Attilan Rising Podcast

Writer Daniel Kibbelsmith and artists Carlos Villa, Roberto Poggi and Chris O’Halloran bring us the first in a four-issue series exploring the adventures of everybody’s favorite giant teleporting dog.

This first issue opens up on the morning of what appears to be a very special day for Lockjaw…  Situated in the Inhuman citadel of New Arctillan on the dark side of the moon, Lockjaw gazes out onto the cosmos and his preternatural sense of smell seem to detect a potential threat.  Something quite not right is afoot and Lockjaw springs to action.  Fist, however, the narrative offers us a quick glimpse of some of the other members of Lockjaw’s fellow Royals.  This includes Medusa and Black Bolt who appear to be *ahem* intimate once more… as well as the always irascible Karnak eating cereal, and Crystal reading a story to her daughter, Luna.  Then Lockjaw teleports off.

The narrative switches to earth, to the apartment of Dennis Dunphy, the one-time costumed adventurer and former Avenger known as Demolition Man (or D-Man for short).  Dennis has had a hard time of late.  Following a tumultuous career as a superhero with some highs and many lows, Dennis had retired from the life and settled down with his boyfriend, Steve.    Unfortunately, things with Steve didn’t work out and Dennis has been very much down in the dumps ever since the break up.  And his sadness gives way to anger when he sees himself as a clue on the TV gameshow, Jeopardy!, and none of the contestants can recall his name.  Then the show goes to commercial before the host can offer the correct answer and it leaves Dennis so enraged that he punches the television.

And this is made even worse when the broken glass from the TV set leaves Dennis with a pretty bad gash on his forearm.  Dennis had once possessed superhuman powers, enhanced strength and durability (qualities bestowed onto him by the villainous Power Broker), but these abilities have since gone away and the cut on his arm is bad enough to warrant a trip to the emergency room.

Exiting his apartment Dennis encounters his neighbor, a kindly albeit kind of homophobic elder woman named Mrs. Gillespie.  She is petting her pet bulldog, Bixby, and invites Dennis to a party honoring the dog’s thirtieth birthday.

Mrs. Gillespie seems like kind of a kook so Dennis doesn’t give much thought to her claims that her dog is actually thirty years old.  Besides, he’s in kind of a hurry to get to urgent care for some stitches on his forearm.

Elsewhere, Lockjaw teleports to earth and arrives at a local park and makes quick friends with a nice little girl chasing butterflies.  Good boy.

Over at the hospital, Dennis’ sister, Ruth, has arrived worried that his wound might have been the result of a suicide attempt.    Ruth means well but it’s rather demoralizing to Dennis that she had thought things so rough that he would try to kill himself.   It’s basically rock bottom for Dennis, but the good news is there is nowhere to go from here but up.

Dennis returns too his apartment building and discovers Lockjaw standing outside barking loudly.  He doesn’t recognize Lockjaw and seems to assume he is just a really big dog who might be lost.  Yet before he can investigate the matter further, Dennis is hit in the back by a hamster in a mini flying saucer.  There’s a sentence I never thought I’d write…

Suddenly Dennis and Lockjaw find themselves facing off against a veritable swarm of miniature flying saucers operated by talking hamsters.  The lead hamster recognizes Lockjaw, naming him a secondary target, instructing his fellow hamsters to apprehend the canine Inhuman.
Mrs. Gillespie and Bixby come out of the building to see what the ruckus is all about.  The hamster identifies Bixby as the primary target and its fleet engages.
With Bixbee in danger, Lockjaw goes a bit wild and takes out the swarming saucers with heightened brutality.

It isn’t long before the saucers have to retreat.  Afterwards, Lockjaw and Bixbee meet up and share a knowing sniff with one another.

Then Lockjaw is off.  Dennis still thinks he is a lost dog and runs up to see if he can check for a collar.  Doing so accidentally causes Dennis to be teleported off with Lockjaw.

The two land in the Savage Land, the secretive refuge of prehistoric life hidden deep in the antarctic.  Lockjaw has teleported to a place in the Savage Land where his one time ally and fellow Pet Avenger, Zabu the sabertooth tiger, is residing.

Zabu growls at first, but his friend Ka-Zar (Marvel’s analog to Tarzan) assures him that all is well.  Dennis is rather confused over all that has happened, but he sees Ka-Zar and is taken aback by the man’s physical beauty.

And it is here that this rather silly first issue comes to a close with the promise of continuation with the next installment…

A very goofy and fun ride.   Carlos Villa’s illustration along with  Roberto Poggi’s inks and Chris O’Halloran coloring all work really nicely for the story.  Villa draws a rather funny looking Lockjaw with an especially big face with accentuated floppy joules.  It’s very much that kind of cute come funny looking often associated with pugs or bulldogs.

Villa’s penciling very much excels in the one action scene, where Lockjaw and D-Man fend off the hamsters in flying saucers.  He is especially good at showing off dynamic scenes and I’ll be looking forward to more action scenes as the series progresses.  O’Halloran’s colors really stand out, with an especially good use of electric blues that capture the cosmic nature of Lockjaw’s powers of teleportation.

