Tales From The Quarter Bin--The Inhumans Did It First!!

You know, maybe I've been all wrong about the Inhumans!!

See, I've always thought that they were a monstrous creation, an absolute monarchy built on eugenics, with a permanent genetic underclass enslaved to make the trains run on time while the haughty royal family sits around opining how superior they are while occasionally going into space to commit genocide. A really repulsive concept, top to bottom.

Of course, matters aren't help by Marvel's constant attempts to shove the Inhumans down our throats as some sort of "replacements" for mutants, a move that is neither necessary nor sensible.

And yet...maybe it was the mutants that were stealing the Inhumans thunder all along!!

Because...and honestly, this was a big surprise to me--the Inhumans were called "Uncanny" before the X-Men ever were!!

In a long forgotten series, from 1975-1977, the Inhumans had Uncanny emblazoned above the masthead for all 12 issues!

Meanwhile, it turns out that the X-Men never had "Uncanny" on a cover until #114, more than a year after the last issue of that Inhumans run!!

Before that it was always "All-New, All-Different" (except for one issue that said "Now On Sale Monthly").

So it's pretty clear that the X-Men ripped off the Inhumans in the first place, as Marvel desperately tried to ram mutants down our throats to replace their obviously superior and much more interesting Terrigen-swilling despots!!

...

Nah, I don't believe it, either. The Inhumans suck. Always have, always will. Even if they were Uncanny first...

Olly Olly Oxen Free!!

Uh, guys...

You can come out now.

No one is looking for the Inhumans. No one wants to find you--ever. Seriously.

Really, there's no need to hide. We'll never even notice you...go on about your business.

From Fantastic Four #45 (1965)

Manic Monday Triple Overtime--Dog Days For The Silver Surfer!!

You all know I hate the Inhumans, and generally despise the Silver Surfer.

So when Inhuman arrogance, the Surfer's superiority complex, and Black Bolt's inability to just write down his damned orders (and a noodge from Maximus The Mad) lead to a pitched battle between the residents of Atillan and the Sentinel Of The Spaceways, well, you know I'm hoping they'll both die in smoldering craters of hubris.

No such luck. But fortunately, we do find the one character who can stymie the Surfer:

How?

Who? WHO?!?!

Hahahahahaha, Norrin Radd has been bested by a dog!!!

Man, I hope Dan Slott remembers this, and has Lockjaw come looking for revenge in the new Silver Surfer series!

From Silver Surfer #18 (1970)

More Human Than Inhuman

You know who I really can't stand...in fact, have never been able to stand?

I don't really grok the Inhumans.

Of all the Kirby/Lee creations, none leave me colder, none have me more willing to give an issue or series a pass, than the damned Inhumans. And many a creative team I admire has tried their hand at these games, and they still haven't managed to make me care.

Why? Well, I've been giving that a lot of thought lately, and I've come to a few conclusions--conclusions that lead me to believe that maybe, just maybe, Marvel may be taking steps to finally make this a palatable concept.

The first problem I've always had is the frankly one-dimensional characterization they've been given over the years. Seriously, beyond the names and powers, what do you have?  No jobs, no hobbies, no friends...just ciphers.


Gorgon? He's Hercules with goat legs. That's it!

Triton? No one has a clue what his character might be, and he's fairly useless. He's Aquaman without the good looks, but more clueless.

Crystal? She's been a member of the Fantastic Four, an Avenger, she married a mutant--she should be one of those characters that belongs to every clique, who can pick up a phone and connect with a contact in any corner of the Marvel Universe. Yet they can't even define her powers, let alone give her a personality.

Karnak? Well, they certainly have tried to turn his power--the ability to find the flaw or weak point in anything--into a personality. Unfortunately, that's 100% of his personality, as any appearance in the past 15 years sees him yammer on about the flaws in everything--building, people, society...he's pretty much the ultimate one-track mind guy.

Medusa? Haughty and arrogant and...well, haughtier and more arrogant. Take away the hair, and there's no there there.

