There’s a good reason The Inhumans never became as big as the X-Men; frankly they’re a lot duller. A bunch of aristocrats on the run from their usurped kingdom doesn’t have the persecuted minority resonance of the mutant storyline and none of the characters are truly anything but ciphers. Kirby’s storytelling still has a kind of mythic power (and it’s often horribly contrived) but his love for huge cosmic concepts mean that there’s only really the big idea here. There’s nothing intrinsically interesting about any of the characters; even Black Bolt is really a variation on the emo-kid leader template of Cyclops.

I suspect this collection is here mainly to tie in with the upcoming plans for the Inhumans movie; the plan being that they make it big instead of the X-Men (whose movie rights aren’t held by the Disney studios and therefore appropriately find themselves corporate outsiders). Good luck in finding a way to make them resonate with audiences because there’s not a great deal to work with. On this evidence they’re not strong enough as an idea to make it big; they’re essentially whatever the writer wants them to be and very different propositions in all hands. Kirby sees them as grandiose tragic figures; Thomas and Adams feed them into more socially conscious storylines and Conway and Sekowsky churn out a bog standard superhero comic replete with Magneto as a tedious cackling megalomaniac.

Perhaps I’m wrong; perhaps their being a chameleonic all-things-to-all-writers team will mean there’s a successful take ready to be made. But with a strong central idea of what this team embodies lacking I doubt it. Interesting for Kirby’s work (and some typically great Neal Adams art) but ultimately what’s here doesn’t give any idea of why anyone might think they might gain the pop culture resonance of the X-Men or the Avengers aside from desperation. ( )