There’s a lot of mystery here and it remains unknown what exactly is going on.  It would seem that Bixby is likely Lockjaw’s brother and that there may be something special about Lockjaw’s siblings that has put them in the crosshairs of these hamster-like creatures.

We know from Black Bolt #5 that Lockjaw was a dog whose mother was exposed to Inhuman experimentation on old Attilan.  The experiment appeared to imbue the her pup with special powers, but it wasn’t revealed whether or not Lockjaw’s mom had just one puppy or a whole litter.  I’m guessing that it was the latter and that Lockjaw has a number of brothers and sisters out there.  Along with an extended lifespan, these dogs may also possess other powers, powers that these saucer flying hamsters could want to exploit.  I suppose we will have to wait and see how this all pans out.

Daniel Kibbelsmith has made an interesting choice in selecting D-Man as Lockjaw’s co-adventurer in the story.  D-Man a peculiar character…  He first showed up in the pages of The Thing as part of a story that attempted to bank off growing popularity of professional wrestling.  He then teamed up with Captain America, getting a costume that was an overt knock off go outfits worn by Daredevil and Wolverine.  He was homeless for a time, mentally ill for a time, an Avenger for a time.  He was recruited into Wonder Man’s squad of Revengers and even mind-controlled into becoming The Scourge.  Then he was killed off and I don’t recall how he was eventually brought back to life.

D-Man has kind of been a cypher who various authors have used for different reasons and different plot-lines in a variety of different comics.  Kibblesmith departs from this and offers up a more fully fleshed out version of D-Man.  He depicts Dennis as a sarcastic yet lovable loser who is down on his luck.  He’s lost his powers, lost his boyfriend, things have gotten pretty bad.  He’s a guy who could really use a good old fashioned adventure alongside a giant teleporting bulldog in order to turn things around…

Dennis provides up a good point of view for the reader (particularly necessary for a main character who is a dog and cannot speak).  Dennis has no idea what exactly is going on with Lockjaw, the nature of his mission, nor the origin of these villainous space-hamsters.  Us readers are equally in-the-dark and I’m looking forward to joining Dennis in discovering the truth behind these mysteries.  Hopefully other readers will feel the same.

Of course as a big time Inhumans fan I was especially intrigued by the opening scene on New Arctillan.  Very interesting to see Medusa and Black Bolt back together and I wonder if this acts as something of a spoiler regarding what will be revealed in the 12th and final issue of Ahmed and Ward’s Black Bolt series.

In any case, it was nice to see confirmation that Crystal has reunited with her daughter, Luna, and both are doing well on Arctillan… and also nice to see that Karnak has apparently been forgiven for his past transgression in the pages of Secret Warriors and has been welcomed to reside on Arctillan with the rest of The Royals.

Lockjaw #1 is my kind of ridiculous fun and I definitely recommend it.  Four out of five Lockjaws :3

 

It’s the courageous Kamala Korps versus the dreaded Inventor as the Teenage Wasteland story-arc continues from the creative team of G. Willow Wilson, Nico Leon and Ian Herring.

Zoe is missing!  She had donned her makeshift Ms. Marvel costume and thought she could take on The Inventor on her own.  She’s been gone for a while now and her friends are quite worried.  Fortunately, Zoe is rarely without her phone and Nakia has the technical wherewithal to triangulate the global positioning system on Zoe’s phone and lead Red Dagger and The rest of the Kamala Korps to her location.

Nakia, Mike and Gabe are looking pretty fly in their ersatz Ms. Marvel costumes; though still outshine by The Red Dagger’s dreamy hair and superior parkour skills.

Not too far away, Zoe finds herself tied up alongside her codger compatriot, Roger, in The Inventor’s layer.  The narrative catches up with her just in time for The Inventor to go off on a rather standard issue super villain monologue.

The Inventor’s whole raison d’etre is all about the streamlining of society wherein the less useful members of the population are used as a source of much needed energy for those he deems worthy and useful.

In his first scheme, The Inventor had abducted a group of teenagers, seeing them as shiftless parasites on society better used as energy producing batteries.  He was foiled in this plot by Ms. Marvel in one of her first adventures.  Having recently been released from prison, The Inventor has modified his plans, now setting his sights on seiner citizens, whom he also sees as providing no value to society as a whole.
It’s a weird hang-up and, despite what The Matrix movies might have us believe, human bodies actually make for rather poor batteries.  All of that aside, The Inventor does possess a good deal of inventive prowess and has been able to use the various old folks he’s collected to power a bevy of oddly cobbled together monstrosities.

The Inventor’s monologue in interrupted by the timely arrival of The Dagger and the Kamala Korps.  Although these young heroes are a lot better at striking impressive poses than they are fighting monster and all manner of mayhem ensues as the Inventor sicks his creatures on the interlopers.  And herein we’re treated to a truly wonderful panel illustrated by Nico Leon and Ian Herring showing poor Gabe being chased be a mechanized pineapple…  it’s moments like this that remind me why I so love comics :3

Zoe is able to free herself and joins the fight just in time to heroically save Nakia from being zapped by a giant cyborg turtle.  It’s crazy…  When the dust settles, the heroes have saved the abducted senior citizens and The Inventor and along with many of his monstrous creations have escaped into greater Jersey City.
Although they saved the day, Red Dagger is forced to admit that they all might be a bit out of their depth.  They can fill in for the real Ms. Marvel when it comes to thwarting muggers and purse snatchers, but a legitimate super villain is clearly it of their league; they’re going to need some help.