Maximus? He's just Loki without the keen fashion sense, the Joker without any of the cool factor. Every damn time it's the same thing. Oooh, Maximus is mad. Ooh,  Maximus has a plan to take over. Ooh, Maximus is thwarted--pat him on the head and put him back in his cell until next time. Lather, rinse, repeat. (Reminder--in his first appearance, Maximus tried to murder every single human on Earth. Yet he's still tolerated because of his bloodline...)

And Black Bolt? Sheesh, the guy drives me nuts. I understand the shtick, but nearly 50 years without a single thought balloon or speech balloon? He can't even get one of those patented 21st century self-narrating captions? The entirety of his characterization comes from other people talking about him. And if I have to hear one more time about the immense burden he has to bear, I'm going to barf.

Plus, c'mon--there are no telepaths among the Inhumans? All of this supposedly advanced technology, and you can't even come up with a whiteboard and a dry erase marker? You can't find a way to communicate electronically? (Wait, let me guess--"the merest tap of his fingers on a keyboard could rip the planet asunder"!) Dude, if Stephen Hawking can communicate, you can too. This "silent burden" is just a lame pose...get over yourself.

Of course, the haughtiness and self-importance are all part of another problem: the royalty. Virtually every Inhumans story has revolved entirely around the "royal family," to the exclusion of any semblance of anyone else. And so we get tale after tale about the the burden of rule, about how ungrateful the lower castes are about all the sacrifices Bolt & company have gone through, about how superior the Inhumans are to humans, yada yada. And unlike, say, T'Challa, the monarch of Attilan and his inbred family make little effort to connect with the common folk, or humans. Perhaps it is just me, but to read the Inhumans has been like watching Upstairs, Downstairs with only the upstairs, a regular dose of "feel sorry for the poor rich folk despite the fact that they enjoy every advantage." Pshaw! It's as overbearing as a whole family of Namors, just nowhere near as interesting.

But it gets worse. Because the Inhumans leap past the whole area of questionable class politics straight into some very, very uncomfortable social doctrine.

The society of the Inhumans is a rigid "genocracy," with your place in the culture determined entirely by your genetic heritage. If you're not chosen to undergo Terrigenesis, you're a second class citizen (in fairness, it should be noted that some versions have shown that all Atillans undergo the Terrigenesis ritual, while others have said that only those of the proper genetic lineage get to, so this point is a bit inconsistent). You're not allowed to have children without the permission of the Genetic Council.

And if you want to advance in society? Good luck. Black Bolt's family doesn't take applications--"Bred to rule, engineered to be royalty" says the text recap page in Realm Of Kings: Inhumans #1--and the whole culture is a rigid caste system, where your genes and your Terrigen mutation determines you role, sorry, no exceptions. (Youngsters--it's like Divergent, except here the oppressors are the good guys!)

Oh, yeah, and they created a slave race of inferiors to live underground and do all of society's dirty work. Don't worry, the Alpha Primitives are bred for it--they love being oppressed. And once they were "freed," well, it was found that they just couldn't handle freedom, they willingly went back to the toil and submission they were bred for!! But it's OK, it's in their (inferior) genes to like it!!

Seriously, that's some extremely repugnant stuff there, no matter what direction you want to take the underlying metaphor.

Oh, yeah, and they just up and decided to go and conquer the Kree, because they were born for that.

So a completely undemocratic monarchy that practices eugenics, has an inviolable caste system that doles out benefits based solely on inviolable physical characteristics, keeps a slave race for all manual labor (but they WANT to be slaves!!), and who feel the right to go out and conquer because they're superior.

And these guys are heroes?!?!?!?! They're a bloody race of Khan Noonien Singhs!!

However, and I say this very tentatively, this whole Inhumanity event may finally be making some moves in the right direction, half a century later.

Yes, the premise is totally a duplicate of the return of mutants at the end of Avengers Vs. X-Men--dues to an outside stimulus, lots of random "normal" humans suddenly are transformed into powerful beings of another race. So, not a lot of imagination spent on the premise.

