#1) What did you think of Jack Kirby's ETERNALS series?

I like it.  As usual with Kirby's stuff, I think it was a good idea, well-conceived and developed, and bursting with invention.  And I like the way it seemed to be more about exploration, adventure and wonder than about superheroics.

When it first came out, I didn't care for it -- Kirby's return to Marvel at that time was so jarring, so different from what I'd been reading, that I was put off.  But when I came back to it after the shock wore off, I found a lot of stuff to like. 

2) Do you have a favourite Eternal and/or Eternals related character?

It'd be a tie between Karkas and the Reject.  The two of them are one of the all-time great buddy-teams in comics -- the guy with the monstrous exterior and the gentle soul paired with the guy with the handsome face and the seething, ugly interior full of self-hatred and violence.  They're just too much fun.

3) As the current writer of THE AVENGERS, what is your opinion on the three Eternals as members; Starfox, The Forgotten One and Sersi?

I think they're all fine characters, but I'm not that wild about any of them as members.  Starfox has a distinctive personality, but aside from the pleasure-power, I find him a little bland, powers-and-appearance-wise; I thought he made a great cast-member in the Thanos Saga, but a merely-functional superhero beyond it.

The Forgotten One has a lot of majesty to the character, but I don't think any of that came across in AVENGERS: I think he's better off outside a superhero milieu, where he can be an awe-inspiring legend instead of just one of a bunch of guys.

And Sersi... I think she's a great character, and I think Kirby did wonderful stuff with her -- she may be my favorite Eternals-related character after Karkas and the Reject -- but I don't think she should be a superhero at all.  Toning down her party-girl personality and giving her purpose -- changing her motivations so that she's out for justice and a crusader alongside the other Avengers -- I think that weakens her as a personnality; it diminishes what was once one of the all-time great supporting characters by turning her into something more standard, to the point where her original personality becomes affectation, not her core.

And she's way, waaay too powerful in ways that make her a problem on the team -- it's like having the Molecule Man as a hero; once you've fought the Beyonder, what's next?  Turning every foe you fight into a pig -- or trapping them in a skintight steel block -- in seconds?

I think what makes characters like that work is their personalities -- they are so tied up in their own obsessions and whims that it's possible to get around the magnitude of their powers, because the powers are subservient to the personalities.  But make a character like that an Avengers, subject to the commands of a level-headed strategist like Cap or the Wasp -- and they become, essentially, a hugee power-cannon, so great in their capabilities that you have to structure every story around why their powers don't save the day immediately.  Or write them as inexplicably weaker than they've been shown to be in the past, which is usually what happens.

Characters like Thor are astoundingly powerful, but in ways that make the battles more interesting, more visual.  Sersi's got the kind of power that, logically used, make the battles over, in seconds, without the other guys needing to lift a finger.  Accordingly, I don't think she's best used in stories where she's part of a battle-team.  Get her in a debate with a Senate committee, or have her decide to remake Alphabet City into the perfect party setting for one great Saturday night, and she'll be a lot more entertaining.

4) Did you ever have the chance to meet with Jack Kirby?

I met him a time or two, and talked to him on the phone once or twice.  But I was too intimidated to say much...

5) You recently said in an interview with THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR that you wouldn't mind writing Karkas and the Reject sometime, what is it about these characters that appeals to you?

I think I answered that above.

6) Did you read ETERNALS vol.2, ETERNALS: THE HEROD FACTOR and THE NEW ETERNALS #1? If so, do you have an opinion on these follow ups to Jack's series?

I read some of vol. 2, but not all of it -- I think I dropped out after a few issues, then came back when Walt started writing it but not having read the previous issues couldn't make heads or tails of what was going on, and dropped out again.  And I didn't read the others.  If I was ever to do some serious work with the Eternals characters, I'd read 'em as research, but they didn't interest me enough to make me want to read them for pleasure.

7) In the recent AVENGERS FOREVER series you revamped the somewhat Eternals related character Genis-Vell (Captain Marvel), in a manner that not only made the character more interesting, but also set him up for his own great series. What prompted this change?

We were putting together the ad-hoc team of Avengers for that series, and we needed a couple of "future Avengers."  In casting our minds over who was out there who might be good, Tom Brevoort and I both liked the idea of bringing in Genis in some way, making him different from how he'd last been seen -- we liked the concept of the character, but thought he'd been presented in a way that unfortunately turned readers away from him.  So we wanted to refurbish him, make him someone readers would like more.

I suggested the idea of having him linked up with a future Rick, and Tom fastened on that, since he'd been trying to come up with a way to relaunch a CAPTAIN MARVEL series, and thought that would be a good hook.  So once we had that, we were actively working toward a possible new series for the guy.

I'm glad it's worked out so well.

8) You also revealed that Captain Marvel would have a future relationship with the Thunderbolt, Songbird. Do you see this as being set in stone or as a possibility only?

It's always just a possibility until it happens.  But if I'm around on AVENGERS long enough, it'll happen.

9) Would you like to write further Captain Marvel adventures at anytime?

Sure.

10) Could you give us a vague idea of what you like to do with Karkas & Ransak? Is the story you would like to tell with them one that would be told on it's own (a limited series or one-shot) or could it be told with them as guest stars in another title (AVENGERS, DEFENDERS)?

