Comic Rainbow - Inhumans

Comics Rainbow is a project I’ve been meaning to start for awhile now and given that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has returned to cement Marvel’s incredibly ill-informed infatuation with the Inhumans I might as well dive in.  The idea behind Comics Rainbow is basically that I wanted another weekly article to produce and this is something I can do several weeks in advance.  The other major factor was getting the chance to rip-off Reading Rainbow’s name because the combination was too obvious not make.  As for actual content this is mostly meant as a beginners guide to a characters, story lines, and interpretations. 

Each week it’ll be some new topical city that I’ll breakdown through my spectrum of criticism.  Red is for stuff everyone hates, orange is personal favorites, yellow is for stuff I think is terrible but everyone loves, green is objective good, blue is something I like but everyone hates, indigo is well intentioned but flawed, and violet is universally loved. 

Occasionally I’ll also work white and black in there if there are other points I’d want to make but the 7 major colors will be here every week.  Like I said, it’s an introduction point for new fans who don’t have the time to just jump in on consensus.  This week I’m taking a look at the Inhumans, a hidden non-human race on Earth with a history so dense it’ll probably warrant a full article of its own.  For now I’m just going to be aggressively focusing on the Inhuman Royal Family, the characters who make up the corp of this brand and will probably be showing up in the movie Marvel are still insisting they’ll make.

RED – TRITON

To be clear, when I say Triton is the most hated Inhuman I’m not saying that because he’s horribly unlikable or does awful things, that’s not the form of hatred I’m referring to here.  No, Triton lands the spot as the most hated Inhuman because he’s the most boring.  The big giveaway to this is how often he ends up forgotten on the Inhuman roster.  Even though he’s a member of the royal family and holds a fairly important position nobody really cares about Triton, even more hard core comics fans tend to forget him when listing off the Inhumans.  The big reason behind this is that Triton is the least impressive Inhuman.  All the other Inhumans have weird and interesting super powers that are really out there in great ways and Triton is just a fish man.  Nobody was really begging for “Namor but older and not as angry” which is all Triton tends to end up as. 

ORANGE – MAXIMUS

Maximus is by far my favorite Inhuman though I’m probably fairly alone in that fact.  He’s actually the Inhuman’s primary antagonist, the brother of King Black Bolt and a master manipulator thanks to his incredible mental powers.  I’ve got a major love for psychic villains but Maximus goes one further by being genuinely crazy, often referred to as Maximus the mad.  He’s sort of like if Mark Hamill’s Joker had psychic powers and was mashed up with King Joffrey from Game of Thrones.  What I really like about his psychic powers is how subtle they often are, with him usually influencing people in very oblique ways rather than straightforward mind control.  Maximus has never really gotten his due as Marvel villain, often falling into the same third tier ranking as like Attuma or Nightmare, so hopefully Marvel’s new found commitment to the Inhumans will lead to a larger role for him as a Marvel mastermind. 

YELLOW – MEDUSA

Medusa is, technically speaking, the first Inhuman ever introduced.  She initially appeared in Fantastic Four as part of the super villain team the Frightful Four but her origins were never explained till later.  It was eventually revealed she was the queen of the Inhumans and had been lost in the real world with amnesia.  During the silver age while these stories were happening I really liked Medusa, then Marvel became obsessed with making the Inhumans the new X-Men and all my goodwill went right out the window.  I’m not opposed to the idea of Medusa as the powerful female anti-hero she’s become under the new regime it’s just that no one seems to have a handle on how to do that right.  She often ends up the stockiest of stock antagonists, just sitting around and maniacally laughing while monologuing about how amazing and superior the Inhumans are.  It’s such an annoying conflict of tones because the comics desperately want her to fill the space of an awesome arch-villain without ever letting her actually DO anything awesome or engaging.  At the very least she should be throwing around henchmen with her prehensile hair. 

GREEN – BLACK BOLT

Black Bolt is the quintessential Inhuman.  King of the Inhumans, Black Bolt’s character concept speaks to the perfect confluence of weird abilities and power as curse that informed Jack Kirby’s original Inhuman concepts.  His powers are sort of the same as Black Canary or Cyborg, in that he’s able to create immensely destructive sonic bursts.  The difference is that Black Bolt’s sonic powers are so incredible he can’t speak without amazing destructive blasts.  He also has a very weird and unexplained ability to manipulate electrons but the super voice is really his primary ability.  It’s a super weird idea for powers that immediately sets Black Bolt apart from other sonic based heroes and sets the tone for the Inhumans abilities compared to the powers of Marvel’s mutants.  Their abilities are more biological, drawn from specific physical attributes like Black Bolt’s voice or Medusa’s hair, and their powers are more bizarre and out there compared to the X-Men’s very single service power type situation. 