Yes, Matt Fraction's last solo event, Fear Itself, was pretty darn dire, and Inhumanity #1 read like a 20-page illustrated Wikipedia article titled "Stuff You Already Know."

But...

...but...the decision to blow up Attilan (what, the 8th or 9th time it has been "destroyed"?), as well as some of the things discussed in Inhumanity #1, have some promise. Removing the royal family from control of everything, and spreading out Inhuman status to thousands of people who didn't know that they were of Inhuman ancestry, who didn't have millennia of indoctrination as to how superior they were or how there was only one way that things could work or how Black Bolt was all that...that could be the first step in correcting many of my problems with the Inhumans.

As Karnak says in Inhumanity #1, "Without Attilan, no Inhuman has a home, or a capital. Or a King..." and later, to Medusa, "If you want to save Inhumanity, Your Majesty--you must forget everything you think you know. You will ignore your instincts and forget your past. Otherwise, all is lost."

So, maybe, this could be a clean break for the concept of the Inhumans, a fresh start, a rejection of the stagnation of the same old royal family, of the arrogant genetic elitism and caste systems and slavery and "bred to rule" and all that offensive nonsense. Maybe.

Maybe not, though. We still don't know how they're going to sufficiently distinguish this Inhuman malarkey from the mutant malarkey going on simultaneously. Will your average Marvel-616 citizen know--or care--about the difference betwixt a mutant and an Inhuman? Why would they react any differently? If they've traded the Inhuman status quo for "Mutants Lite," it won't mean new life for the concept, but rather eventual irrelevance.

So the jury is out. But for now, they have me paying a bit of attention...

More Gratuitous Sex Objects

OK, I've finally reached my breaking point!!

The continuing parade of characters dressed ridiculously inappropriately, the objectification of an entire gender--I was mostly silent whilst others carried the campaign.

But now they've just gone too far:






Man, I feel dirty...

What?

Oh, wait, that wasn't the nu52, that was Neal Adams and John Verpoorten in Amazing Adventures #7 (1971).

Never mind.

PS--This was also the issue wherein Black Bolt had amnesia and was wandering around California and was recruited by the Black Panthers to stick it to The Man:

Ahhh, the 1970s..

A Humpday Present For My Loyal Readers

It's Wednesday, it's already been a freakin' long week, everyone is yearning for the long holiday weekend...so, I figured...

...that everyone needed to see Janet Van Dyne attacked by a giant red-and-black-striped bull, as drawn by Amanda Conner. (click on the pic to embiggen to full Connerrificness)

Oh, yeah, the bull is really a giant Inhuman with a magic shape-shifting jewel that lets him turn into a giant red-and-black-striped version of any old animal. And he's attacking Wasp at a fashion show for petite women because he thinks that tiny humans have stolen the world away from giants.

Really. Hey, cut me a break, I didn't say it was a brilliantly written story...

Anyway, the Wasp and Dakota North (!) whoop him and turn him over to Reed Richards, so the world is safe for "the tyranny of the tiny."

Really.

Man, Friday can't come fast enough...

From Marvel Super-Heroes #3 (1990)

Friday Night Fights--Let's Give The Sphinx Another Chance Style!!

Last week in Friday Night Fights, we saw The Sphinx try to rise to the level of a god--and get his butt handed to him by Galactus.

But since this is Repeat-Rehash-Revenge, I have to use one of those two again for this week's fight. Well, here at Slay Monstrobot, we're all about giving people a shot at redemption. So let's go back a couple of years earlier, when the Sphinx was merely really really really powerful, and see how he fares.

In this story, he's captured the Inhumans, mainly because he wants to harness Black Bolt's awesome powers. Why? So he can go all Darkseid and take control of every mind on Earth and search them for the Anti-Life Equation the mysterious secret he's been looking for (SPOILER ALERT--he's looking for a way to end his own eternal life!)

