The Inhumans Are Marvel’s Biggest Flop, And 1 Writer Knows Why The Team Was Destined To Fail

[[{“value”:”

The MCU may have fallen from its highest point after Avengers: Endgame, but the ill-fated Inhumans were forgotten long before the Marvel brand ever started to lose steam. And leave it to one acclaimed Marvel Comics writer to perfectly explain why the MCU version of the Inhumans went wrong, encapsulated entirely in the TV show’s silent protagonist, Black Bolt.

The problems with the ABC series were clear from the moment its pilot episodes were first screened in 2017, from the scripts, to production design, and spread across too many departments for any one aspect to take the blame. But for those Marvel fans looking to know just where Inhumans went wrong (to perhaps avoid repeating if they ever get a second chance), writer Paul Jenkins offers some hope that the modern-day MCU has actually learned the most important lesson in doing the Inhumans the right way.

Marvel’s Inhumans Were A Challenge in Comics, Long Before The MCU

As perhaps some consolation for the doomed TV series, the Inhumans have faced challenges in the comic books, as well. After all, the Inhumans are a society of superpowered beings seeking independence, while being feared and interfered with by humans… in a comic universe filled with such societies. Establishing what makes them unique from the X-Men, Eternals, or others has been a hard question to answer from one publishing era to the next.​​​​​​​

Eventually the 1980s-1990s came to the same focus seen in the Inhumans TV series, centering primarily on the drama within the Inhuman Royal Family, led by its patriarch Black Bolt and his wife, Medusa. A supremely powerful, wise, and undefeated warrior to sit upon the throne and lead his people. But unlike other such monarchs in Marvel’s Universe, this one can’t actually speak. Which, in practice, turned out to be the secret to the Inhumans franchise as a whole.

Marvel’s Inhumans Writer Explains The Problem, And It Begins With Black Bolt

Speaking to Traversing the Stars, writer Paul Jenkins discussed the origins of The Sentry, star of Thunderbolts*) as a prime example of how different writers or storylines can ignore a character’s original purpose (The Sentry only works, or works best, when used to explore mental illness or self-doubt). In the process, summing up a major problem with the infamous Inhumans, for which Jenkins and Jae Lee won an Eisner Award for Best New Series with their 1998 relaunch:

“There’s actually a comparison I can make with the Inhumans… The first thing I really [wrote] for Marvel is The Inhumans. And one of the things that I now, in hindsight, can say: ‘I know why we won an Eisner.’ And why everyone else has not been able to really do the Inhumans very well since. I think there have actually been some good ones since, but it was certainly a struggle before we took over.

“And you know why? Because the whole point of Black Bolt as a character is he can not speak. If he speaks, everything blows up. And that’s not a good thing, you don’t want everything to blow up. Everyone before me had actually had the bit where he blows stuff up, and he’s too powerful, and it all explodes. Visually it looks great, but for the character it doesn’t work.

“Because he’s the king, he’s not supposed to speak. It’s a metaphor–the president or the king shouldn’t really speak their mind, otherwise it creates a constitutional crisis. So I wrote him like that, he never speaks. And I remember somewhere around Issue #8, #9, #10, fans would write in and say, ‘When is he going to say something?’ And I’m like, ‘This is the first time you have ever cared about him.'”

The accolades for the Inhumans series speak to Jenkins’ point, and the series itself leaned directly into the symbolism placed at the very top of the Inhumans world. It’s what made the Inhumans completely unique, even if it meant fans needed to look for their ‘superhuman action’ elsewhere.

The MCU’s Inhumans Were An X-Men Replacement, Not A Royal Family & Nation

The significance of Jenkins’ point is the idea that Black Bolt’s destructive superpower is, first and foremost, what causes him to grow into the leader he ultimately becomes. How does one lead as the silent person in the debate? What does a king represent if possessed of ultimate power, but refusing to wield it? What does it mean for the people who honor him as their leader? Needless to say, these are not the questions that the MCU’s Inhumans were created to explore.

With the X-Men rights owned by 20th Century Fox at the time, Marvel and ABC leaned into the Inhumans as an X-Men stand-in. Building the series on ‘mutant soap opera’ scheming was nothing new. Instead of exploring Black Bolt as the idea of an absolute monarch whose actions must speak for him, he was flung into ‘fish out of water’ hijinks, unable to ask what a cellphone was, or why police were tasering him. And above all, teasing audiences of when he would finally use his voice as an attack.

There may come a day when Black Bolt and his family get another chance to be done right, and when that day comes, we can only hope that the new creative team take Jenkins’ words to heart. And if Jenkins was brought in as a script consultant to portray The Sentry properly in Thunderbolts*, perhaps there’s more than hope for Inhumans fans, after all.

Source: Traversing the Stars

“}]] The Inhumans proved to be a misfire in the Marvel Universe, but one acclaimed comic writer has the perfect explanation for what the story got wrong.  Read More