BLUE – GORGON

Gorgon is one of the stranger Inhumans in that he’s actually really emblematic of the group as a whole and is one of the perfect iterations of their culture but not a lot of people really like him.  His whole thing is that he has these weirdly mutated giant feet that allow him to stomp and cause massive shockwaves.  Again, this is basically the freaky physical version of a mutant power, taking the shockwaves ability of folks like Vibe or Avalanche and wedding it to Gorgon’s physicality.  I personally love Gorgon for a lot of reasons, partly it’s because he’s basically Gimli from Lord of the Rings with the power to shatter buildings with a stomp of his foot.  The bigger thing though is that he was the first Inhuman I ever found out about.  It was when I was just a kid and broke my foot and had to wear a big boot cast so to make me feel better my dad told me about how it looked like Gorgon’s big hooves/feet.  Ever since then I’ve had a soft spot for the loud and raucous Inhuman warrior even if he is pretty overused.

INDIGO – KARNAK

Aside from Black Bolt Karnak has probably the most interesting power in the Inhumans roster, he can see the weakest point in structures or people.  Unique powers like this are always a double edged sword as if they’re too limited they tend to make the character useless but Karnak has neatly managed to skirt this fact, mainly because his abilities make him an incredible martial artist.  So, why is he in the “flawed” space of the comics rainbow?  It’s because authors doggedly refuse to actually have him do martial arts stuff.  He tends to fall into the role of advisor or ambassador, playing around with his abilities allowing him to see the weakest point of advice or plans.  It’s just such a waste of his character, he can shatter buildings with a single judo-chop but they’ve got him whispering platitudes into Black Bolts ear and delivering proclamations.  After the Marvel reboot this fall Warren Ellis will be writing a new Karnak comic and I’m very hopeful this is the book that pushes Karnak into the kick-ass unstoppable force he always should’ve been. 

VIOLET – LOCKJAW

Lockjaw is the Inhuman’s royal pet, a giant bulldog with a fork on his head that allows him to teleport people anywhere.  Lockjaw is amazing, this giant lovable bag of weirdness that blends light goofiness and sincere weirdness like only Kirby could.  There really isn’t much of a secret or deeper reasoning to why everyone loves Lockjaw beyond he’s a giant lovable dog.  In the midst of all the Inhuman weirdness the idea that the royal family has a pet that’s been specifically elevated to elite status is just a great idea and Lockjaw’s lovable friendliness is instantly endearing.  Lockjaw’s proven so popular in fact he once formed his own team of Pet Avengers to quest for the Infinity Gauntlet in a pretty enjoyable mini-series.  In a lot of ways Lockjaw could only really work for the Inhumans because they aren’t meant to be a superhero group.  When actual superheroes like Batman or Superman get pets people tend to react poorly but the Inhumans are a royal family so having a royal dog actually fits perfectly into their ethos. 

BLACK – BEYONDER

Black installments on this list are the bizarre entries that are too strange not to mention but too stupid and weird to ever really endure.  In the case of the Inhumans I’d be remise not to talk about the Beyonder.  I’ll probably delve more into the Beyonder at a later date but he was the villain of the first ever event comic, 1984’s Secret Wars.  During Secret Wars the Beyonder was depicted as essentially just a living light or energy force, not really a being in any sense.  However, the comics major popularity led to a much less well-remembered sequel, Secret Wars 2, in which the Beyonder assumed a hilarious human form as this weird leisure suit disco looking guy.  Everyone more or less agreed to not talk about the Beyonder after that till Brian Michael Bendis’ Illuminati mini-series where it was revealed the Beyonder was actually an Inhuman.  More specifically he was a mutant Inhuman hybrid, which granted him amazing powers but also led to him slinking off with his tail between his legs when Black Bolt showed up to tell him he’d been bad.  Pretty much everyone involved agreed the idea was silly and not to mention it again but, given Marvel has never had a reboot before, it’s still technically canon. 

And so we’ve reached the end of the Inhuman’s rainbow, next week? WHO KNOWS!


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