman would be as well – but Eternals, sadly, definitely wasn’t.