If I was a betting man, I’d say the critical brouhaha over Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers, New Avengers and Infinity has prodded Marvel to try and get everybody to write in a complex style. Take Inhumanity #1, a long-winded, excessively wordy book by Matt Fraction. I use the Hickman analogy simply because Fraction’s writing has never been this densely packed. Inhumanity #1 reads like stereo instructions for installing audio equipment into God’s basement.
First and foremost, do we really need a new title, or event, based around Black Bolt and his cast of merry Inhumans? Doesn’t the idea of creatures with great powers hidden among us get covered in the X-Men world? Part of what makes Inhumanity so uninteresting is that it’s the story of the X-Men, but shrouded in bad sci-fi allegories of the beginning to the world. I applaud Matt Fraction for attempting to write on this scale, but he should stick to Hawkeye.
What’s Inhumanity about? No idea. A former Inhuman scientist on the city of Attlian, a floating city just above Earth, is becoming increasingly agitated over wolf bones. The scientist, named Karnak if you can believe that, is apprehended by The Avengers after going a bit off the rails in New York City. What follows is a long, long, looooong backstory about the history of the Inhumans. A history that ceases to be entertaining about halfway through it.
Aliens came, they turned cavemen into Inhumans. These Inhumans were planted throughout the world and when Black Bolt destroyed Attlian, it covered the surrounding area in a dust that created massive cocoons, as well as other unnatural goings-on. It’s a lot like what was done in the opening issues of Hickman’s Avengers, but I digress. Apparently, Black Bolt and his nutty brother planned to do this. Naturally, at the end of this longwinded explanation, nothing is clear. Karnak, who is terrified for the future, speaks as cryptically about it as he can, then kills himself.
Fraction loses control of the story almost from the word go. He barely even explains why the aliens came here, why they experimented, or what the goal was for keeping themselves a secret. The Thanos tie-in feels strained, and the most egregious sin is the “I know how the world will end” Karnak only speaking in riddles and then killing himself. At the end of issue #1, there is no desire to find out what happens in issue #2. The Inhumans just are not that interesting, especially with Fraction writing them.
Saving the day visually is Oliver Coipel’s nicely done art. He has a real playground here. Fraction’s story pans decades, races, aliens, everything. Coipel takes full advantage of that. His pencils are creative, always shifting perspectives and dynamics. The end result is art as grand as the story, but not as dull.
(2 Story, 4 Art)
