I'll confess that when I was a much younger man, I found the "theories" of Erich Von Daniken fascinating. It was the 70's and his ideas of spacemen having given help to ancient civilizations was frankly a thrilling one to me, awash as I was in science fiction and comics. I got his books and read the theories, but soon my college training made me first challenge his arguments and ultimately his facts. The sweep of conspiracy theories can be vast, and the pleasure of finding the "key" can be intoxicating, but life is complicated and ancient peoples weren't dummies. These two facts help me debunk his wild claims, as internally attractive as they might seem.
But for a time his ideas were everywhere and even showed up at Marvel Comics. First there was that debut issue of Marvel Preview with that magnificent Neal Adams cover. The title "Man-Gods From Beyond The Stars" left little doubt and the distinctive logo design left none at all about what the source of this fiction was. Later Marvel let Jack Kirby play in this field and he did some magnficent work with The Eternals, a concept spun out of the notions of Von Daniken. The early title of The Eteranals was "Return of the Gods" and once again that distinctive logo was to be used. But cooler heads prevailed, as DC was reviving Kirby's other "gods" and using the word "return" to boot.
I've recently seen that Von Daniken is still very much with us. A recent TV special went through all his "evidence" again and it didn't seem at all compelling to me this time. Maybe the years have added healthy skepticism. It all seems intriguing but fundamentally lame these days.
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