ADVANCED REVIEW: AXE: Eve of Judgment #1 (Spoiler-Free)

Welcome to the opening salvo to the big 2022 event for Marvel, where we have a war on the horizon with not one, not two, but three powerhouse groups of characters where the stakes are the extinction of the mutants. Now, I know. Mutant storylines where they’re fighting another group of heroes, and an extinction level storyline has been done to death, BUT Gillen has been giving us a master class on how to handle a concept like the Eternals. I’m quite shocked that DC hasn’t followed suit with their Fourth World properties. 

If you’ve been reading Kieron Gillen’s Eternals, (and you haven’t pick it up) it’s been quite a tumultuous year for the Machine (earth has a personality, and she’s called the Machine), with a near cataclysmic catastrophe that threatened the entire planet because Phastos wanted to end the cycle of Eternals resurrection. See, when an Eternal dies, the Machine resurrects them by extinguishing a human life. Phastos found this to be unacceptable, and cooked up a scheme that resurrected Thanos, while he made the changes to the Machine to save any further human deaths due to their resurrection. Thanos would kill Zuras, and keep the rest of the Eternals busy while Phastos tried to change the resurrection process, which unfortunately could not be done. After the Eternals saved the world from destroying itself, they would learn what Phastos was hiding, and unable to accept that, a small group would leave Olympia and move to Lemuria to live amongst the Deviants. 

The Deviants are a group of advanced life forms that were created by the Celestials alongside the Eternals, and while the Eternals are immortal, the Deviants are not. The Eternals are like flies stuck in amber, where they remain unchanging as time moves on. The Deviants are capable of evolving. Other than Kro, the Deviants can die. Their genetic makeup is not stable, and once they begin to mutate, they enter a phase called excessive deviation, which triggers a response from the Eternals to seek and destroy the Deviants who have reached that state. 

During the departure of this group of Eternals from Olympia, Druig and Thanos would concoct a scheme that would lead Thanos to become the Prime Eternal, and together they would lead an all out assault on Lemuria as they attempted to kill the Eternals there. Now, we know that the Eternals are resurrected, but there’s a place called the Exclusion Zone, which is more or less

 a prison for the Eternals who have committed atrocities that cannot go unpunished. With Thanos’ role as Prime Eternal, he could force those Eternals to remain in the Exclusion Zone, leaving no one with the ability to stop Thanos from completing his goal. Thanos being Thanos, discovered his grandfather’s doomsday weapon, and decided to activate it, and destroy everything. Why? Because that’s what Thanos does. Luckily Druig proves just how duplicitous he is, by creating a failsafe in Thanos’ new form to begin achieving Excess Deviation, and destroying himself if he should ever create a planetary destruction event. Druig went from the sneaky snake that you should never take your eye off to the hero of the entire world. 

Now that we’re all caught up on what’s come before, let’s begin with this issue. Gillen continues to advance the plots that he’s been cultivating over the last year in both his Eternals, but also his Immortal X-Men, making Sinister a more central character that’ll bind these two groups together. I really hope he comes back to his first storyline in Uncanny, when he had Sinister mucking about with the Sleeping Celestial that was introduced in the Gaiman and Romita Jr. Eternals mini from 2006, and I’m here for it. Gillen’s masterfully setting up the pieces for this storyline to try to make it as…feel not forced. Druig’s using his position to start the war, and as Prime Eternal to rally the rest of the Eternals who aren’t currently in Lemuria. It’s just these little touches that makes the world building so great. 

On art duties is Pasqual Ferry, who has been in the game for decades. Ferry is no stranger to big characters, and bigger concepts. He had a run on Adventures of Superman with comic veteran Joe Kelly, as well as Thor by Matt Fraction. His style works great with these sci-fi concepts that’s pretty prevalent in this crossover. Unfortunately he’s only here for this, as well as the AXE: Eternals one-shot later on in the crossover. While I’m a huge fan of Esad Ribic, and the cinematic scope he’s brought to this world, I’ll be holding out hope that we’ll see Ferry on something that’s Eternals related during the next volume.