Marvel Comics is known for having some pretty interesting characters. And that’s what makes the Marvel Universe so incredible. There are heroes, villains, and everything in-between. And, as we all know, there is more than one origin story.
In this article, we’ll focus on the character of Zuras, the King of The Eternals.
Zuras is an Eternal, a member of a race of highly intelligent beings that lived for tens of thousands of years. For the most part, the Eternals are peaceful people, content to spend much of their time in their city of Olympia located in the far north of the Earth.
However, as with many races, they are extremes. Zuras is one of the most extreme. He is the King of the Eternals, and he is one of their most violent members.
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Who is Zuras?
Zuras made his first appearance as Zuras in The Eternals, Issue 5, which was released in November of 1976. He’s also held the title of The Prime Eternal.
At one point being their leader, and has also been mistaken for the Olympian god Zeus. Having a height of 6 Feet 2 Inch’s tall and weighing 300 pounds, also having blue eyes and red hair.
Now, this is a second generation-eternal, being the son of the original eternal leader named Kronos, who was created millions of years ago by the actions of the powerful beings known as The Celestials.
Due to this genetic manipulation in the usage of cosmic energies, Eternals have extreme superpowers, with reserves being noted as being the most powerful of all the earthly Eternals.
Origin Of Zuras
On a seemingly normal planet in the distant past, an unfortunate event caused this once peaceful planet to be on the brink of war.
This event was the existence of Eternal civilization that was somehow created by The Celestials long ago who kept watching over their children for a very long time.
Upon their arrival in the universe, they were to colonize their Alien race, The Eternals.
They gave them a powerful weapon in the form of The Eternal Trident. In fact, they gave them so much that many of the population was rather easy to influence and control.
Unfortunately, an excess of these beings would cause them to spread throughout the universe and lead to the continuation of their existence in the form of alien civilizations.
What are The Powers and Abilities of Zuras?
As mentioned above, Zuras is the son of Kronos and Alexandra. He’s known as the 2nd generation King of the Eternals, making him the heir to the throne of Kronos. As the 2nd generation king, Zuras has many unique powers.
- Zuras can Shapeshift into any form of Eternal, including humans. He can also be infected with flesh-eating disease, transforming him into a vicious flesh-eating monster.
- Zuras has mid-level to vast superhuman strength, typically being able to lift between 30 to 40 tons, and that can be augmented using his telekinetic abilities.
- These psionic gifts, also allow him to fly exhibit telepathy, and manipulate matter to a very high degree.
- Zuras’s also very fast, but his psionics allows him to Teleport instantly, although it’s been noted that Eternals prefer not to do this, due to it being physically unpleasant.
- Zuras also has the durability that borderlines on invulnerability.
- And other than a very few powerful means of physical attack, keep being considered functionally immortal. However, if for some reason he is injured. He does have a regenerative healing factor as well.
- And none of this addresses the fact that his mastery of cosmic energies means that his consciousness would tend to live on, even if you were to completely vaporize his body.
- And since I mentioned his mastery of cosmic energies, it is noted that he was the most powerful and accomplished, of all of the Eternals at controlling and projecting cosmic energy being able to condense it into various forms of electromagnetic energy that can be projected from his eyes or hands.
- Matter of fact, he was so proficient at this, that he can easily compete with other sky father gods, such as Zeus.
- And it’s all of this wasn’t enough,
- Zuras was the first eternal to be capable of initiating something called the Uni-Mind, which is a process by which the internals could collectively combine their life force and energies into one powerful consciousness in being so yeah, he’s special.
The small-time references to the character’s later films or comics Zuras was in the first movie “Avengers” when Thanos says he has to kill off half the universe, and Zuras is the first person he asks.
How Zuras Became The Prime Eternal
Now long ago Zuras’s dad Kronos was working in his laboratory in the eternal city of Titanos Earth, he was doing experiments to try to discover the secrets of the cosmic energy that empowered these people.
But as these stories tend to go, they experiment went wrong, causing a massive explosion that completely wiped out the city of Titanos, and would leave Kronos in a non physical but extremely powerful astral form.
It would seem as if this accident, even wiped out all the rest of the Eternals, but they would all be revived in what’s known as reactivation chambers, and they quickly learned that they had new even more powerful abilities.
Subsequent to this Zuras, and his brother A’Lars aka Mentor, would initiate the very first Uni-Mind. And during this bonding of sorts, all of the Eternals would determine that Zuras would be the most appropriate new leader for their race.
Thanos’s Connection With The Eternal Zuras
Things would go pretty smoothly, but to prevent any type of this unity his brother A’Lars and a few others we’d leave Earth, making a settlement on Saturn’s moon known as Titan.
This migration was done, just to prevent any discord between the eternal people seeing is how A’Lars and a few others disagreed with Zuras, about the direction the eternal civilizations take.
And just for the record, A’Lars’s son would eventually be known as the infamous Mad Titan, aka Thanos.
But regardless of this Zuras would lead the construction of a new main city of the Eternals named Olympia, which happened to be in the mountainous regions of Greece.
Zuras and Zeus’s Agreement
Now, there came a time when the ancient Greek civilization began to rise, and the Olympian god known as Zeus wanted to make the presence of his Pantheon known to the Greeks so that they would worship them.
Seeing is how the cosmic nexus between the Olympian gods realm and the physical world was on top of the Greeks Mount Olympus, Zeus in his daughter Athena, arranged a meeting between Zuras and his daughter Azura.
Addressing the coincidence that Zeus and his daughter looked very similar to Zuras and his daughter.
Suggesting that the two Eternals could act as their representatives on Earth, they would all agree on this, and to seal the deal Azura would actually take on the name, Thena.
And over the years, despite a little jealous tiff that the Olympian gods would have with the Eternals, things would end up working out pretty fine.
How Zuras Died
We would next See Zuras preparing for the fourth arrival of The Celestials knowing that if they judged humanity not worthy, they could easily destroy the Earth.
So in an attempt to prevent such a thing from happening, Zuras and The Eternals would join up with the Asgardian God Odin. In his efforts to drive these Celestials away from the planet.
And despite once again, initiating the Eternals Uni-Mind and battling alongside the powerful Asgardian destroyer armor, The celestials Gamanon And Jamiyah would both together fire powerful bolts into the Uni-Mind.
Which would cause all of these Eternals to revert back to their individual forms, and would leave the powerful Eternal at the center Zuras died.
Luckily for Earth. However, The Celestials would judge in our favor and leave the planet alone from their Zuras’s daughter Theana would take up leadership of the Eternals, but we eventually see that Zuras’s consciousness was very much alive and active.
With him eventually being physically revived by the actions of the tricky, eternal named Sprite, the newly revived leader and Ajak being fooled into forming a Uni-mind powered by the dreaming celestial to rewrites reality into reverting all Eternals back into human, but at the end of the day, the plan failed.
And Zuras would be restored to his complete power source would go on to struggle alongside the rest of his eternal brethren, concerning the troubling revelations revealed by the arrival of the Dark Celestials.
However we see him arise out of this dark period for his people, only to later see him in his city of Olympia, with a crushed skull, seemingly being taken down by his mad nephew, Thanos.
But due to his eternal nature, don’t be surprised if we see Zuras again.
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