And fortunately, Mike has an idea about how to get it.

Way back in the Civil War II story arc, Ms. Marvel had a terrible falling out with her hero and inspiration, Captain Marvel.  Captain Marvel’s effort to utilize the predictive powers of Ulysses to stop crimes before they happened led to calamitous results, including poor Bruno being severely injured.  It was the last straw and Ms. Marvel quit Captain Marvel’s junior preventative justice squad.  As she did, she tossed away the signal device that could be used to call the Captain in case of emergency.

Mike had secretly watched this all go down and she went and retrieved the signal device as a memento for safe keeping.  Having collected it from her home, she and the gang now stand on a rooftop and use it to call for Captain Marvel.

The good captain arrives with her usual panache for dramatic entrances; and Leon and Herring do not miss the opportunity for a very cool splash panel.

At first Captain Marvel seems irked.  Why is it that these cosplay kids have called her?  They better not be wasting her time…  And yet the reason for her being beckoned becomes quite evident as they look out on the Jersey City skyline in time see a series of green mushroom clouds detonating all over.  Clearly the Inventor has triggered his engage and it looks to be disastrous.

Whether or not Captain Marvel and the Kamala Korps will be up to this new challenge remains to be seen and will have to wait until the next installment as it is here that the issue ends with the promise of conclusion next month.

Another fun ride with lots of great moments…  although at this point I’m definitely starting to miss the real Kamala.  The issue starts off with a quick prologue showing Kamala’s lunchtime buddy, Neftali, and his ongoing search to find his missing pal.  I can definitely relate to young Neftali; I’m missing kamala as well and hoping she comes back soon.

In the meantime, it’s been wonderful getting to see the extended cast further cultivated in terms of character development; especially Zoe who is rapidly becoming a favorite.  Wilson really excels at offering Zoe up some very funny, self-depreciating one-lingers.

During the exchange between Zoe and The Inventor, their banter ventures into the territory of animosities between the baby boomer generation and the so-called ‘millennials.’  The Inventor is perplexed that Zoe should try and stick up for the older generation considering all the social frictions existent between the two groups.  Zoe admits that she does have angry feelings toward her elders, blaming them for ruining the economy and environment and their general slowness in accepting young people.  Still, she’s unwilling to cast so wide a net of contempt as to just write off an entire generation… especially considering all the sacrifices they made.

It’s all a bit ham-fisted and the whole millennial versus baby boom subtext might have been better left implied instead of overtly expressed.  Although in a story that involves mechanized frogs and knife-wielding pineapples perhaps subtly isn’t really called for.

What is handled with a smoother hand is a nice exchange between Zoe and Roger about the importance of symbols and aspiring to be super.  Zoe explains that knowing Ms. Marvel was out there just made everything feel better; it created a sense of security and helped to make a hectic world seem all the more tolerable.  With her missing, Zoe and her friends felt it their responsibility to fill her shoes and maintain that sense of security for other people.  Having been captured by The inventor, Zoe has come to realize there is much more to being a super hero than dressing the part…  She feels she is missing the magic, the key ingredient that makes a super hero super.  Yet Roger disagrees.  He sees Zoe standing up to The Inventor, sticking to her principles despite the direness of the situation and he is very impressed with her.  She may not have super powers, but she’s brave and strong and doesn’t back down.  As far as Roger is concerned Zoe is just as magical and heroic as any super powered caped crusader out there.   It’s a nice moment.

The whole issue is just a joy to read, the illustration and coloring is top notch and I’m very much looking forward to seeing how the whole arc wraps up.  While other books are relying on gimmicks and twists to generate buzz, Ms. Marvel has continued to truck on providing top quality comic book fun.  Definitely recommended.  Four out of Five Lockjaws!

Artist extraordinaire, Stephanie Hans, joins the team of Christian Ward and Saladin Ahmed in this latest installment of the perilous adventures of the Midnight King.

Blinky, the kind and innocent orphan Black Bolt has taken under his wing, has been abducted by the villainous Lash, teleported away to places unknown.  The occurrence has sent Black Bolt into a state of despair as he cannot help but be reminded of his many failures of the past… how he was unable to be a good father to his son, how his efforts to protect his people led to their future being doomed.  He is left kneeling as the doubt and self condemnation wash over him.  Fortunately, Titania is there to jostle him from his stupor.

Titania is the wife of Crusher Creel, the friend Black Bolt had made whist incarcerated in the terrible space prison and whose noble sacrifice facilitated their escape.  Black Bolt and Blinky had sought out Titania to inform her of her husband’s fate and she is now more than willing to sublimate her sorrow into violent justice in rescuing Blinky.

Utilizing the communications system aboard Black Bolt’s fancy flying car, the two contact New Attilan and speak to Iso, the current regent of the Inhuman peoples.  Iso informs them that they had been monitoring strange activity among the ruins of Orollan, the one time lair of Lash’s Tribe of Lor.

