Friday, September 20, 2013

Meeting Of The Minds!


Artistically speaking, it's hard to get wrong the concept of the Uni-Mind, the ritual of the Eternals that we've occasionally seen enacted over the years. You basically have all of the Eternals (along with maybe a few guests) taking to the sky and doing some flying in a circular pattern before joining forces at one central point formed by their leader, Zuras, to reform into a huge floating brain. There's a considerable amount of spectacle involved, since the ritual itself seems to mean a great deal to the Eternals.

But even with such basics, artists have differed in their perspectives of the whole thing--some giving the grandeur its due, while others have regarded the end result (i.e., the Uni-Mind itself) as the focus of their efforts. Let's take a look and see how some of their different interpretations compare with each other.

First, in a series of back-up stories featuring the Eternals, one installment spends two entire pages on the ritual, courtesy of artists Ron Wilson and Alan Kupperberg, where Zuras forms the Uni-Mind in tandem with his brother, Alars:



In Thor, while the Thunder God is investigating the threat of the Celestials, he pays a visit to Olympia and is witness to the ceremony, drawn by Keith Pollard and Chic Stone:




Over in The Avengers, the Eternals have invited Starfox to participate in the Uni-Mind ceremony, this time with Thena issuing the call.  Though artists Al Milgrom and Joe Sinnott seem to think a lot more of the Uni-Mind than the pomp which leads up to its formation:



Finally, the concept's creator, Jack Kirby, gives the Uni-Mind ritual a gorgeous two-page spread, and much more:






Despite the attention given to it, I confess that the Uni-Mind ritual has never really caught on with me in a singularly impressive way. But I'm still intrigued by whatever new twist an artist might give its latest appearance.

4 comments:

Simayl said...

This simply proves once again that there is good art, great art and then there is Kirby!

Comicsfan said...

Simayl, quite a good way of putting it! :)

Anonymous said...

Kirby seemed to have a bottomless magic hat full of weird, crazy, startling imagery. There was just no end to it! That's one of the reasons he's the king. If he was around today he'd still be doing amazing stuff. It didn't always make sense, but it always pretty wild. Now they just ape him.

dbutler16 said...

I like the Kirby version the best (of course!) but the Wilson/Kupperberg version is good too. I do like the idea of the uni-mind. It's offbeat and interesting.