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The Things on Easter Island (Monsterbus p.118)

The real statues (the moai) of Easter Island are indeed whole bodies. They are the spirits of ancestors: they watch over the villages and other areas of importance. They come from a different time: that is, a different world. What the English call "Earth" was a different planet then, without modern technology, before the Europeans conquered every last corner of this globe. In the story the moai call this other planet, this lost golden age,  "lithodia rex". From the Greek "litho" for stone and "rex" for king: a time when the stone men were kings and as long as they survived nothing could harm the people.

The statues were toppled in few years after the Europeans destroyed the culture of the native rapa nui people. To the indigenous population most earthlings were aliens: stranger, hostile, advanced, innumerable, from far away. This invasion from the rest of Earth caused the people to be enslaved. They lost their freedom, their authority, their pride, their livelihoods, their hope and their direction. Their ancestors had failed them and so the statues were toppled.

The return of the statues indicates the hope of return of the ancestral ways, and defeat of the modern westerners who wrought such pain and destruction. The only statues that survived the destruction were those buried to their necks. They await the return of the other statues, from that far away time when those stones (lothodia) were kings ("rex") over all they surveyed.

The final panel

The final panel is beautiful and poignant. Hundreds of years have gone by and the other statues never returned. One day, surely, the true order will return. And still the statues wait. And wait. And wait.

"They contrive; I conceive"

Some readers might say Kirby didn't intend this interpretation? Please see the first entry on this blog. Kirby's greatness is because he did not write like other writers. Kirby creates ideas that are so fertile they can support their own life, their own endless growth. We see that with the MArvel movies today: something Kirby created can grow far beyond the shoots he planted. Other writers cannot do that. Kirby simply chooses the ideas that have the most meaning: Easter Island statues, battles between worlds, life changing discoveries, the difficulty in persuading others; the passing of the centuries, etc. Mind expanding ideas. He weds them together and leaves the rest to the reader. Kirby is not like other writers. Other writers contrive, Kirby conceives.

Classic Kirby themes

In later years Kirby's editor claimed to have written these stories, but this story is a good example why it's obviously Kirby. Not just the quality of the story, but the characters develop over the years, following Kirby wherever he goes. Thanks to the "Marvel In The Silver Age" blog for spotting this.  Here are Kirby's previous and later versions of the same characters:


The Marvel Masterworks blog added the details. In September 1958 Thor Heyerdahl published "Aku-Aku: The Secret of Easter Island". As I have blogged about elsewhere, Kirby's stories generally follow whatever is in the news that month. So that same month or very soon after, Kirby created the story for House of Mystery, cover dated April 1959 (add 3 months for writing to printing, and then the cover date was 3 months after the real on-sale date). The third stone men story featured Thorr, with two "r", just like the end of the first Thor story.

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