SNAP Into Marvel– Gilgamesh Pumps Up The New Season

Real Name: The Forgotten One

First Comic Book Appearance: The Eternals #13 (July 1977)

First Multimedia Appearance: Eternals (2021) played by Don Lee

Powers: Like all Eternals, Gilgamesh possesses superhuman strength, speed, stamina, agility, and reflexes, a regenerative healing factor, repressed aging, immunity to disease, and the ability to fly and generate optic blasts. 

Comic Book Chronicle

The new season of Marvel Snap — “The Celestial’s Finest” — is built around the long-lived, godlike Eternals, with Gilgamesh, one of their number, serving as the season pass card. Created by the legendary Jack Kirby in the late 70s, the Eternals were introduced as a new pantheon of sorts, beings created by the powerful alien Celestials to defend Earth against the more traditionally-monstrous Deviants. Originally existing separate from the rest of the Marvel Universe, the heroic exploits of various Eternals were meant to serve as inspiration for the tales of gods and heroes worshiped by early humanity.

Eventually, the Eternals were incorporated into the broader Marvel Universe (where versions of the beings the Eternals were meant to represent actually existed). All of which is to say the Eternal Gilgamesh is meant to be the inspiration for numerous “epic heroes” of literature, including Samson, Hercules and, yes, Gilgamesh. His fondness for humans and pride led the leader of the Eternals to confine him to a section of the Eternal city of Olympia. This area was avoided by the rest of the Eternals, leading to his status as “the forgotten one”. 

In the grand scheme of both the Eternals lore and the broader Marvel Universe, however, there’s not a ton of Gilgamesh stories out there. His first significant foray out of the Eternals’ narrative cul-de-sac came when he joined an ad hoc team of Avengers formed by Captain America during the events of “Inferno”. Donning bull-themed armor and styling himself as a monster hunter, Gilgamesh’s tenure as an Avenger was short-lived and largely redundant. This was largely because Thor was also on the team, and Thor can do everything Gilgamesh can but also has a cool hammer and way more comic book stories to his name. Gilgamesh’s most notable act as an Avenger came a few years later, when he was killed early in the infamous crossover event “The Crossing” in order to artificially raise the stakes for the remainder of the story. 

But, of course, the Eternals are eternal (it’s right there in the name), so eventually, Gilgamesh got better. Most recently, in Kieron Gillen’s updated and revisionist take on the characters, Gilgamesh, once more embracing the Forgotten One sobriquet, led a group of Eternals called the Forgotten. Believing their duties as Eternals meant prioritizing human life above that of the Eternals, this group was largely ostracized by the rest of the Eternals for their perceived radicalization, (a callback to Kirby’s initial setup for the character, banished for his love of humanity), including the execution of Eternals who killed humans. Given his role as a protector of humanity, Gilgamesh was devastated to learn the truth behind the Eternals’ immortality, that every time one of them is killed and reborn, a human life is taken to fuel their resurrection.  

Fit & Finish

All of the cards this season take their visual inspiration from the 2021 film Eternals film directed by Chloé Zhao. As such, all of Gilgamesh’s initial cards are modeled after the character as played by actor Don Lee. While the decision to go “all MCU” for the Eternals makes sense, given that the comic book Eternals have never been consistently huge players in the Marvel Universe and therefore the film, while hardly beloved, is still the vehicle that has been most effective in making the characters familiar to the largest possible audience, the absence of comic book looks for some of this season’s cards is still lamentable. That is less the case for Gilgamesh, whose relatively brief comic book CV means his most signature look is either him wearing a white loincloth that looks a lot like a diaper, or his brief bull helmet suit of armor. 

That said, I absolutely want a Diaper or Bull Armor variant of Gilgamesh in the game as soon as possible (as well as one featuring his most recent and very cool silver mask from his rabidly pro-human days). In the meantime, I’ll have to settle for the Eduardo Mello variant that showcases his MCU counterpart’s proclivity for cooking.

Form & Function

Gilgamesh is an On Reveal card which gains extra energy for itself based on how many of your other cards in play have increased power (so if you have four cards on the board and play Blue Marvel on Turn 5, a Turn 6 Gilgamesh will be boosted by four points). The increase in power aspect of the card seems like a nod to Movie Gilgamesh’s ability to increase his strength and durability by manifesting a golden energy exoskeleton around his arms and fists (in the film, each Eternal has a specific ability beyond their shared abilities that come from being the Eternals). Less clear is how the whole “for every other card with increased power” caveat plays into either his comic book or cinematic abilities, which makes it seem more like a means to a specific play end than anything else. 

Interestingly, Gilgamesh may be a key card in the creation of a new “strength pump” archetype, something akin to the Silver Surfer or Kazoo decks, that prioritize the buffing of as many cards as possible. Whether a Turn 6 Gilgamesh boosted to, say, 5-18 is an effective enough finisher for those kinds of decks given all the vulnerarbilities (Cannonball, Wong, an Enchantressed Ka-Zar or Blue Marvel) vs. simply dropping a (green or Red) Hulk, remains to be seen. Given how many cards boost or can be boosted in the game (including stuff like Sebastian Shaw or Black Panther), as well as archetypes like Mister Negative (in which many Negative-ed cards would count as having had their power boosted), there seems like a lot of places for Gilgamesh to get play (could Nova find his way back into a Death build that features Gilgamesh as another final turn power drop?). Which means he should be a fun card to explore in a variety of different places, always a good attribute for a season pass card.