Late to the Party: A Review of Inhuman #1

(writer) Charles Soule

(artist) Joe Madureira

In the wake of the significant events involving the Inhumans, Marvel has launched a new series involving both existing characters and those mutated by the Terrigen Mists that have been loosed on an unsuspecting population by no less than the apparently deceased king of the Inhumans, Black Bolt.

Inhuman deals with new characters who have inhaled the mists, and the race between Medusa, queen of the Inhumans and the relatively new character Lash, to gain their allegiance. Two metamorphoses occur in this issue; the first one, of a professor in Norway, does not really yield super-powered results. When drummer and wedding-band-regular Dante (another new character) gets a whiff of the mists, however, interesting things happen, and he finds himself a target for Lash, unless Medusa can protect him first. 

I like this relatively recent practice of Marvel Comics of getting top-tier talent to do short story arcs on a variety of titles. Civil War veteran Steve McNiven, for example, has worked on at least three titles in as many years, boosting the sales profile of each and getting them noticed by readers both old and new.

Madureira, who rose to fame drawing X-Men books in the late 1990s, has, after an extended sabbatical from comics to work in the video game industry, has worked sporadically for Marvel since coming back in 2007. After a five issue stint on the Ultimates, Madureira or "Joe Mad" as he's more popularly called, has drawn three-issue stints on Avenging Spider-Man and Savage Wolverine. That's a total of eleven issues over a seven year period, which kind of highlights Joe Mad's timeliness issues, but the good news is that for fans of his anime-inspired art style, he absolutely delivers, as he does here. His take on Medusa, the only familiar character here, is drop dead gorgeous.

The problem with this issue, however, is that Charles Soule's script is, in a word, uninspired. I have no idea if it's because he was a last-minute replacement for original writer Matt Fraction, but from the character concept to the narrative, the issue just doesn't come together for me. I was intrigued by the notion of a "fake-out" lead character, which is clearly what the writer intended with the blond Norwegian professor whose Terrigenesis turns him into some kind of troll, but the concept isn't developed at all and quite frankly the pages spent on him would have been better devoted to developing Dante, clearly the hero meant to be launched by this series, a bit more thoroughly. I mean, it's bad enough that the character they've apparently come up with, a fire manipulator of some sort, has already been done several times before.  Dante had better have something unique going for him.

 I'm fairly sure I won't be sitting through too many of these issues, given Joe Mad's track record. I'd be surprised if he lasted longer than four or five issues on this title before Marvel finds something else for him to do. That's good news for me as I am trying to keep my monthly collection down to two or three titles at the most. I just hope the remaining issues of this story arc have scripts that are at least half as good as the art that brings them to life.

6/10