Unfortunately, Iso’s forces are stretched too thin and she cannot afford to dispatch aide to assist Black Bolt.  Yet he is not alone in his effort to rescue Blinky…  Titania insists on accompanying him and Black Bolt knows better not to attempt to dissuade her.

The flying car travels to Greenland where Orollan once resided.  They know they are entering into a trap but proceed nonetheless with steady resolve.   The car is shot down and the two heroes climb from the wreckage to face Lash’s various minions.

The Inhumans Lash has recruited as his subjects are composed of a group of new Inhumans, or NuHumans, created by way of exposure to the Terrigen Cloud.  They were once human, regular people unaware of the latent Inhuman genes passed down from their ancestors.  Black Bolt had triggered the Terrigen Bomb, created the subsequent Cloud, and caused their transformations.  His actions undid these peoples’ lives, changed them into super powered creatures.  For this they hate Black Bolt and he cannot blame them.

Black Bolt had detonated the Terrigen Bomb because he felt he had to, to protect the world from the threat of Thanos, to ready it for the oncoming incursions from The Builders… but he also did so because he wanted it, because he felt it was time for The Inhuman race to come out of the shadows and achieve its true actuation.  What he enacted did help to save the world, yet he knows now that his conduct was not as righteous as he had led himself to believe… he was as motivated by hubris and folly as he was necessity and desperation.  And necessary or not, Black Bolt’s actions destroyed countless lives and he deserves to pay for his crimes.  It would be just were he allow these NuHuman creatures to kill him, he might even welcome his death.  Yet there is still Blinky to rescue and hence Black Bolt must fight on.

He and Titania make short work of Lash’s minions, forcing Lash himself to step out from the shadows.  He holds Blinky by the neck, threatening to snuff her life out unless Black Bolt submit and kneels before him.

In the past, Black Bolt would respond to such a demand with self righteous fury.  He saw himself as the monarch of a race of gods who lived above petty mortals.  Such an insult would have been replied to with Black Bolt’s voice as his very words would resonate with such power as to reduce his enemies to ash.  And yet that power no longer belongs to him.  All that was exerted to escape the prison and destroy the Jailer has left Black Bolt’s diminished, his voice all but halved in terms of its potential for destruction.

More so, he has also been shed of his prideful arrogance.  He has been humbled and come to see gestures as only as meaningful as one chooses to make them.  Lash demands that he kneel or else he will kill Blinky and hence he kneels knowing that this child’s life, any child’s life is much more important that Inhuman pomposity.

A bit surprised, Lash is amused by Black Bolt’s bowing down.  He seizes upon the moment to have his minion, Fume, neutralize the two heroes.  Fume in a new Inhuman who owns the ability to change his form into a noxious gas; he billows over Black Bolt and Titania, rendering them both unconscious.

Black Bolt awakes to find that he, Titania and Blinky have all been bound, chained to stone pillars that stand before some odd machine.  Finding that his captives have awoken, Lash begins his villainous monologue.  He explains that he had underestimated the threat posed by humankind.  He once felt that Terrigenesis should be reserved for only the most worthy of Inhumans, yet such a luxury is no longer something that can be afforded.

Humans are too dangerous; they hunt down and kill all who are different.  They poison the earth in their never-ending quest for energy and convenience.  They are wild pests who must be conquered, tamed and lorded over.  So to achieve this, Lash must have more Inhumans to act as his army.  And to this end he has had this machine built to create a new Terrigen Cloud so to awaken new soldiers.

Yet Terrigen has been all but extinguished.  In its place, Lash’s machine will utilize Black Bolt’s blood.  Black Bolt experienced Terrigenesis whist still in his mother’s womb.  It endowed him with a purified version of the Terrigen, bonded to his every cell.  Lash believes that this will enable Black Bolt to be used as a living battery, a new source of Terrigen that can be drained, concentrated and expelled into the atmosphere.  Of course the process will kill him, but with his death Black Bolt will give life new generations of his race.

It’s an absurd plan.  Who knows whether or not it will work?  Although if nothing else it will certainly kill Black Bolt.  Unfortunately he is too weakened to resist.  He is loaded into the bizarre machine’s circuitry and his mind drifts as his body is filled with all manner of toxins.

His consciousness floats off into the ether where a familiar voice beckons him.  The haze begins to part as crimson locks take hold of him and brings him closer.  And this is when he realizes that somehow he has been taken to a neither-realm where he is reunited with his love, Medusa.

Here the narrative veers into an interlude, a cross-over with the events of The Judgement Day story that culminated the adventures told in the pages of The Royals.  The cosmic beings known as The Progenitors were approaching earth to wreak annihilation.  In a desperate effort to repel them, Medusa had been sent into the astral plain, hoping against hope that she might find some means of defeating this all but omnipotent threat.

Once in the astral plain, Medusa had become ensnared by menacing forces, murderous manifestations of her own doubt and regret.  In her distress her mind had called out to the one soul whom she most needed to rely on, her one time husband and the former love of her life.  Black Bolt.

