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Thursday, 28 August 2014

Inhuman #4 Review (Charles Soule, Ryan Stegman)


Four issues in and Inhuman has yet to really catch fire despite having a main character who can actually become an inferno. His Inhuman name is Inferno. His human name is Dante. Dante’s Inferno. You know, I generally stick up for comics when I hear someone saying they’re simplistic and dumb but sometimes you just can’t defend crap like this.

So Thor’s visiting New Attilan for some reason and Medusa’s showing him around their market. Someone takes a shot at the Queen, Thor does his thing, and the tension brought about by this influx of new Inhumans – or Nuhumans as Medusa has dubbed them – is tediously underscored again. Meanwhile, in China, a mysterious chap called Reader is tracking down a Nuhuman though unlike Lash he’s not potentially murdering them if he doesn’t think they’re useful enough.

Ryan Stegman’s taken over art duties from Joe Madureira so the series doesn’t look quite so good. While I’ve generally liked Stegman’s work on Spider-Man, some of the panels in this issue look rushed and sloppy, particularly the panels of Medusa and Thor walking through the crowded market. Very sketchy, rough imagery.

Charles Soule is writing his blandest scripts ever with Inhuman and #4 is no different. He continues to cultivate the uninteresting theme of characters dealing with their new identities/powers, and has failed in making the Inhumans seem interesting to a wider audience. If Marvel were hoping for this group of characters to shine as brightly as the X-Men for a potential future movie franchise, this series has surely seen those hopes dashed.

Reader is a semi-interesting character though and his scenes in China with the Nuhuman were the highlight of the issue. Whether he’ll develop into a great addition to the series or, like Lash before him, seem interesting at first before becoming yet another one-dimensional character, we’ll have to wait and see.

When I picked up my copy of Inhuman #4 I noticed how few copies my local comics shop had brought in, so I’m not the only one aware of how underwhelming this series has been. I’ll stick around until the conclusion of this first arc with #6 but this “event” has been a total wet firework since the start and issue #4 is no different than the preceding three comics.

Inhuman #4

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