The best thing about this is the artwork in the first half.



Considered that not a single main character here is under 16, or maybe 18 (hard to tell), you really have to wonder why it is written as if for preteens.

It started badly enough with the typical Marvel incompetence in terms of spelling (it is spelled "Björn" and not "Bjorn") as well as the usual signs of a forced plot, like when at the start those Norwegians have no idea what that big cloud will do and yet no one tried to barricade themse

The best thing about this is the artwork in the first half.



Considered that not a single main character here is under 16, or maybe 18 (hard to tell), you really have to wonder why it is written as if for preteens.

It started badly enough with the typical Marvel incompetence in terms of spelling (it is spelled "Björn" and not "Bjorn") as well as the usual signs of a forced plot, like when at the start those Norwegians have no idea what that big cloud will do and yet no one tried to barricade themselves in or so. I mean they literally say it is right upon them. And it is not as if no one is afraid as we do see people running away from it when it is right up to them. And what was also odd here and later on was that there were no chevrons around the words of anyone there. Not the Inhumans, nor the Norwegians. Are we supposed to believe they use the same language? And later on they do use chevrons for the "Mongolians." That is the problem with many other cases here as well, which show how the writers cannot really think outside of their English-speaking readers. Like with the totally not threatening speech there by Medusa. Good luck with those "Nuhumans" who don't speak English and have no way to get to NYC... not that it will matter as most relevant ones will come from English speaking countries or will conveniently speak English anyway, unless they are evil of course. That is how Marvel works. And btw if the Inhumans were split from our ancestors millions of years ago, why on earth do they look identical to us? And why do most Inhumans have English or anglicized names?



And then we get to our first new character, his name is Dante. Him and the other women have light brown skin, I think, his skin tone is barely darker than that of Medusa (later on it is barely distinguishable from hers), he and his sister have black hair and his name is Italian. So, is he Italian? You know an ethnicity that does not make many new appearances in Marvel, especially not as good guys apparently. Nope, I know American stereotyping, and so being a slightly brown white guy clearly means that this is a Latino. They could at least have used something more specific or a Hispanic nationality that was less well known. But the way it is now, the only thing pointing towards Dante being Hispanic is his last name. His "inhuman" name is even "Inferno" which the comic acknowledges is from "Dante's Inferno", so why not make him Italian? And in terms of character we do not get much from him either. We know he is a musician and cares for his family. But that was it. Later on he is basically there to address intolerance. Which is still better than what we get for Jason and Naja. Of course Jason is also from the USA, the later reveal does not change that; I guess “Minnesota” is somehow edgy or so. Or they just chose that to pull off the "lonely black kid" stereotype. And I mean it, almost the first thing we get for his backstory is how he never met another black kid until he was eight and in the zoo. Aka, really lazy writing. Why bother with building character right? And I joked about how the next thing we would get was "white guilt" and the very next page Jason does accuse his father of only adopting him because of white guilt. His dad comes in, tells him they have to go quickly and all Jason does is bitch how he isn't some accessory to relief their white guilt. And apparently this bitching happened before. But at least Jason has some character flaws, Dante is pretty damn bland and Naja is basically just an extra.

We don't even get her first name (not even google could provide me with that). For some reason she is already referred to as Naja even though she did not even join the Inhumans yet. Isn't this name picking thing supposedly some rite of passage/new identity thing among Inhumans as they stated with Dante earlier in the volume? Also I looked the term up and Naja is a genus of Cobra snakes and while she looks only vaguely cobralike, she can fly, shift color and has apparently sensitive hearing. Why not based on "Chrysopelea" (gliding snakes)? Or some mythical being. Was "Naja" really the best choice?

In the end the best thing about these three are their designs.



If this wasn't enough, the plot convenience is really dumb, I call bullshit on how Lash was just in Norway seconds before Dante and his mother were cocooned, so how can he be there in Illinois already? And how did he know how to find them? Yes, he can teleport but that explains only one question.

This was getting ridiculous really fast. Not only does Dante seem to be somehow instinctively be able to shot fire, but Lash thought Dante did not transform because he still looked the same, although lacking a shirt but still with flame resistant pants apparently, and then thought he might have been mistaken? Lash himself looks only barely non-human and most major Inhumans look human as well. And earlier he killed a new Inhuman that was not looking human anymore, was that one too inhuman looking or what? Who writes like that? And of course Dante handles his new status better than anyone Gorgo ever saw... because Dante already could shot fire just like that. Why waste time right? Honestly, Dante seems pretty damn pointless for the story.

Of course New Attilan is in the USA, I mean where else is it supposed to be right? They even talk about the remains of Attilan being strewn all over New York City. The tower is in the Hudson River next to the statue of liberty. Are the writers incapable of picking a city other than New York? In fact, if pieces of Attilan fell on NYC, how come the city isn't full of craters yet?