The Fantastic Four show up to rescue the Inhumans, but...


Well, that didn't go so well. But the FF's battle did manage to awake the Inhumans!!






Well, that's that, then. Sphinx wins, and...hey, wait a minute! There's one Inhuman who's not crumpled unconscious on the floor there. Where's...

BAM!!!








Black Bolt is so badass that he knocks Sphinx a full light year away!!!!

Poor Sphinx. Never quite ready for prime time. Perhaps Spacebooger could coach you up some...

Marv Wolfman, Keith Pollard & Bob Hall (pencils) and Bob Wiacek (inks) show us that Black Bolt is more Inhuman than human in Fantastic Four Annual #12 (1977).

I've really got no good reason for you to vote for my fight this week. But you should, anyway, just because.

Marvel 1995 Week--Fantastic Four #402!!

Oh, man, just look at this cover:

There's 1995 in a nutshell. A special logo just for the FF "family" of mags, a mini-event with its own logo, craptacular all-metal & flesh costumes...I guess the good news is that the FF had just stopped wearing those ridiculous leather jackets that the Avengers were still stuck with.

But, despite the outward trappings, the Fantastic Four was not completely lost to the excesses of the 1990s at this point. They were, however, completely DeFalco-tized.

Now, in full disclosure, I was never a fan of Tom DeFalco's time on the FF, so I'm prepared to concede that maybe I've been too harsh on him as a writer.

Let's acknowledge, first of all, the man's bad luck, having to follow the Walt Simonson runs on both Thor and the Fantastic Four. Talk about a thankless task, and a way to get your work judged far too harshly! And certainly, anyone who can put together a 6-year run on a title, as he and artist/co-plotter Paul Ryan did on FF, deserves some level of praise, as does his 6-year run on Thor, mostly with artist/co-plotter Ron Frenz.

And, for the record, I'm much higher on his Thor work, as I thought that DeFalco and Frenz did an enjoyably retro Lee/Kirby pastiche, a return to the character's Silver Age look and feel. Never great, certainly nothing like Simonson's run, but never bad...comfort food.

Ah, but the Fantastic Four...let me be fair: DeFalco had a LOT of ideas for the FF, and always kept things in motion. Unfortunately for me, they were quite frequently ideas that I never cared for. Plus, while it worked in Thor, I found his dialogue in the FF to be frequently purple and over-the-top.

But the man never let anything stagnate. Retconning Alicia Storm into Lyja, always at least one character hanging around who "wasn't what they seemed," bringing back Malice, having Ben wear a helmet and drop even deeper into self-pity mode, a mix of (mostly lame) original villains and old standbys, bringing Kristoff back to life, rotating members in and out, a seemingly constant high-octane soap opera of pouty on-again, off-again relationships...say what you will, DeFalco never let things sit still, even if you weren't pleased with everything he did.

Towards the end, though, I do feel he strained far too hard to keep things moving. Alternate futures, poorly explained cosmic wars, characters rapidly aged to adulthood, descendants of characters from alternate futures, relatives of those descendants, very convoluted plots...at times it all began to have way too much of an X-Men feel for my taste.

But hey, I'm not going to say it was all bad, or that DeFalco & Ryan were bad writers. I just didn't care for their stuff.

Which brings us to:

See what I mean about about constant churning? Yes, right now the FF consists of Sue, Ben, Scott Lang Ant-Man, and Kristoff Von Doom. And Doom's retainer, Boris, hanging around (even though he was actually Zarko, the Tomorrow Man!!). Reed and Victor Von Doom were dead, Johnny was off in other parts of the Atlantis Rising story...so we get this oddball team. Standard operating during the DeFalco days!

Oh, yes, and Ben's face was supposed to look like that--Wolverine had mauled him awhile back, and the Thing wore a helmet for awhile to cover what was surely the slowest-healing injury in Marvel history (oh, OK, that was Tony Stark's heart...).

