Inhuman #3 Review (Charles Soule, Joe Madureira)

In the wake of Black Bolt detonating the Terrigen bomb, new Inhumans have begun popping up everywhere with the existing Inhumans scrambling to press them into their cause. On one side you have Lash of the hidden Inhuman city, Orollan, and on the other you have Black Bolt’s wife, Medusa, formerly of Atillan, who now leads the Inhumans in Black Bolt’s absence. Both are vying for the new Inhumans but Lash’s methods are more brutal, killing those he deems ineffectual to his militant cause, while Medusa is more benevolent. 

The series so far has felt like classic X-Men comics with Professor X and Magneto both looking to recruit mutants to their different causes, peaceful and violent respectively. But there also hasn’t been much substance to the series either which is why it’s been so unimpressive and, yes, boring, which is surprising given that this is written by Charles Soule.

An Inhuman character from Soule’s Thunderbolts run, Lineage, says he knows what Black Bolt’s plan was which leads Medusa and her guys to Orollan to fight Lash. Elsewhere the new Inhumans are being trained to use their new powers and Dante picks his Inhuman name: Inferno. Because Dante, like the poet, and his powers are fire-based. Groan.

Part of the problem is the lack of any truly interesting characters. Inferno, Medusa, Lash – none are that enthralling, really. And what is the story? Inferno learning to use his inferno powers – who cares? For the third issue in a row it feels like Soule’s been treading water while we wait for Black Bolt to return and/or the real story to start.

I’m not putting this totally on Soule as this series was troubled from the start. He was a last-minute replacement for Matt Fraction, who’d been working on the book for a while before parting ways with it over “creative differences” with Marvel, so Soule’s had to do what looks like a hatchet job on the material. But considering this is a big Marvel series, I’d expect much more going on here than what little we’ve had so far.

I get that Inhuman is Marvel’s way of laying the groundwork for a big ensemble X-Men-esque franchise without the X-Men, whose film rights belong to Fox, but this series is going to have to step up its game if it wants that big an audience. Inhuman #3, like the last issue, is unfortunately a very unengaging comic.

Inhuman #3