Then 2013 happened. The Marvel Cinematic Universe had just had their first billion dollar success and Marvel’s corporate arm, newly flush with cash and power after the Disney acquisition, started making decisions. They couldn’t use mutants in the MCU, but they could use the Inhumans. Because they were going to use the Inhumans in the movies as the mutant analogue, the comics had to as well, and so began the maligned Inhumans push. The X-Men got pushed into their own little corner as the Inhumans took their place. The whole thing was a disaster, but it didn’t have to be. This massive mistakes could have actually worked if Marvel hadn’t been stupid.
The Inhumans Push Could Have Been Great but Marvel Did It in the Worst Way Possible
Image Courtesy of Marvel Comics
The Inhumans push has its origin in the excellent Jonathan Hickman run on the Avengers. Black Bolt was a member of the cast of New Avengers (Vol. 3), helping deal with the Incursions and in the story Infinity, the Inhuman monarch would detonate a Terrigen Mist bomb as part of a battle against Thanos, who was hunting his half-Inhuman son. This was the catalyst to the whole push, and led to “Inhumanity”, a story that would get several one-shots and tie-in issues across the Marvel line. It was the brainchild of Matt Fraction, but it didn’t make a huge impact at the time.
“Inhumanity” led to Inhuman, and would reveal the gamehanging moment of the push: that humans around the world had Inhuman genes, and that the clouds of Terrigen Mist were transforming random people into Inhumans. This led Attilan, the secret city of the Inhumans, to reveal itself to the world as beacon for these new Inhumans. Ms. Marvel came out during this time, introducing readers to Kamala Khan. The push wasn’t setting the world on fire, but it was gaining steam, and Secret Wars would lead to the next phase and the doom of the push.
After the multiverse-redefining event, the publisher did a time skip and opened up with the Inhumans even more dominant as a force while the X-Men were forced off the planet because of the M-Pox, a disease caused when mutants were exposed to the Mists. At some point in the time skip, Cyclops did something to attack the Inhumans and died. Suddenly, numerous Inhumans book spopped up, with writer Charles Soule writing the flagship titles. New Inhumans started showing up in the same way mutants did in the past, but fans didn’t really care, because they were getting pushed down our throats. The whole thing was a disaster.
Basically, corporate Marvel decided that Inhumans could have all of the stories that the mutants did. Suddenly, there was anti-Inhuman bigotry, young Inhumans trying to come to terms with their new powers, older members of the group training younger ones, the whole mutant shebang. Everything unique about the civilization was gone and they were made into the new X-Men. It was a complete flop. Readers didn’t really like the cynical way that the Inhumans were being pushed. While no one at Marvel said out loud it was because they didn’t own the film rights to the X-Men, it was apparent. Other than Ms. Marvel, none of the Inhumans books sold well. Inhumans vs. X-Men ended the conflict, destroying the Mist clouds (with Marvel still making mutants look bad in what felt like a fit of pique over readers rebelling against their ideas), and after one last attempt to make the whole thing work with Royals, the Inhumans were killed off in Death of the Inhumans. Since then, they’ve been completely absent.
Marvel’s MCU-Related Greed Doomed the Inhumans Push
Image Courtesy of Marvel Comics
The Inhumans push had a lot of potential in the beginning, but it was completely squandered in its second phase. Replacing mutants with Inhumans was never going work, and actively antagonizing X-Men fans by removing mutants from everything and replacing them with Inhumans was a terrible choice. Trying to replace A-listers with D-listers was a stupid idea. It almost ruined the X-Men in the 2010s, and led to a lot of books that no one is ever going to care about. Add in the mediocre core books like Inhuman, Inhumans, Uncanny Inhumans, and all of the solo books not titled Ms. Marvel, and the whole thing was the wrong choice to make.
The sad thing was that it never had to happen the way it did. The Inhumans aren’t inherently bad; go back and read that 1998 maxiseries to see them done right. However, the corporate side of Marvel, ran by Ike Perlmutter, saw dollar signs. They didn’t understand that stories were why fans loved mutants, they just saw them as interchangeable superheroes that could be replaced with the Inhumans. This was one of the first major examples of Marvel changing their comics for the movies, and it was a disaster. It would be nice to say that the company learned their lesson, but MCU synergy is unfortunately alive and well.
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