Oh, and Atlantis Rising?? Well, Morgan LeFey wants to use Atlantis as the basis to establish a magical empire--so she raises it from the ocean floor!! There's more that we'll cover as we go. For now just note that the pounding on the ship's hull...??

That's Thor, in a very stupid costume, whom she has in her thrall. Uh-oh.

So Ben barrel rolls him off:

And Sue has Kristoff fire a missile:



Well played!! Unfortunately, that pisses off LeFey:

Oh, and by the way, did I mention:


The Inhumans' city of Attilan had been shrunken down and put it in a glass jar (no, it wasn't Brainiac!), and stolen from the moon. And Morgan had it now, and had decided that a city full of powerful Inhumans to enthrall was an even better idea that an empty city full of dead Atlanteans. So she's going to enlarge it on top of Atlantis!!

Meanwhile, what about the Atlanteans??

That's something I really dislike (and not just about DeFalco)--making mass murder a plot point, and then carelessly tossing it away. 60% of the Atlanteans died?!?! 6 out of every 10?? That's amazing...that should call for international tribunals and lots of corncern about the dying of a people and culture and a meeting of the Illuminati and...But no, like the destruction of Alderan, it's just a plot point here to show what bastards the villains are, never to be mentioned again. (Seriously, her whole planet is destroyed, including her father, and Leia spends 1 second mourning, and it's never mentioned ever again?? What was up with that?!? But I digress...)

Still, the genocide is enough to provide mulletedNamor a reason to be a jerk--not that he has ever needed one before:

But Vashti call him on it...

Well, the FF have arrived in London to brief NATO (what, not S.H.I.E.L.D??) on the crisis, when look who turns up?


Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that it somehow turns out that Atlantis is the Inhumans' "hereditary homeland," and now that it's above water, they want to claim it for themselves!!

Well, you can guess how Namor takes that, can't you?

So we get the spectacle of Namor versus Black Bolt, in an apparently very respectful battle:


Seriously, Namor? You're one punch into the battle, and you can tell from that one punch Black Bolt's "courage" and "nobility?" Really, a battle-base Rorschach test??

Meanwhile, the ersatz FF is battling the rest of the Inhumans, although no one seems particularly clear why...which leads to this amusing scene:

Ant-Man...no respect, no respect at all.

Namor and Bolt are building up to one, final mega-punch each:


D'oh!!! Good one, Sue!!

The Inhumans bail, thanks to their teleporting dog...

...but that's OK, because guess who shows up, good and pissed??

D'oh...to be concluded in Fantastic Four: Atlantis Rising #2. Trust me, the good guys win at the end.

Fallout from the mini-event? Johnny Storm leaves the FF to join Fantastic Force (please don't ask); because Sue doesn't truly trust Kristoff, so she asks Lyja to join the FF for awhile, so they become an unofficial Fantastic Five; bereft of subjects, Namor hangs around awhile; they find Reed and Doom, and meet Reed & Sue's hypothetical grandson...and it all means nothing, because Heroes Reborn is coming hard and fast, and after the FF got back, 99% of this all seemed to be forgotten (although DeFalco did resurrect a bunch of it in his MC2 Universe titles...)

But, all in all, not a terrible issue, and the FF did do a better job than most of weathering the mid-90s. While I'm still not going to be Tom DeFalco's biggest fan, I'm not going to be a hater, either. He wasn't as good as some, but it wasn't through a lack of effort, or lack of imagination, or unwillingness to try new things--those are franchise killers. He kept the pot a-boilin', and sometimes that's enough.

ELSEWHERE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE:

Look, someone was reading Neil Gaiman's Sandman:

Plot description from GCD: "Sister Nil tells the tale of how Nightmare wanted a successor, and he choose either Doctor Strange or Sister Nil."

Let's see, chalky white gothy demi-gods fighting for control over the dream realm...with cover art by a gent who had drawn Sandman and the Endless before...I wonder which demo Marvel was trying to push Doctor Strange to...?