The Inhumans

Trade Edition of the 12-issue series

Writing: Paul Jenkins

Art: Jae Lee

              My better than a year's break from comics is still catching up with me. Fortunately some of the more striking material I missed has been collected in trades. In early October I received my copy of The Inhumans, the trade collecting the 12-issue series by Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee.

              I enjoyed it.

              Oh, I have the occasional problem - allowing Jenkins and Lee to turn the once more humanly-faced and well-spoken Triton as a syntactically-challenged stock alien from Lost In Space and Voyage To The Bottom of the Sea seems an unnecessary editorial indulgence, for one - so I blame Quesasda and Palmiotti for that one. I won't spend more time on it than this, but I'm at a loss to see what the forced change adds to the story; it seems completely gratuitous. I'm also not thrilled to have Maximus depicted as Alex from A Clockwork Orange. No, O' my brothers, I'm not. I suppose it's a move in the "adult" direction, and if its intent is to make him more unsavory, well, it worked. Personally I preferred it when he was reprehensible because, well, he was simply power-mad.

              Jae Lee's work has improved greatly since I first saw it on some issues of Namor years ago, when the speculation machine was trying to instantly annoint him as the next hot, Hot, HOT artist. Back then his work struck me as muddier, less defined, an attempt at mood rather than substance. While he still tends to keep things in the shadows - I mean, even when we see Reed Richards on Politically Incorrect, the backgrounds are black - the series is largely a study in faces. Expressive faces that probably play to and look into the camera more than they should. Faces that are in general considerably younger-looking than I'd seen them before, too, but that's a minor quibble. Still... the formerly robust Gorgon in particular looks an easy ten years younger and seems to be having trouble growing a beard. Okay... dismiss that as aging fanboy's syndrome if you will, but I'm not a fan of these trendy roll-backs.

              That Attilan, when the story opens, is sitting on the ruins of a risen Atlantis is something I=m taking as being the result of a story I missed. My drifting away from the Marvel mainstream has left me with the occasional continuity hole, and having Attilan move from the Blue Area of the Moon back to a terrestrial site isn't especially odd.

              The story itself is ultimately solid and worthwhile. The examination of the Inhumans' culture is consistent with earlier examinations, taking us farther into a culture of institutionalized individualism. A monarchy that has tried to learn from its mistakes, but where a caste system still exists as a matter of long-ago engineered genetic predisposition.

              It was the strength of items such as this series for the Marvel Knights line that Joe Quesada rose to EIC of Marvel, and if it's indicative of what's to come, then Marvel could be in for a creative rebirth. Oh, I'm sure some of it will be difficult if not impossible for old fans such as myself, with impressions of various characters set years and even decades ago, but truly creative experimentation is better than stagnation.

              With a cover price of $24.95, though, I'm glad I get a discount. Yeah, I'm still a cheap bastard.

                                                              MJN

Any comments?