The Inhuman Royal Family will be featured in a new ongoing comic book series called Royals by writer Al Ewing and artist Jonboy Meyers.

Royals teaser by Paul McCaffrey. (Marvel Comics)

Inhumans vs. X-Men #1 cover by Leinil Yu. (Marvel Comics)

The new book is launching in April 2017 out of Marvel’s Ressurxion initiative that acts as a new chapter for both the Inhumans and the X-Men after their clash in December’s Inhumans vs. X-Men event. Royals will be the first of several new Inhumans-themed comics to debut in 2017.The cast features classic, royal Inhumans Medusa, Black Bolt, Crystal, and Gorgon; newer “Nuhumans” Flint and Swain; and surprise addition Marvel Boy. The story sees the group returning to the Inhumans’ space roots as they travel to the remains of the Kree homeworld and beyond to discover the origin of Terrigenesis, the chemical process that gives Inhumans their powers.“It's not the first time the Royals have been to space, admittedly, but I promise they've never been this far out before. I wanted to create a myth from the future, a quest to find answers and meaning in the face of extinction,” Ewing told us in an email interview. “In some ways, this is similar to my run on [Loki: Agent of Asgard], the thing that'll let me explore ideas of myth and metaphor, that'll allow me to play around on a grand tapestry. And the further out I get, the bigger I can go. I want to take this book to a place where Marvel-Earth -- the Marvel Galaxy -- isn't even a speck in the sky.”As for why they’re seeking out the origin of Terrigenesis, Ewing teased, “Let's just say that Terrigenesis is... not working out great the way it currently is. It's doing terrible things to the mutant population, and it's roaming the Earth as a giant cloud, and really, knowing more about it doesn't seem like that crazy an idea, even if it does take the form of a giant space quest.”Right from the get-go, Ewing is making sure readers are aware this adventure is serious business by letting them know that while seven are going forth, only six are going to come back alive.“It's a quest, and quests should have some kind of consequence to them,” he said. “Plus, if I told you ‘Anyone could die, honest!’... well, you wouldn't believe me. It'd be just more high stakes, like in every issue of every cape comic ever. But if I tell you that someone will die, that it's prophesied, baked in, suddenly there really are high stakes. One of these people is going to go to the far shore and not come back. And you're going to fall in love with all of these characters, so it's going to matter when it happens.”With this band of Inhumans traveling into space, the likes of Karnak and Lockjaw will stay behind with the Nuhumans on Earth. As for why newer characters Swain and Flint made the cut, Ewing said they were just too interesting to leave behind. As for Marvel Boy, Ewing hinted that he’s there because he knows an important piece of information that will prove vital to the Inhumans.“Marvel Boy is the outlier, the x-factor. I'm kind of combining [Kieron Gillen's] characterization with the ‘Lord of Force and Fire’ from [Grant Morrison], then putting my own spin on it,” Ewing said. “He's very necessary to the mission, because he's a Kree from an alternate dimension. And he's realized that there's one piece of common knowledge in his world that just isn't know about in the dimension he ended up in. Imagine going to a dimension where oil hadn't been discovered... well, knowing what we know now, you might want to keep quiet, but it's that kind of magnitude. There's something Marvel Boy knows about the Inhumans that they don't. Yet.”Artist Jonboy Meyers recently left DC’s Teen Titans comic book series over creative differences, which freed him up to take on Royals at Marvel.The Inhumans have been getting quite a bit of attention in the past few years, with Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD television show introducing them to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and just last week it was announced that, instead of the planned Inhumans movie, a new show called The Inhumans will feature the Royal Family and debut in Fall 2017 in theaters with a two-hour IMAX special before heading to TV. Ewing said he had no knowledge of the upcoming TV show when he signed on for the book.Marvel Comics has put an increasing emphasis on the Inhumans, an effort spearheaded by writer Charles Soule with the titles Inhuman, The All-New Inhumans, and The Uncanny Inhumans. Soule and his artistic partners over the years essentially reinvented the Inhumans by bringing them down to Earth, creating a new cast of characters thanks to the Terrigen Cloud released during Jonathan Hickman’s Infinity event, and putting them in conflict with the beloved X-Men. The reveal of Royals signals that he will be wrapping up his years-long work and handing the Inhuman baton off to Ewing.

Joshua is IGN’s Comics Editor. If Pokemon, Green Lantern, or Game of Thrones are frequently used words in your vocabulary, you’ll want to follow him on Twitter @JoshuaYehl and IGN