My experience of Neil Gaiman and his estimable oeuvre is, in large part, a recent acquirement, having come into being over the last year and a bit. If you don’t count an earlier, regrettable experience with Sandman —an experience than by no means offered justice either to Gaiman or his grainy little fellow. Or indeed to myself as a reader. I feel fortunate that Anansi Boys came along and changed everything.Because otherwise, I might not have givenits due shot. And that would have been sad.When I was a wee Danish (jelly-filled), I had the good fortune to inherit a veritable mess of comics that included some real finds among which were the entire original series of, several giant-sizedbooks, and ancient and collected reprints of some of the greatest Kirby-era. And an entire run of another Kirby invention,I’ll be honest here. Either I was not a very discriminating fifth grader or the Great Jack Kirby wasn’t exactly on his game when he came up with this super group, based, I hear, on ruminations inspired by. I suppose that the truth of the matter lies in all likelihood betwixt these two precarious compass points. In any case, I didn’t really catch the fire for the series and abandoned it both to my crappy-comic box and to that sector of my memory that is now and likely forever unreachable.And so, I am approaching the work, for all intents and porpoises, as a reader entirely unaware of the personalities and history intimate to the characters going by the nomenclature, Eternals. In essence, as you yourself would approach the work—presuming that you were intimately familiar with the visual vocabulary upon which works of comic storytelling are founded. I will assume this knowledge and allow you to debate my assumption wholly within the realm of your internal monologue in which you engage your mind, your heart, and your moral self.So then, Gaiman crafts a tale in which no prior knowledge of the Eternals is necessary for events have conspired to leave the Eternals themselves with no knowledge of either their longevity or their grand destiny. Gaiman allows the reader to be introduced to their fantastic world with all the shock, surprise, and inevitable confusion that the Eternals themselves experience. It is an indubitably strange experience. The story is wild and inventive and all those fantastic adjectives that book reviewers indiscriminately slather all over the backs of a a thousand books that grace the new release tables at Borders and Barnes & Noble across the span of any given year.I cannot be certain that Gaiman’s story will be memorable (at least I still remember now, but it’s only been a week and a half...), but I’m sure I wouldn’t mind reading it again some day. And that’s worth something. I do remember thinking bothandon several occasions as Gaiman proceeded to blow my mind. That also must be worth something in whatever currency you call native.I was not initially certain that John Romita Jr.’s artwork would work for the story that Gaiman was telling. I love JRJR’s work on other, more mundane projects, but was concerned how it would serve this particular yarn. I needn’t have worried. While there are probably artists who might better capture both the grandiose and the pedestrian more capably, it did not mind their exclusion from this particular work.At the last, I will givemy recommendation. Understand that this is not an unqualified recommendation—as there are a vast number of books that are more worthy. Still, there are a much vaster number of worse books out there and while this is no, I can certainly claim to have enjoyed myself.