Here Stephanie Hans takes over art duties from Christian Ward, retelling parts of the events that had previously occurred in Judgement Day.  Time has no power in the astral realm and Medusa and Black Bolt march on for days, talking and recounting their various ordeals.  Through this seemingly endless sojourn they learn to lean against one another, doing so in a fashion that one doesn’t draw strength and ballast from the other but rather a mutual strength is created between them.

And through this they come to realize that whatever fate holds for them, neither can go back to how things where.  There is no returning to the past, but there is hope for something new in the future.

This happy moment is only allowed to last for an instant before the perils both are facing resurface and tear them apart from one another.  Medusa is drawn back to the dreaded Progenitors (an adversary she ultimately defeats) whist Black Bolt is drawn back to Orollan and the murderous machine he has been strapped into.

Having seen Medusa again, having reconciled with her, imbues Black Bolt with new strength, a new sense of resolve.  He uses this new strength to burst free from the machine and to free Titania as well.

And he turns to take down Lash only to find that the strength was fleeting and quickly spent.  The poison the machine had filled Black Bolt’s body with finally takes its toll and he falls.

Seeing Black Bolt fall, that he has possibly died terrifies young Blinky.  It awakens a frightening power in her.  Blinky’s alien abilities for telepathy have remained mysterious.  There has been much more to her than meets the eye(s) and the trauma forces onto her a monstrous transformation.  Titania and Lash can only look on in horror as Blinky’s body contorts and mutates, growing larger until she fully transforms into the form of The Jailer, the horrendous godlike being who lorded over the space prison where she and Black Bolt had been incarcerated.  She even takes on the Jailer’s voice, imitating his constant demands penance through death.

Black Bolt revives and stands up just in time to see what has become of poor Blinky.  And sadly we will have to wait to see what happens next fore it is here that the issue ends with the promise of confutation in the next installment.

Another intense ride…  We’re treated to some good old fashioned hero on villain action as Black Bolt and Titania cut through Lash’s forces.  Along with a traditional villainous scheme, complete with an evil lair and old school bad-guy monologuing as Lash expounds on his plot like a cad from a Bond movie.   Sandwiched in this conventional superhero fare is Black Bolt’s ongoing personal journey of redemption as he owns up to his past mistakes and evades the kind of pitfalls his pride had caused him to make in the past.

I’m quite impressed with what Ahmed has done here with the narrative.  He uses very traditional superhero tropes to tell a story that involves a theme that is actually quite contrary to your typical superhero tale.

Most often, the superhero succeeds by summoning a power that is at its heart autonomous.  The hero is not just a hero, they’re a ‘super hero’ and possess strength that is unique and self reliant.  And yet it is this kind of self reliance that has proven to be Black Bolt’s greatest weakness.  He has been too autonomous, seeing everyone else as below him and requiring either his protection or subjugation.  And this led to his downfall… led to his losing his wife’s love and his son’s respect.  It left him vulnerable to his brother’s treachery, ultimately resulting in his being jailed in the space prison.

Back Bolt’s redemption has been about shedding that autonomy and embracing mutuality.  He has let go of the kind of strength more often associated with the masculine and accepting a different kind of strength, one more often associated with the feminine.  All of these very standard fare superhero story elements and what the issue is really about is essentially a mother desperate to rescue her child and willing to do anything, accept any indignity in order to do so.

In the end strength is strength regardless of whatever gender-based value is ascribed to it.  And it is really neat to see Black Bolt make a full transformation from a character who had previously been ultra masculine… all about stoicism, pride and tightly controlled emotion… into one who is actually rather feminine… who is maternal, giving, humble and self sacrificing.

A bit less impressive is how the story ties into Judgement Day.  It is kind of clear that this is Mr. Ahmed’s first foray into comic book cross-overs.  The art by Ms. Hans is fantastic, yet the interlude as a whole is essentially a word for word retelling of what had previously happened in Judgement Day.  Since I had read Judgement Day, this felt rather perfunctory and I was kind of impatient for the narrative to return back to Orollan.

Nevertheless, the reconciliation between Black Bolt and Medusa is likely to be an important facet to where the series is headed int he future and, while the interlude felt unnecessary for me, that likely wasn’t the case for any readers who didn’t read Judgement Day.

So what is going on with Blinky?  Her powers and origin have continued to be an ongoing source of mystery and intrigue.  Clearly she is much more than just a telepath.  It seems that she also has the power to manifest into reality the psychic energies of her mind.  Has she transformed into the Jailer as a product of this difficult to control power, or is her connection to he Jailer more significant that previously indicated?  I’m kind of scared to find out.  Like Black Bolt, I’ve definitely come to feel rather parental toward Blinky and fearful over what the future has in store for her.

Christian Ward’s art, as always, is amazing.  I’ve long since run out of terms of approbation over how much I dig his work, so I’m not even going to bother any more.  It’s awesome… ‘nuff said.

Another highly recommend read.  Four and a half out of five Lockjaws.

The real life fantastic three (Brendon Montclare, Natacha Bustos and Tamra Bonvillain) continue the tale of the fictional fantastic three (Lunella, Johnny and Ben) in this 27th installment of the always-fun Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.