That Medusa includes Gabriella among the Inhumans is either a hiccup or the writing is better than I thought as in this way there would be an actual ideological difference between her and Lash in that regard. Not that it means much, you see how does Lineage know that Black Bolt released the Mist because he needed more Inhumans because something "is coming?" He has the memories/personalities of his ancestors and Black Bolt is not an ancestor. So how does he know and why does everyone belief him? And how the fuck does he know where Jason's "real family" is? What sort of ancestry did the guy have? Oh and making him purple with sharp features and horns, really subtle design their artists.

If it weren't for the artwork in the first half of the volume, this would be a pretty generic story. Especially the whole thing with Dante and Jason happens way too fast to have any proper development. This whole thing stinks of editorial mandate and rushed production.

But once the artists change even that little bit of saving grace is gone. And interestingly, it is at this stage that the volume is using chevrons for the "Chinese" and later Mongolian. Not that this is much of an improvement mind you. The artwork is worse in my mind and those Chinese look like Western Europeans and in terms of story: if these two Chinese people wanted to protect the troops, why didn't they just say so?

And how does Medusa know her attackers are Inhumans? They may as well be mutants. After all, plenty of them are hostile to Inhumans as the terrigen mist suddenly kills them or renders them sterile, but no, she is right and the writing is so bad she is even fine with letting them run around. It was clear by this point that this is written as if the characters know how the story has to progress.

The parts in China are no better, in it the daughter says her parents always wanted a son that she always pushed for knowledge and books that they could not give her and I was pretty damn sure of two things:

a) If they had not wanted her, they would have gotten rid of her years ago

b) As this seems to be rural China, I am pretty sure they would have been allowed a second "try"

Helps to actually do research you know.

Or to think about how people actually act or should act if they run a country like Medusa does. She claimed Thor is fickle because he told her before she cannot execute those men from before and now that she cannot free them. How is that fickle? Both make perfect sense. Especially since these three tried to murder her!!!

And then they had this marriage proposal by the former king... who writes like this?

To further the nonsense, we get told that Jason, without knowing, lived in a community of Inhumans that avoided the terrigen mist for ten thousand years. And they adopted Jason from another group of Inhumans in Africa. And they didn't tell him this why? Really, there is no good reason for this except that he isn't supposed to know. In fact having one that does know and did not want to have superpowers would be something different. But alas this has to be some X-Men stand in apparently. We get further evidence for that when Naja enters the scene and tells them that she heard Dante in new Attilan talking how he spoke to Thor how he was helped and she decided to follow him instead of talking to another inhuman? Like the registration place that was shown? I know she is just there to make a statement about tolerance via Dante, but come on; couldn't they come with a more believable story? They already try to have Inhumans as an X-Men stand-in so why not have the classic mob chasing scene? It would be no dumber than this here.

And speaking of the kids, up to that point, the plotline with Medusa was way better than the one with Dante, Naja and Jason. Her betting on the "Unspoken" (even when he rules his name is not spoken?) trying to trick her into accepting him and then betting on him leading her to some terrigen crystals is smart. But the fact that she did not suspect his three cloaked Mongolians (complete with foreign language) to be a trick speaks volumes about the bad writing.

And when those cops just told Dante that he should try the Avengers I had to ask: Where are the avengers? Where are any of NYC's superheroes while New Attilan is taken over?

The idiocy does not stop there, as we get from Dante that he was on New Attilan the longest and had never heard of the Unspoken.... geee.... could it be that a guy referred to as such would not be talked about casually? And why does he act as if he had been there for a considerable amount of time? At best weeks had passed and we did not see him interact with any of the "old" Inhumans past Medusa and Gorgo. So how could he have known about the Unspoken then?

Speaking of idiocy among teens: I know Jason is a teenager but he says he can only do things with rocks and there everything around them is metal, so maybe he should have taken some rocks with him then or use the rocks that are part of his body? Wasn't he supposed to be smart? And later on he can control the terrigen crystals? They stated earlier he can only control rocks. If he can control crystals he should have been able to do the same with dust and earth.

In the end Medusa does not have her telepath check the Unspoken and is not having an eye on Lineage which makes her appear even dumber than everything she did before. This "new X-Men" routine was bad enough but holy shit is she stupid. I was glad this was over.



In the end I would say the main problem here is that the makers want the Inhumans to be the new X-Men but on the other hand they want to keep the power struggle nature among the high-ranking Inhumans. Which also doesn't work because based on the X-Men comics in the Marvel Universe humans try to kill mutants at apparently every step but Inhumans are ok.



PS. The balloon head girl was worthy in Lash's eyes but purple and gargoyle-like Kristian was not? Was the guy one of those slave Inhumans? If yes, he probably would have been useful either way.