After an unfortunately slow and unfocused first issue, “Inhuman” returns to try and forge a permanent place in the Marvel Universe. But is it successful? Well, you’ll have to read on to find out.
Written by Charles Soule
Illustrated by Joe Madureira• New Inhumans are transformed every day as the Terrigen Mist spreads around the world.
• Queen Medusa finds herself face to face with Captain America, and it doesn’t go well.
• Who is Lash and what does he want with the new Inhumans?
The Inhumans were, not long ago, much like the Guardians Of The Galaxy in that they were so deeply entrenched in the comic book-y comic book-ness of the Marvel Universe that you would likely have to a base knowledge of the Universe before even encountering them. Now that enough people are reading comics (thank you, Joss Whedon) that properties like the Inhumans can sustain an ongoing (well, hopefully), it’s up to Charles Soule and Joe Madureira to give people who have never heard of the Inhumans an in to this section of the Universe. What that left us with was a first issue that focused too much on explaining everything you missed if you had never heard of the Inhumans than actually providing much of a story for us to care about going forward.
Well, thankfully, it seems like Soule and Madureira have learned from that and have used this second issue to give the series some much needed focus.
“Inhuman” follows a plot formula that you’ve probably seen a million times (most memorably in X-Men and Transformers because my pop culture references end in 2008): there’s a large society/culture hidden from our society and so an audience avatar character finds themselves now a part of that hidden society/culture so the writer can explain the mythology of it to the audience by way of explaining it to the character. It’s a simple formula, but it’s effective because it works. Our audience avatar in this case is Dante, introduced last issue as one of the new Inhumans created by the destruction of Attilan (or Nuhmans, as this comic calls them, because… why not?).
Unfortunately, Dante is the weakest link in the story. Because of how much the first issue jumped around setting up plot threads, there was never much time to build a personality for the character which hurts him more here as we really have no idea who this guy is. We only seem to follow him because he’s the guy that everyone explains handy exposition about Attilan to. It’s unfortunate because the character we should care about comes off bland and not all there in terms of development.
However, Soule manages to make up for it with a secondary plotline involving Queen Medusa and Captain America teaming up to recover a piece of Attilan. This storyline dominates over the opening of the issue which focuses on Dante’s introduction to Attilan as both Medusa and Cap feel like people we should care about through the writing. It also doesn’t hurt that this storyline allows Joe Madureira to let loose with an action scene that allows him to further experiment with just how wild he can draw Medusa’s hair. Even though Madureira is probably more well known for a series with much grittier or darker tones than this, his work does actually fit here as he has cleaned up his style a lot. It allows for the exaggerated dynamism of his artwork in the action scenes without feeling like he is constrained when Soule has the characters stand around and talk about the politics of Attilan.
In fact, both creators feel much more comfortable and energised in their work in this issue as it moves forward and focuses more and more on Medusa. With Attilan in shambles, Black Bolt missing, Inhumans scattered over the globe and more and more humans becoming Inhumans, Medusa practically screams ‘most interesting character’; it really helps the issue that Soule and Madureira seem to have realised that. While Dante serves his purpose as an audience avatar, his character pales compared to the history and tragedy infused with Medusa’s character. I’m not exactly calling for Dante to be excised from the book, but the fact is that “Inhuman” #2’s focus on Medusa puts it leaps and bounds ahead of the first issue in terms of core emotionality to make the reader care about what’s going on.
Ultimately, yes, this is a solid improvement over the first issue and that’s because Charles Soule and Joe Madureira seem to have something to focus on. Actually, no, that should be someone. The first issue suffered from introducing so many mythological and world-building elements with no emotional core to weight them down, but by focusing on Medusa’s attempts to rebuild Attilan and find Black Bolt, the second issue feels much more like the start of the grand epic that Marvel promised us. While the book may have been a victim of circumstance over the late-game change of writers in development, it looks like Soule and Madureira have settled in and hopefully we will get something great out of this.
Final Verdict: 7.0 – A much better first issue than the actual first issue.
