This article contains SPOILERS for A.X.E.: Judgment Day #3

The major Marvel Comics event of Summer 2022, Judgment Day, is bringing back to their former glory the company's all-powerful cosmic beings, the Celestials. Judgment Day begins with the rise of the Progenitor, a dead Celestial given new life by the Avengers to stop a catastrophic war between the Eternals and the X-Men. However, when the Progenitor decides to "judge" the entirety of planet Earth, the heroes are completely powerless to stop him, which is in stark contrast with the most recent depictions of the Celestials, but in line with their original stature as unfathomable space gods.

The Celestials were created by comic industry legend Jack Kirby in 1976's The Eternals #2. "The King" was inspired by stories and legends of aliens visiting Earth in prehistoric times to experiment on primitive life forms. The Celestials are thus the creators of the Eternals and their twisted opposites, the Deviants, but they are also cosmic judges who come back to their "experiments" to see if they are worthy of survival or otherwise have to be destroyed. The Celestials came to Earth many times to pass on their judgment. Originally, they were stopped only by the combined efforts of all of Earth's pantheons, because even the mightiest heroes were powerless against the Celestials. However, as the decades passed, the status quo changed and the Celestials became just another breed of Marvel villains, losing much of their mystique.

Related: Avengers Are Paying The Ultimate Price for Living Inside a Celestial Corpse

In 2018, the first story arc in Jason Aaron's Avengers run begins with dead Celestials raining from the sky and ends with the even more powerful Dark Celestials defeated by the heroes. The Avengers then take possession of the corpse of the Progenitor, the first Celestial to arrive on Earth, and use it as their base. It took a lot to repair the damage made to the Celestials' reputation, but A.X.E.: Judgment Day #3, by Kieron Gillen, Valerio Schiti, and Marte Gracia, managed to do it. After the Progenitor is resurrected and declares his intention to judge planet Earth, the Avengers, the X-Men, and a rogue faction of Eternals struggle to find a solution. Even an apparently successful attack on the Progenitor ends up being just an illusion projected by the Celestial.

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On the surface, this does not make any sense, as the heroes of Earth have dealt with the Celestials many times in the past, often outright defeating them, so they should not have any trouble with the Progenitor. However, this is actually the best way to bring the Celestials back to what they used to be, space gods that are impossible to understand, relate to, or reason with, and whose power is beyond comprehension. Much like in the science fiction stories that inspired their creation, the Celestials should represent unavoidable doom for the planet, and be more akin to a natural catastrophe than to actual characters. Judgment Day does a great job in that, but it takes an entire issue to achieve the result and establish the Progenitor as a supreme threat, because of all the damage that has been done to the Celestials' image until now.

Much of this damage came from Marvel's overusing the Celestials and from the various attempts to explain their origins. While the now-canon story that the Celestials are the rebellious angels created by the first personification of the Marvel Universe is fascinating, it also made them lose their aura of inscrutable superiority. Marvel Comics setting up the Progenitor in Judgment Day as a threat that not even the assembled might of every hero on Earth can stop is a great way to bring back the Celestials to their former status, even if it may be too late for that.