Jonathan Hickman’s interstellar event book Infinity hasn’t even started yet, but we’re already seeing some of the aftermath being previewed. It seems Marvel wants to bring the Inhumans to the fore under an umbrella they are simply calling “Inhumanity,” accompanied by this Steve McNiven shot.
Sure, there are only two Inhumans in that image – Black Bolt and Medusa – but it’s an interesting amalgamation of characters, including Angela and freakin’ Yondu from the original Guardians of the Galaxy – not to mention Nightcrawler, and we can’t tell if that’s the Age of Apocalypse version or if the 616 Kurt Darkholme is coming back thanks to crazy space-time madness spinning out of Age of Ultron.
Anyhow, this is what Marvel is saying about the latest rise of the Inhumans:
“For decades, the Inhumans have lived sheltered and separate lives from the entire Marvel Universe, led by their fearless ruler, Black Bolt. But following the cataclysmic events of Infinity, Medusa, Karnak, Gorgon and Triton along with the rest of the Inhuman Royal Family ascend to the forefront of the Marvel Universe as major players as the world plunges into Inhumanity! Thousands of new Inhumans have powered up around the globe, leaving Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Hulk, Spider-Man, Wolverine and the rest of the Marvel Universe to react to this emerging new race of super-powerful, super-strange beings!”
“The Inhumans are here to stay, and there are lots of them,” explains Axel Alonso, Marvel Editor In Chief, in an interview with Marvel.com. “Their emergence in the Marvel Universe – during and after Infinity – will be a game-changer. Who’s to say the planet is big enough for everyone?”
So, Inhumans popping up all over the globe? That… kinda sounds exactly like mutants. Why is this any different? Well, that’s something Matt Fraction and Joe Madureira will begin to explore in a new series called Inhuman, which was accompanied by this teaser image.
“The events of Infinity jumpstart a long-dormant genetic inhuman strain. It leads into a global crisis overnight — in the middle of, and coming out from, Infinity”, writer Matt Fraction said in an interview with Marvel.com. “The idea that there’s a secret super hero city, and I might belong there, was a hook that fascinated me. Inhuman means I’m telling small, human, intimate origin stories about new Inhuman characters, set against the grander story of the politics of a fragmented royal family battling one another for dominance. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever done.”
Erstwhile Marvel fans know that the Inhumans are a secret society of super-powered individuals who were created by the Kree as weapons and then abandoned as a failed experiment. They live in the city of Attilan, which has had many locations, from the mid-Atlantic to the mountains to the Blue Area of the Moon to the Kree homeworld to its current location hovering above Manhattan, and Black Bolt and Medusa are its king and queen. Fans might remember a time during the rise of the Marvel Knights that the Inhumans had a pretty high profile series from Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee, which was recently made into a motion comic feature film. That series eventually led to a follow-up where there was a student exchange program allowing Inhuman children to attend normal human schools.
It remains to be seen whether any of that, or their recent cosmic history – when they actually left Earth’s confines and took over the entire Kree Empire and engaged in a war with Vulcan and the Shi’ar that ripped open a hole in spacetime – will be referenced, or if they’ll just jump in guns a-blazing, assuming nobody knows jack about the Inhumans, and just start fresh and all Marvel NOW.
“It’s a chance to reclaim a key metaphor to me, of alienation and disenfranchisement,” Fraction says. “We’ve given ourselves the chance to tell stories about a group of people that fit in yesterday but today are misfits, freaks, and outcasts. And these characters endure because there’s something amazing about a secret royal family that begs for big mythic stories.”
They might be trying for a Game of Thrones vibe, then… and the Inhumans are just freaky enough to fit that bill.
