Marvel’s Inhumans: Inbreeding! Fatalism! Slavery!
Travis Hedge Coke
What’s the deal with the Inhumans? Most importantly, the Inhumans in Marvel’s cinema and television properties does not have to have anything much to do with how they are in the comics. What those Inhumans will be all about, I’ll have to wait like most of you for future movies and episodes, from Age of Ultron to Agents of SHIELD.
The Inhumans as they’ve appeared in, and been used in comics, that I can talk about.

While we have met Inhumans of all classes, the royal family is what is generally focused on: the king, Black Bolt, his brother, Maximus, and wife, Medusa, her sister, Crystal, and their cousins (royalty keeps it in the family), Gorgon, and the brothers, Triton and Karnak.
Why the focus on the royals? For one, they were introduced first, as they were out in New York City, looking for the wayward and amnesiac Medusa. But, also, focusing on the royals helps us forget that they are royals, that they are a ruling class in a slave-using society. I think it’s safe to say, a lot of fans like to take the approach that the Alpha Primitives are happy to slave away, despite the fact that mostly when we see them, it’s either for a “know your place” story, or to criticize slavery or oppression (as seen, especially, in the Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee Inhumans). marvel.wikia.com states, “For all the successive millennia, [they] have been working without any complaint,” without emphasizing that they’ve been surgically lobotomized and never presented with a chance of freedom, and without connecting this sentiment to the examples of rebellion that immediately follow.
The most interesting aspects of the Inhumans, for me, are the parts that many fans would prefer to leave unaddressed, including this slavery - that they deliberately hobble these slaves’ intellectual capacity and then pat themselves on the back as four thousand years of unchanged benefitting from slavery is judicious of them. The incestuousness of the Inhumans also fascinates me, and the familial infighting. Thousand and thousands of years of no out-of-family coups, alone, is gonzo stuff, though a late-addition genetic council of elders can make, at times, this unbroken line of kings seem a little lip-servicey. And, the Inhumans are politically, religiously, and socially so fatalistic!
And, with all that randomness, the Inhumans still believe everything has a reason, that there’s an implicit plan. You find me the religious leader of any massively hierarchical religious system on Earth, from the Catholic Church to the NRA, and you introduce to their life that their neighbor might randomly have spider-legs explode from his face, or that their eyes might one night melt away, and their faith in the system is going to be shaken. But, this unpredictableness, for the Inhumans, is the system. We do not, in general, question our own systems, unless we are fractured, ourselves, from that system, by experiencing outside societies. While fans may not want to dwell on the morality of a lobotomized slave class, the Inhumans, themselves, probably don’t often even register that the systemic oppression is there. Slaves and royals, for the Inhumans, like their faith in an implicit engineering and elevated status to their people, is the natural order.
When the Alpha Primitives rebel, it’s part of the plan, things will return to normal. When the Kree come back and try to destroy the Inhumans or enslave them, it’s part of the plan, things will return to normal. When King Blackbolt renounces his crown to go into hiding amongst the humans, it’s part of the plan, things will return to normal. A young girl’s skin detonates with lightning. An Inhuman begs for a second exposure to terrigen. Maximus declares himself king, it’s… It’s always part of the plan.

Inhuman policy appears to be, simply, “Don’t think about it too hard.” Faith-based in a very sincere and dramatic fashion that, when we examine in contrast with the outside world, or even we look close at any individual Inhuman's private life, we see as a manufactured lie resting precariously and ready to tip.
To Be Continued… as we learn more about the Inhumans and their supporting characters, from Queen Medusa to the Follower, the Pursuer, Eelak, the one who looks like a tree but is not Groot, and Thanos, the madman of Titan, who is the same Thanos from Guardians of the Galaxy and The Avengers!
Then, To Be Continued Again… when we explore some of the biggest Inhumans stories! From Jack Kirby to Jae Lee! The Himalayas to Manhattan to the Moon and beyond! Atlantis Rising to Inhumanity!
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