Panel Vision - History of the Inhumans

In case you haven’t heard, Marvel Studio’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. TV show has started its third season and kicked off a major storyline involving a secret race known as the Inhumans.  The Inhumans have been hovering around the edges of the Marvel cinematic universe for awhile now, especially since the announcement that they’d be getting their own movie as part of Marvel’s Phase 3.  What’s more Marvel has been building them up as a major part of the comics universe for the past 2 years.  That particular prevalence will only be increasing this month with Marvel’s major universe reboot.  It’s clear that Marvel wants the Inhumans to be a big part of their universe no matter how little sense it makes. I’ll get more into the bone headed whys of that decision but first I think it’s time to cover the history of the Inhumans.

THE FANTASTIC FOUR AND THE INHUMANS

The Inhumans started life in the pages of Fantastic Four, in a very strange manner.  They were essentially the byproduct of one of the Fantastic Four’s central enemies; the Frightful Four.  The Frightful Four aren’t really well remembered now a days, they were a strange little side element of the FF mythology that was rarely included in the team’s multiple adaptations.  A big part of that was just that they weren’t very unique or interesting, the Frightful Four were the most superhero-ish about the Fantastic Four and it quickly became clear people weren’t reading FF or superhero antics.  The original team roster were the Wizard, an inventor who felt Reed Richards’ genius was a direct challenge to his own, the Trapster, basically the Wizard’s friend who he dragged along, and Sandman, a Spider-Man villain who was doing some title hopping. 

The fourth member was a female villain named Medusa whose origin was initially veiled in mystery.  It was eventually revealed that Medusa was the denizen of ancient hidden city called Attilan, home of the Inhumans.  She had lost her memory and become trapped in the human world only for her people to eventually come and rescue her and, because this is a comic book, become embroiled in a complication with the Fantastic Four.  The story is one of the all time best in the Fantastic Four canon right up there with ‘When Comes Galactus’ and ‘A Blind Man Shall Lead Them.’  It’s revealed that the Inhumans are a hidden race created by genetic tampering with the human genome.  No, strap in because this is where things get complicated.

ALIEN EXPERIMENTS

In the X-Men continuity it’s been established that the human genome always had the ability to produce the mutant X gene and create super powers.  This genetic potential attracted a mysterious race of giant alien beings known as Celestials, the legend of myth who wielded the power gem in Guardians of the Galaxy.  The Celestials performed strange genetic experiments on early humans to produce a god-like race called Eternals and a demonic race called Deviants.  That manipulation basically marked Earth with a big red flag for all the alien races in the Marvel universe.  The first to get here were the Kree, the people of Ronan the Accuser, again, from Guardians of the Galaxy and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  The Kree performed their own experiments on Earth and created a unique species all their own.  This species grew as humans did till puberty where they were exposed to bizarre gaseous crystals known as the Terrigen mists.  These mists would trigger a strange mutation in the individual, granting them weird physiological powers.  While the Kree abandoned this race on Earth to germinate they slowly formed their own monarchical society and became…the Inhumans of Attilan.

THE QUIET YEARS

The Inhumans were initially popular but not really enough to ever maintain their own comic.   That didn’t come till nearly a decade later in the mid ‘70s.  1975/1976 were very good years for Marvel’s Earth-based non-human races.  In 1975 the X-Men were relaunched by comics legend Chris Claremont ushering in 3 decades of massive success and popularity the team never found in the ‘60s.  The hit status of the new X-Men prompted Marvel to produce a bi-monthly Inhumans comic which is fun for what it is.  I’ve mentioned before I’m a big fan of ‘70s comics but the Inhumans initial series really wasn’t anything to write home about, especially given Jack Kirby launched the very similar Eternals comic only one year afterward and it does pretty much the same thing only infinitely better. 

Since then the Inhumans have revived in multiple forms but spent most of the ‘80s and ‘90s as C-list players in the Marvel universe.  It says a lot that one of their most notable moments was Quick Silver marrying the Inhuman princess Crystal.  

The major exception was in 1992 with Operation: Galactic Storm, a title and comic that’s so ‘90s it hurts.  I actually plan to give this comic a full review one day so I won’t get to deep into detail but the main gist of the series was that the Kree and the Shiar, a bird race from the X-Men continuity who are heavily linked to the Phoenix entity, go to war and Earth’s heroes get involved.  However, part of that war is that Ronan the Accuser comes to Earth and kidnaps all of the Inhumans to be used as elite troops against the Shiar Imperial Guard, a group of super powered aliens that work as the Shiar’s elite force and are heavily ripped off from the Legion of Superheroes.  As I said I’ll get more into Operation: Galactic Storm down the line but it aside, nobody really cared about the Inhumans till 2006. 

MODERN EXPLOSION

Even though Secret War had primed the Marvel Universe for change 2006 really was the year that changed everything.  2006 was the year of Civil War, the comic that split the superhero universe and introduced the Illuminati into Marvel canon.  The Illuminati are a group of high-level heroes and politics super beings who would meet and attempt to proactively avert crisis and covertly guide the superhuman community.  Led by Iron Man they included Charles Xavier, Namor, Reed Richards, Dr. Strange, and Black Bolt, King of the Inhumans.  This was pretty much the first step the Inhumans took to re-entering the world of important Marvel events because after this revelation the Inhumans suddenly underwent a rollercoaster of comic events.  

