Very nice article. But remember the real reason you’re going to see so much of the Inhumans in the near future.
Marvel/Disney still hold full control over that particular franchise, and don’t have to wait for a hacking scandal just to get back a small piece of a character [Spider-Man]
There’s also this idea that any societal/cultural story you could tell with the X-Men could be an Inhumans story with a bit of tweaking.
Keep in mind, this is a company that’s celebrating their 75th anniversary, and good luck finding anything Fantastic Four related. Rather than give any semblance of pub for the upcoming film, the order was given from the top down for zero promotional artwork and to cancel the series.
I read the first few issues of Soule’s Inhuman run and they were kind of dull. Bargain basement X-Men.
It’ll be interesting to see how far Marvel can push it in the film/tv universe. Fox own the rights to the X-Men, but could Marvel get away with a character with similar powers to one of the X-Men? I’m guessing referring to someone as a mutant is out, but I doubt Fox can insist that the word ‘mutation’ is completely off limits etc.
but hints on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. might mean their appearance on TV sometime this year
Later this year == tomorrow (or is it on tonight in the states?)
Was never a big ‘Mutant’ or X-Men fan. I don’t know what it was but I could never get into any of those stories. The Inhumans, on the other hand, with their other-worldly mystery and hidden lands and the noble royal family intrigues and bizzare characters were way more interesting and fantastic. Looking forward to the movie coming much later. Dunno how they’ll work this up in their SHIELD TV show though.
Soule is one of the better comics writers out there right now; he’s really shone on smaller titles such as Thunderbolts and DC’s Red Lantern as well as that company’s Swamp Thing (a tough title to do, as everyone who’s written it since Alan Moore’s run has struggled to come from out under his long shadow). He’s also got a good run going on She-Hulk, having the advantage of being a working lawyer and understanding how a law firm actually works, as opposed to getting it second-hand from TV legal dramas.
As for the push-back in comments above, well, I kind of expected even before I toggled over to the BBS that we’d hear from X-Men fans, as there has long been suspicion (even before the official movie announcements from Marvel Studios) that the Inhumans were being groomed as replacements for mutants in general within the franchise, and unsurprisingly, given the long-running popularity of the X-Men sub-franchise, lots of X-fans aren’t really happy about that. There are a couple of things to keep in mind, though:
- Since the Inhumans haven’t been used nearly as much as the X-Men, there’s a lot more freedom in terms of what can be done with them. Where will Attilan be–in the Himalayas, the moon, New York Harbor (all locations at one point or another in the comics), all three, or somewhere else? Is Maximus the Mad going to be the big bad, or will they work on promoting someone else since Loki has the black-haired cool evil guy franchise sewed up in the MCU? How much of the CGI budget will be spent on making Medusa’s hair just as crazy-cool as Kirby drew it?
- Related to the above, there’s something that X-fans don’t want to acknowledge: the X-franchise is kind of played out. Yeah, I know–you love each and every story that was ever published (well, maybe not the Chuck Austen years, of which we need not speak), and would love to see them all filmed, but in terms of really big stories that are suitable as summer tentpole movies, we’ve already had the origin story, the Dark Phoenix saga, Kavita Rao’s mutant “cure”, Days of Future Past and (upcoming) Apocalypse. First Class made good use of the Cuban Missile Crisis for a not-tied-directly-into-the-comics epic story, but the Wolverine spin-offs were kind of meh IMO, and what’s left for a really big story? M-day?
Nice, I had not come across these much before, should make for a very interesting film and new series, if played right.
The “everyman” principle is an interesting aspect of many modern stories where alternate identities are involved, but it is by no means the only manner of interesting character which works for audiences. In fact, you can have that principle with entirely alien characters to very good effect if coupled in some manner with an “everyman” character.
Noted: that principle can water down otherwise very promising material, in an attempt to try and force people to be able to relate with a character… essentially “dumbing” the character down for them, underestimating people’s capacity for sympathy of otherwise entirely alien creatures on levels of moral understanding, emotion, and intellect.
Cassius of Supernatural & Trick of Lost Girl did it well, I think. The Sandman universe has a number of such characters that explored that sort of character well from a number of angles. The Invisibles has some nice twists on that theme. Forever is well playing out a Sherlock Holmes like character who has lived for centuries, pinning his underlying moral understanding, emotional understanding, and intellect on his age.
Sometimes there is a tendency for such characters to be played like they are robots, for all the patience they must have. This can be a shortcut for characterization which diminishes the depiction of their likely increased capacity for understanding matters on moral, emotional, and intellectual levels, and often showing them incapable of wit or humor… which one would have to have, or they would be insane.
So much misfit action! I still fantasize about DC getting Grant Morrison to write a Doom Patrol movie.
In Marvel Comics, they use the term “mutate” (as in “Daredevil is a mutate.”) for humans with inherent superhuman powers who acquired their abilities through some external source (energy, chemicals, etc.) that permanently altered their body. Naturally, this covers a lot of characters.
I’m sure the lawyers for Disney and Fox could have a grand old time arguing over whether “-tate” can be confused with “-tant”.
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