Being the smartest person in the world can be difficult and it can often create situations where one is constantly exasperated by the lack of capability demonstrated by those around you.  This has been a difficulty Lunella has had in abundance ever since Benjamin ‘The Thing’ Grimm and Johnny ‘The Human Torch’ Storm has entered into her life.  The two had merely dropped by Moon Girl not-so-secret secret lab to offer up some of Reed Richards’ old gizmos  and all manner of chaos has ensued ever since.

A villain utilizing the various powers of the Fantastic Four has been thieving valuable items all about the city… ultimately leading to The Thing being arrested.  And to make matters worse, The Silver Surfer and Galactus have suddenly shown up on the Lower East Side offering up a dire warning that a terrible cosmic force known as The Infinity is coming to devour and destroy all of reality.  that ain’t good…

Things are looking pretty rough and it is time for Moon Girl and her new compatriots to get their act together and get it together soon.  Unfortunately, their first endeavor as a team, saving Zoe’s cat whose gotten herself stuck in a tree, ends up going rather poorly.

The trio just do not yet know how to act as a team.  Moon Girl is used to being a solo act or at least having Devil D as a dutiful assistant.  Whether he’d admit it or not, The Thing is used to be given orders and doesn’t do so well acting on his own.  And The Human Torch is as impulsive and reckless as it gets, always leaping before he looks.  They just don’t gel together at all and they make an absolute mess of trying to save this poor kitty.

Fortunately, Zoe’s cat is able to take care of herself, jumping from the tree and finding a suitable landing spot on Eduardo’s face.  And Zoe, Eduardo and the frazzled kitty run off before matters can possibly get worse…  Leaving the not-so-fantastic three realizing that they’re a good ways off from being the squad they need to be.

Lunella has not been keen on this idea of teaming up with Ben and Johnny from the start, yet it is clear that they need her.  The old Fantastic Four was unstoppable, a squad that saved the world more times than the Avengers,  X-Men and Inhumans put together.  Yet they are no longer whole.  Reed Richard and Sue Storm are gone and their absence has left Ben and Johnny adrift.  They need Reed’s brains and Sue’s sensibilities and, though it’s left unspoken, it’s pretty clear the two are hoping to find these missing qualities in Lunella.

Her annoyance notwithstanding, Lunella can relate to both Ben and Johnny’s needs as well as their sense of loss.  Furthermore, there’s a serious threat afoot in this rapidly approaching ‘Infinity.’  She’s going to need all the help she can get and decides to give the matter one last chance… but this time they’re going to do it right: with uniforms.  And with that the official ‘Fantastic Three’ hit the streets – evil-doer’s beware!

The trio make their way to the science pavilion where Galactus stands in waiting.  When they arrive they are greeted by the one villain they probably should have already expected: The Super Skrull.

The Super Skrull is a member of a shape-shifting alien race who has been endowed with each of the super powers of the Fantastic Four (Ben’s rocky strength, Johnny’s flame-power, Sue’s invisibility, and Reed’s stretching abilities).  Of course this has been the cad whose actions has caused the Fantastic Four to be suspected of crimes about the city.

But to what end?  Why has the Super Skrull come to earth to bedevil the Fantastic Three?  Is this Kl’rt, the original Super Skrull?  Last seen, Kl’rt was a good guy that assisted the heroes during in the Infinity Event…  Has something happened that’s led Kl’rt to once more become a villain?  Does it have something to do with the cosmic force now treating to consume reality?  These questions will have to wait to be answered in that the issue ends on this cliffhanging with the promise of continuation in the next installment.

Oh, and there is also a mysterious side-story running through the narrative involving the Fantastic Four’s old robot assistant, HERBIE.  A few issues back, Lunella had accentually switched HERBIE on and the pesky bot has been acting rather hinky ever since.

Originally, Richards had built HERBIE to act as a caretaker and playmate fro his son, Franklin, but now the robot is insisting that it actually has a very different purpose.  Indeed it insists its name is an anagram standing for ‘Highly Engineered Robot Built for Inter-dimensional Exploration.’  That’s a mouthful…

What might this mean?  In a previous issue, Galactus had intimated that it was Lunellas exploration into the inter-dimensional realm, looking for Reed Richards, that may have attracted the Infinity entity in the first place.  And now it’s revealed that perhaps HERBIE’s central functioning has to do with such exploration.  There are a lot of puzzle pieces at play here and I’m looking forward to seeing how they fit together.

And of course whatever hi-jinx HERBIE might be getting up to can only be made worse when the robot discovers the Doom-Bot head Lunella’s been keeping in her lab.  HERBIE and DoomHead together… you just know that’s going to lead to trouble…

While the narrative thrust of the tale could use a little fine-tuning, I just loved this issue… loving this arc as a whole.  I have so missed the Fantastic Four and getting to see the Fantastic Three in action has made for a wonderful balm over my sense of loss of not having a monthly FF comic to read.   It all but gave me chills to see the trio running down the street with their unstable molecule F3 uniforms!

Again, being the smartest person in the world can be difficult… and it can also be rather frightening.  It’s easy to confuse being ‘the smartest’ with being ‘the most capable.’  And Lunella must feel rather anxious that it is always going to land on her shoulders to get things done, to lead, and take on whatever new threat endangers the world.

