This one is just so good.
We first meet Eternity Girl in the pages of the Milk Wars crossover (which I would love to see in the Arrowverse). Chrysalis (her hero name)'s story is told to us in two-page back-up features in each of the issues of the crossover, though she demonstrates something close to self-awareness at the end of the series, and manages to escape from the gaps between panels and into the world. Which world is an excellent question though.
There are certainly aspects of the character of Eternity Girl that align with Urania Blackwell's Element Girl, and part of me wonders if she had been the original character intended for this story. Element Girl goes through a very similar story and process in an issue of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, but Eternity Girl delves much more deeply into the processes that begin to overrun a person in the throes of depression. Caroline (Eternity Girl's name) admits to throwing herself off a bridge once a month, even though she knows she can't die, just in case, for some reason, this particular time works. Those who suffer from depression, and who have had suicidal thoughts, will perhaps recognize in this story a metaphor for their own mental wanderings and wonderings.
The series is also, however, about comics and comic book heroes. Frye once noted the stagnation of comic strip characters, and Eternity Girl is dealing with that idea head on. The only way Caroline can die is by ending her universe, thus halting the cycle of death, decay, and rebirth that she appears to be trapped within. That cycle is something that well describes the "life" of a superhero, and is something that Grant Morrison chats with Animal Man about in the final issue of his run. Eternity Girl hasn't quite come to the realization yet that her reboots are for the entertainment of readers, but the language being used to describe her experience of life is equally applicable to the experience of the life of a costumed hero.
Not a happy series, by any stretch, but a great one, I think.
More to follow.
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