Posted in: Comics | Tagged: imperial, inhumans, jonathan hickman
Will we be getting a new Jonathan Hickman-written 60th Anniversary Inhumans comic book series from Marvel Comics?
Article Summary
- Marvel’s Inhumans celebrate their 60th anniversary, sparking rumors of a new Jonathan Hickman series.
- The Inhumans, created in 1965, are famous for their powers, royal drama, and ties to Fantastic Four lore.
- Marvel heavily promoted the Inhumans in the 2010s amid disputes over X-Men and Fantastic Four media rights.
- With X-Men’s return and leadership changes, Marvel might bring the Inhumans back into the spotlight.
Just asking questions. Spoilers are for elsewhere. But a new Inhuman comic book series written by Jonathan Hickman and published by Marvel Comics might make several licks of sense right now, don’t you think? Especially with the Inhumans’ sixtieth anniversary just around the corner.
The Inhumans, created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee‘s Fantastic Four #45 in 1965, are a race of super-powered beings evolved through exposure to the Terrigen Mists. Led by Black Bolt, whose voice can level cities, his queen, Medusa, the scheming Maximus, and fan-favourites like Crystal and Lockjaw, the teleporting bulldog, they were Marvel’s attempt at a royal dynasty with alien flair. For decades, they starred in their own comics, crossovers, and even tangled with the X-Men over those pesky mists that were killing mutants.
The 2010s saw Marvel pushing The Inhumans hard as X-Men proxies, under the instruction of then-Marvel chairman Ike Perlmutter. The Marvel bankruptcy a decade plus previously had seen Marvel sell TV and movie rights to the Fantastic Four and X-Men to 20th Century Fox, and Spider-Man to Sony. But unlike Sony, Ike was unable to renegotiate the deak with Fox over the treatment, use and financial recompense for using X-Men or Fantastic Four, after Marvel Studios had seen new success with their own movies. So instead, he cancelled the Fantastic Four comics out of spite, as well as licensing deals, in an attempt to lessen the value of the license to Fox. Marvel Comics editorial was able to stop him from cancelling X-Men comics outright, some of their biggest sellers, but he pulled many X-Men licensing deals and the X-Men publishing line was not marketed as it might otherwise have been. And Marvel started publishing a number of Inhumans-related comics, including retrofitting the new Ms Marvel, Kamala Khan, to be an Inhuman rather than a planned mutant. The biggest push that the X-Men comics of that era received was when they were part of the Inhumans vs. X-Men event. It also led to conflict at higher echelons of Marvel, with Ike Perlmutter pushing against a Captain Marvel and Black Panther movie in favour of an Inhumans film. The cancellation of that movie, as scooped and rescooped by Bleeding Cool, led to a TV series run by Ike Perlmutter’s department, starring Anson Mount as Black Bolt, Serinda Swan as Medusa, and Iwan Rheon as Maximus. It flopped and led to the Death of the Inhumans comic book series, which killed off many and scattered them across the cosmos. Disney’s purchase of Fox was the last straw as the X-Men roared back to prominence at the publisher, and Perlmutter was pushed out. But now? It looks like it just might be Inhumans time again.
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