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Until I read Neil Gaiman's rewrite, I had never heard of Jack Kirby's Eternals series. And I think I'm rather glad about that. The conceit is an intriguing one--the gods of the ancient world still exist among us today. The problem with this is Kirby's explanation for their existence. They are the products of alien life forms known as the Celestials who came to our planet (in ginormous robot suit, apparently) and created three species of life: the humans, the Eternals, and the Deviants. These alien "gods" would check in every now and then and see how things were going (they were awfully fond of "smiting" when they found things had gone awry). Yeah, that's all just a little too muddled for my liking.

The first half of the book was well-written and absorbing (hence the 3 stars); however, the second half was full of slipshod explanations for events, an ending that felt unnecessary and unfinished, and a rather strange attempt to incorporate the Eternals into the Marvel Civil War universe (cameos by The Avengers, Iron Man, and The Fantastic Four). Is that the way it was in the original series? I have no idea, but it felt rather forced here.

I don't think my disappointment with the book is necessarily Gaiman's fault. As a premise, I just didn't like what Kirby was trying to do here--it just felt too New Age-Scientology for my liking. I think Gaiman pulls off a similar and superior "gods live among us" narrative in his novel American Gods.