In Son of M the depowered Quick Silver stole the Terrigen crystals from Attilan in attempts to reactivate his lost mutant powers only for the US government to confiscate the crystals from him leading to the comic Silent War. 

In Silent War the Inhumans fought the US government and the Avengers to reclaim their crystals only for it to end with their nation unmoored and broken and Black Bolt sold into servitude as part of the events of Secret Invasion.  This dark period for the Inhumans was really the result of Marvel’s overall darkening in the mid-2000s.  Civil War left the entire company feeling grittier and more “realistic” than ever before and it all clashed horribly with the Inhumans.  Thankfully the group found new life in an unlikely place.

In a move that would prove amazingly ahead of the cover Marvel launched a major cosmic comic event in 2009 called War of Kings.  The event revolved around a 2^nd war between the Shiar and the Kree, making this the first documented instance of comic ‘90s nostalgia if I’m not mistaken.  The central twist of this new war was in leadership.  Previously the Shiar had been the defacto good guys because Charles Xavier’s occasional girlfriend Majestrix Lilandra led them while the Kree were led by the cold and clinical Supreme Intelligence.  

However, this time the roles were reversed with the Shiar being led by the villainous Omega Level Mutant Vulcan, secret brother of Cyclops and Havock, while the Kree were led by the Inhumans.  War of Kings is an incredible comic and a stand out in Marvel’s incredible space saga, another topic I’ll probably be covering in more depth down the line.  That’s the thing about the Inhumans though; they themselves are not that interesting they’re just adjacent to a lot of interesting events. 

THE DARK TIMES

The Marvel run of cosmic event comics concluded in 2010 with the excellent Thanos Imperative and with its end the Inhumans ultimately returned to Earth, reverting to their previous status quo.  More recently they were heavily involved in the Infinity event comic, which was awful.   This was around the time Marvel started actively trying to expand the ranks of the Inhumans and alter their place in the Marvel universe, so the fact it was terrible isn’t much of a surprise. 

The big thing that came out of Infinity was the revelation that the Inhumans had previously interbred with humans throughout the entire history of both species.  This meant that the world was now fully seeded with tons of potential Inhumans, who all ended up activated due to the events of Infinity.  This launched a new comic about the newly awoken Inhumans called Inhumanity, which was also awful.   

Which brings us up to the Inhumans current, horrible, situation.  If it’s not obvious by now the big thing the Inhumans have always run up against in terms of popularity has always been the X-Men.  It’s an understandable point of conflict, both teams are based around single definition powers rather than a whole suite of abilities and both teams are made up of diverse body types with the same power sources.  The big thing that’s always separated them has been that the Inhumans were smaller, both in universe and outside of it. 

The Inhumans are about a city’s worth of people, hidden away from the world by choice, mainly due to a general dislike for humanity.  They aren’t a globe-spanning race and they aren’t meant to stand in for oppressed minorities.  Just on a conceptual level the Inhumans can’t do that because every Inhuman has a great super power, unlike the mutants where it’s generally understood most mutants have useless abilities.  What’s more the Inhumans actually keep slaves in the form of the Alpha Primitives, a mindless race bred for servitude.

WHERE THEY'RE HEADED

The problem is that Marvel is trying to make them into the X-Men because Fox owns the movie rights to the X-Men and mutants so Marvel has to rearrange their whole mythos around this fact.  They want ‘Inhuman’ to be the go to powers explanation, the thing that peppers the world to prop up human/superhuman points of controversy that can parallel real issues and support conflicting ideologies.  Even worse, they’re doing it badly, not bothering to change any of the mechanics of the Inhumans to be more conducive to this new role. 

If they decided the Inhumans should be the new font of allegorical sci-fi within the Marvel universe they should at least make them allegorical of SOMETHING.  That’s what’s so infuriating about this horrible reworking, it’s all the outward flavor of the X-Men and mutants with none of the depth or meaning that makes the X-Men actually engaging.  That’s a massive flaw that’s only compounded by the fact they had to basically destroy everything unique about the Inhumans to do it.

This is all seriously disappointing for me because I was actually a pretty big fan of the Inhumans.  They were one of the first obscure comic book groups I learned about growing up and the incredible weirdness of them is what made me more interested in comics beyond just “hey, another Batman villain I haven’t heard of yet.”  And at the end of the day that’s what I find so alienating about the Inhumans on Agents of SHIELD or in their own film or standing in for the X-Men: they aren’t weird anymore. 

When the Inhumans worked at all it was because they were strange and trippy, a true preservation of the freedom of creation inherent to ‘60s sci-fi.  But what Marvel’s doing to them now, it’s draining all that away, sanding off the rough edges for maximum appeal, sucking out the personality to be replace with focus group tested character-supplement.  I’m not angry that Marvel wants the Inhumans to be more popular, I’m angry they don’t think the Inhumans are good enough to be popular on their own merits, I’m angry that they think they can just dress up the X-Men in Inhuman colors and have no one notice or care, I’m angry because this is a move that comes from cowardice instead of confidence.


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