Marvel Announces Uncanny Inhumans Featuring Black Bolt

Marvel Comics will be launching a new ongoing series entitled Uncanny Inhumans.

The series will be written by Charles Soule and art will be provided by Steve McNiven, the same team that killed Wolverine last year in Death of Wolverine, IGN reports.

The new series is set to focus on Black Bolt.

Currently, Black Bolt is presumed dead by the Inhumans and the world at large, with only his fellow Illuminati members knowing he survived the events of Infinity. However, in Avengers and New Avengers, which takes place eight months in the future, he just revealed himself to the Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D.

The Inhumans have certainly been receiving a boost of visibility in recent months. Between the current storylines in Marvel Comics and their introduction during the winter finale of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and the Inhumans movie announced for 2018, the popular evolved race certainly stands to make an impact within the Marvel universe.

"I've been working on Inhuman since the beginning, and one of the themes of that series has always been to expand the idea of what the Inhumans could mean to the Marvel Universe - new characters, new ideas, new locations, everything," Soule said. "And at this point, we looked at everything going on with Inhuman and realized it could easily support another big title. That's what Uncanny Inhumans is - an expansion of the storytelling related to the Inhumans in the MU, looking at who they are and what they mean from a different angle."

Soule added what distinguishes Uncanny Inhumans as a title.

"Well, if Inhuman is the big, royal-level story focused on the various Inhuman factions and their struggle for control over the Inhuman "nation," then Uncanny Inhumans will take more of a street-level approach, looking at some of the battles being fought on the ground, so to speak," he said. "It won't be quite so focused on New Attilan and the struggles related to it. Maybe more of a global view. Another key difference is that Inhuman focuses on Queen Medusa, while Uncanny's lead will be (primarily) Black Bolt. That said, the idea is to continue to bring up the newer characters we've met, guys like Reader, Lineage, Inferno, Iso, good old Frank McGee, and others in both books. They will certainly cross over - in fact, the inciting events for Uncanny will be shown in Inhuman #11 and #12. You don't have to read those to understand what happens in Uncanny, but my whole plan is to make a really rich, cool reading experience for people."

With Uncanny Inhumans revolving around Black Bolt, Soule addresses what he has planned for a primary protagonist who cannot talk.

"I have a ton of tricks planned to handle that, but I'll admit that a non-speaking protagonist can be tough," the writer explained. "Lots of gestures and steely looks. Supporting characters can do some of the talking for him, of course. But I think there's a lot of appeal in the idea of a lead character who doesn't speak. He maintains an aura of mystery. You can only interpret what he's thinking by what you see him do. You also have no idea what he'll do next. As with most writing challenges, I think it opens at least as many doors as it closes."

Soule also reveals a few of the main players involved in the new series.

"The villain for the first story is Kang the Conqueror!" he explained. "I don't want to get into the story too much at this point, but it also involves Black Bolt and Ahura (his son with Medusa, who has been missing since the events of Jonathan Hickman's Infinity event from 2013.) The story will involve a very cool mix of Inhumans old and new, but giving you too many details will spoil who survives the events of the coming months in Inhuman. As you might expect with Kang, you'll get some time travel, and as the Inhumans have been present on earth for more than twenty thousand years, I think that's a pretty exciting prospect."

Soule added, "As people have seen, characters aren't really safe in Inhuman. Anything can and does happen to them. I wanted to re-establish a sense of danger in superhero comics, and working with a ton of new characters lets me do that. You never know what will happen next, because you don't know who's "important" in the same way as you do if you're something like a Justice League issue. Uncanny Inhumans will very much carry on that tradition."