I think you're misapprehending.  I'd like to write them someday, but that doesn't mean I've got a specific story in mind that I want to do and am looking for the appropriate home for.  I just like the characters and would like to write them sometime.  Maybe someday I'll figure out a story, but at the moment it's just the characters.

11) Do you have any interest in employing any characters from the BLACKWULF series? Or can we add you to the list of writers who never even heard of the book?

I've heard of it -- and I think I've even read most of it.  But no, I've got no interest in using any of the characters from it.

12) Based on BLACK PANTHER#26-29, it seems that the NEW ETERNALS one-shot may be (deservedly) forgotten by writers, but as an author who's dealt with a fair number of continuity errors, are you interested in smoothening out the continuity (namely, the Deviants' sudden return to normalcy after have been turned into rampaging monsters)?

I think I'll let someone else deal with that.  AVENGERS shouldn't be the "continuity janitor" of the Marvel Universe -- and I deal with enough history as it is, in the course of telling the stories I want to tell, without actively seeking out other continuity potholes to fill in.

The Deviants and the Eternals seem back to normal, at present -- if and when I use 'em, I'll use them that way, since it's their current status quo.  I'll let someone else go back and tell us how they got that way.  Unless something were to happen that made it make sense for me to address it as part of an
ongoing story.

13) When you first read Kirby's ETERNALS, did you think they were set in the Marvel Universe, or did you believe them to be a separate continuity? And how did you feel about Roy Thomas making them official MU continuity in THOR years later-- in which you had a letter printed?

I think I might've mentioned how I felt about it in that letter -- the phrase I used, in one letter I wrote back then, was that I thought making the Eternals part of the Marvel Universe was like revealing that the Fantastic Four were robots ... and always had been.

I think it was very clear that Kirby didn't intend for his new creations to be part of the Marvel Universe, and any ties that show up in the books are put there grudgingly.  In ETERNALS, we have an espionage agent referred to as a SHIELD agent, but he could have just as easily been CIA;  there's nothing particularly SHIELD like about him.  And the appearances of Marvel heroes -- a Thing mask, if I remember correctly, and the Hulk-robot built by some wacky fans of the Hulk -- don't require the stories to be happening in the MU, merely that the Marvel characters are known to these people as comics characters.  The Hulk-fans, in particular, came off as comics fans more than as people who were affectionately devoted to an actual rampaging monster responsible for great property destruction and death.

I thought that the whole ETERNALS cosmology, with its evolutionary aspect, just didn't fit well over the Marvel Universe.  I thought it weakened the Eternals concept by sticking it into a context that already had plenty of hidden races and evolutionary oddities, and it hurt the Marvel Universe by imposing a cosmology on it that didn't fit terribly well.  I still think it doesn't fit all that well, and the occasional linking of Marvel's mutants to some sort of Celestial meddling weakens that aspect of the Marvel U. too -- they should be mutants, pure and simple, not the side-effect of some genetic tampering by space gods who were up to something else entirely -- doing that reduces them from a simple, clear, emotionally- compelling concept to a murky, complicated afterthought.

And of course, we've now got two sets of Greek gods, the "real" ones and the Eternals who supposedly inspired the legends -- except the legends they inspired are legend of beings who actually existed.  We've got the Forgotten One, who inspired legends of Hercules, among others -- including having performed feats that the Marvel Hercules _also_ performed.  We've got two Lemurias.  And so on.

But it's been so firmly ingrained into Marvel history by now that it's just the way things worked.  And I'm sure readers who came to Marvel after the Eternals were integrated into Marvel continuity are scratching their heads and thinking, "What's HIS problem?"  But it's hard to understand just what a massive imposition it was, at the time it happened.

Ultimately, I think it caused a lot of needless duplication and weakened both halves of the combination -- they both were cleaner and stronger as two separate worlds, and I'd much rather have seen the Marvel heroes travel to the Eternals reality (or vice versa) than see Marvel try to integrate and incorporate two conflicting histories and cosmologies into one.

Same goes for MACHINE MAN, by the way -- but on a smaller scale.  He doesn't screw up the Marvel Universe; he just doesn't belong in it.  It weakens him immeasurably to be the fifth or sixth self-aware intelligent artificial being in a world crammed with superbeings and technological wonders, rather than a new kind of being in a world that has never seen his like.

14)You haven't used the Celestials in any of your stories...do you have any interest in changing that?

Not until and unless I come up with an idea for them.

15) You've already opined that the Forgotten One is still alive. Are you interested in being the writer who brings him back? Under which alias? In the Kirby armor, or the sandals?

If I brought him back, it'd be in the space armor.  But I've got no plans to, at the moment.

16) You've recently set up a team of Avengers in space, including Quasar, Photon and Living Lightning, with Starfox on call. Will they remain in the background monitoring? Get involved in a story of their own like Black Knight & Firebird? Or should we just wait and see?

Only time will tell.

Thank you Kurt for your time and answers. I for one hope you do get a chance to write Karkas and the Reject someday! Or even that Alphabet City Sersi story...We here at Sersi's Loft will be waiting!