As she has in the past, Lunella tries to sublimate this anxiety by being sassy, pretending that everything is beneath her… something she can roll her eyes over.  And yet her actions betray this false sense of confidence.  She may fool herself into believing that she’s joined the Fantastic Three for Ben and Johnny’s sake, but the truth is she’s doing it for her own sake as well.  Devil Dinosaur is gone and whether she’ll admit it or not, Lunella just doesn’t want to face these world-ending threats on her own.  She needs others as much as they need her and this has been a reoccurring thematic that Lunella has struggled to come to terms with for a while now.

Alitha Martinez did terrific work filling in for the pencil work for the previous issue, yet I’m very happy to see series regular, Natacha Bustos, back on art.  I love her art and in particularly love the way she draws The Thing and Human Torch.  Hyperbole aside, Ms. Bustos is right up there with Kirby and John Byrne as my favorite FF illustrators.
The facial expressions on the Thing are just priceless.  The bit where he is slurping up udon whist Lunella is badgering him with questions… classic.  I also appreciate that Johnny is shown as lithe and a touch androgynous… more of a puckish pretty boy rather than just another musclebound blonde nearly impossible to distinguish between Steve Rogers, Hank Pym, Clint Barton and the dozen other toe-headed Adonis’ of the marvel Universe.

Once more, Tamra Bonvillain kills it in the coloring department.  I love the way she utilizes a different primary hue to distinguish the various story-arcs.  ‘World’s Smartest’ was unified by an overarching blue hue; ‘Girl-Moon’ had a purple hue; and this arc has had an orangish, earth-tone hue.  It’s a neat trick that acts to augment the the distinctions between the themes and whatnot of each arc.  Cool stuff!

The truth of the matter is that I’m completely ill-qualified to offer up an unbiased review of this book.  I love Moon Girl and I love the Fantastic Four and it’s impossible to not read this issue, this arc, without giant heart-eyes obscuring any sort of critical evaluation.
Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur is one of the comics I share with my nieces and nephew.  They’re always excited to receive the latest issue and it usually results in chaos as they argue over who gets to read it first… it’s been no different with the last two issues.   Anyways, the other day I was over at their home having a beer with my brother… and I looked over into the other room just in time to see my niece leap from the couch shouting ‘Flame On!’  It absolutely made my week :3

Oh, and lest I forget, the issue also includes a set of Valentine cards for us to share with our sweethearts and loved ones!  Bust out your safety scissors, kids!

My clear, overwhelming bias notwithstanding… definitely recommended; Five out of five HERBIEs!

The inhumans face off against the Progenitors in this grand finale, from the creative team of Al Ewing, Kevin Libranda, José Villarubia and Mike Del Mundo; cover by Daniel Acúna.

Let’s set the stage…
The inhumans’ powers and culture are derived from the mysterious, mutagenic substance known as Terrigen.  Millennia ago, the space-faring Kree had come to earth and conducted experiments on a group go prehistoric humans, altering their DNA so that they could be changed by way of exposure to the gaseous rendering of Terrigen Crystals.  The subjects of these experiments would go on to found Attilan and call themselves Inhumans.

Central to their customs was that each Inhuman would undergo Terrigenesis, transformation by way of the Terrigen Mist, at the time of their adolescence.  This continued on for thousands of years as the Inhumans remained isolated and sequestered from the human world.

Only the kings and queens who ruled Attilan knew the secret truth that there were many other Inhumans living amongst the humans.  Numerous Inhumans had left Attilan over the years, integrating into human society and quietly passing along the genetic potential for Terrigenesis.

When the world was threatened by Thanos and the cascade of encroaching alternate realities, King Black Bolt opted to take a drastic course of action.  All of the Terrigen was made into a bomb that, once detonated, created a set of Terrigen Clouds… clouds that would flow over the earth and would trigger transformations among a legion of new Inhumans all about the globe.

It was a decision Black Bolt had made without his wife’s consort or consent.  Since childhood, Medusa had been much more than Black Bolt’s friend and later wife… she was his confidant, his voice.  Yet he took her for granted, keeping her in the dark over his ongoing affairs with The Illuminati and the dire threats they were seeking to address.  It took its tole on their relationship and his disappearance following the Infinity Event proved to be the final straw.  Medusa was made the new queen of a new Attilan and by royal decree she annulled their marriage.

Catastrophe was ultimately averted, but a new peril soon came to pass when it proved that the Terrigen Clouds were deadly poisonous to The inhumans’ cousin race, The Mutants.  So to prevent the genocide of all Mutants, Medusa was forced to destroy the Terrigen Cloud, ridding the world of the last of the Terrigen… saving the Mutants but, in so doing, dooming the future of Inhumanity.

In the wake of her actions, Medusa chose to abdicate the throne and dissolve the Inhuman Monarchy; selecting Iso as New Attilan’s leader until democratic elections could be held.  Medusa’s final order as queen was that the treacherous Maximus being exiled… not just from New Attilan but from Earth itself.  Maximus was to be sent to an ancient prison located on the far side of the galaxy.   Yet Maximus’ cleverness was once again his salvation.  Through trickery and guile, Maximus orchestrated matters so that it was his brother, Black Bolt, who was sent to the space prison whilst Maximus remained behind disguised as his as his brother.

