Black Bolt One-Shot + Inhuman #4

I have been meaning to post this for some time. I kept putting it off because the issues involved are big, and I didn't feel I could do them justice. But here goes anyway.

Black Bolt #1, or the Black Bolt One-Shot, is a collection of old Amazing Adventures issues --  #5 - #10 plus Avengers #95 -- from 1971 that Marvel put out last summer in order to inform its readers of the Inhumans back story.

One of the storylines to emerge from the recent Thanos Infinity crossover event is the emergence of new Inhumans -- NuHumans -- in the wake of Black Bolt's deadly struggle with the evil Titan. Here is the synopsis from the splash page of Inhuman #4:

Black Bolt, king of the Inhumans, was forced to detonate a massive bomb in the Inhuman home city Attilan in order to save Earth from attack. The explosion sent the city crashing into the Hudson River and released the Inhumans' Terrigen Mists across the globe, which awakened superhuman abilities in anyone with traces of Inhuman DNA.

Now, Medusa, wife of Black Bolt and queen of the salvaged city of New Attilan, aims to restore the Inhuman empire and protect her people by giving refuge to the newly changed among them, called NuHumans.

An Inhuman named Lineage requested an audience with Queen Medusa and revealed the true motivations behind Black Bolt's release of the Terrigen Mists: the deceased king sought to increase the Inhuman's numbers in preparation for a terrible disaster . . .

The Black Bolt One-Shot gets today's reader up to snuff on the origin of the Inhumans. Inhumans are the result of genetic experiments made by visitors from outer space, the Kree, on early Homo sapiens. The Inhumans establish themselves in a secret secluded city, Attilan, which, judging from the issues reproduced in Black Bolt, is contiguous to China. There is a Marvel tendency to situate forbidden cities -- like Iron Fist's K'un Lun, the Ancient One's hideout in the mountains of Tibet where Dr. Strange learns the mystic arts, and the Inhumans' Attilan -- in the Himalayas. Western culture has thoroughly assimilated Lost Horizon (1933) and accepts the fictive existence of Shangri-La.

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created the Inhumans, who like so many Marvel characters first appear in the pages of The Fantastic Four; in this case, Fantastic Four #45, with a publication date of December 1965.

In any event, I'm going to cut it short here and let the scans speak for themselves. The sun is shining this morning and I want to get out on a run. I selected Amazing Adventures #8 for the following reasons. One, it provides the cover to the Black Bolt One-Shot. Two, it showcases, particularly the splash page, the power of Neal Adams' drawing (John Verpooten provides the inks). Neal Adams was the premiere comic-book artist of the late Silver Age, taking the mantle from Jack Kirby. Three, it showcases Neal Adams' penchant for showing Sixties-era radicals -- here, black nationalists modeled on the Black Panthers -- in a negative light (in Neal Adams' comic books Hippies are often very scary people; think about the famous issue, from the same time period as the Inhumans stories in Amazing Adventures, where Green Arrow's sidekick Speedy shoots smack). And finally, four, it features, Thor, the God of Thunder, providing a transition to today's Inhuman #4, which also features Thor.

The artist of Inhuman #4 is Ryan Stegman, whose work, along with colorer Marte Gracia, I am really impressed with. He worked on Superior Spider-Man, issues of which I own but have yet to read. The writer of Inhuman #4 is Charles Soule, always topnotch.