Noh-Varr, a Kree adventurer from another universe sought out The inhumans, informing them that all was not lost.  The Kree Empire that he hailed form was far more advanced, more knowledgeable over their own origins as well as that of the Inhumans.  He possessed an understanding over Terrigen that could be used to attain a new supply… a new future for Inhuman-kind.
A pilgrimage was set out on as Medusa led a team into the cosmos to obtain this new salvation.  She was accompanied by Noh-Var, her sister, Crystal, the empath Swain, the geokinetic Flint, and Medusa’s longtime friend and protector, Gorgon.  Black Bolt joined this mission as well, but it wasn’t long before his true identity was revealed and the team discovered that had unwittingly brought along Maximus the Mad on this most crucial of missions.

A new development occurred that forced them to shelve the matters of dealing with Maximus and rescuing Black Bolt.  Medusa divulged that has recently discovered that she was dying.  Her strength had been waining ever since she destroyed the Terrigen Cloud, then her hair began to fall out and she could put the matter off no long.  Death was near.

Noh-Var’s efforts to identify the etiology of Medusa’s illness proved to be just as quixotic, bizarre and difficult to understand as his explanation of what exactly Terrigen is.  Science, magic and poetry are not disparate entries in Noh-Varr’s philosophy, rather they are puzzle pieces that fit together to create a grander gestalt transcending the confines of conventional thinking.  The Terrigen was not sentient per se; yet also not completely without a sense of self agency.  It was Medusa’s hand that destroyed the Terrigen and now that Terrigen that remained within her was bringing about this terminal illness as a kind of ’poetic revenge’ ,,,a death by metaphor.

Stubbornly, Medusa refused to die quietly and was intent on going out on her feet.  She led the team to Hala, the former home planet of The Kree, as well to NovaHalla, the new refuge for The Universal Inhumans.  Throughout their adventures they gathered the clues ultimately that ultimately led them to powerful race of space demigods known as the Progenitors.
Just as the Kree had utilized Terrigen to alter the evolution of The Inhumans, so too did the Progenitors done the same for the Kree, changing them from a primitive and savage race to a highly advanced and space faring peoples; although not with Terrigen but rather with the purified Primagen from which Terrigen is merely a diluted derivative.

Although an unwanted stowaway, Maximus proved to be very helpful throughout this endeavor.   Maximus was aware of this mysterious Primagen.  It is what his parents considered the ‘Prima Materia,’ the key to understanding and obtaining the true destinyy of their people.  As well as the reason why both Maximus and his brother were exposed to an ultra-purified strain of Terrigen when they were both still in the womb.

The team ultimately made their way to The World Farm, the strange home of the Progenitors.  It was an unwelcoming world, a manufactured solar system where robotic-like beings cultivated mutated amalgams of science and nature as a means of furthering the advancement and of their own quasi-evolution.   Here the Primagen was shown to be The Progenitor’s life-blood, a complex compound of organic material infused with billions of microprocessors facilitating its mutagenic properties.

The Royals arrival on the World Farm was viewed by The Progenitors as little more than an infestation of pests… inferiors beings who needed to be eliminated so to ensure the clockwork functioning of the farm.  The Royals had to battle off these beings in a desperate effort to obtain a cache of the Primagen and escape with their lives.

They were no match for these awesome beings, yet managed to discover a weakness in them.  The Progenitors synthetic minds worked on a level of pure logic and rationality.  As such these beings had no concept of emotion, sentimentality and affect.  Swain and Maximus combined their powers to flood their attacker with intense emotional sensations, befuddling its circuits and left it vulnerable to being destroyed.  They Royals ultimately succeeded in fleeing the planet, but it came only through the noble sacrifice of Gorgon who remained behind to fight off the attackers whist his colleagues escaped.

In the midst of trying to discover a means of returning home, Medusa granted Maximus permission to touch the Primagen.  Doing so acted to supercharge his mental powers, allowing him to experience his past, present and distant future all in the same moment.  As such he was able to gain access to his experiences some five thousand years in the future.  To this end, he came to realize the ultimate folly of The Royals’ actions.

Thieving the Primagen, holding their own against The Progenitors merely acted to pique these beings’ curiosity… to view The Inhumans as possessing the potential for raw material that could be harvested, assimilated and utilized to further their own advancement.  The Royals had not only doomed themselves, but all of earth as well.  The Progenitors would return and the result would be the destruction of the planet and all life thereon.

A desperate plan was devised once the Royals returned home.  The Progenitors were coming and they could not be allowed to set foot on earthly soil.  To this end, the battle station of New Arctillan was built on the oxygen rich Grey Area of the moon, located on the satellites’ dark side.   There the Inhumans would mount their defense against the Progenitors, doing all they might to prevent these nigh-powerful being from reaching earth.

The task before them seemed all but insurmountable, yet Maximus had a plan.  The Progenitors had demonstrated an Achilles heel once before in their vulnerability to human emotion… perhaps once more this might be utilized to obtain victory.

To this end, Maximus had assembled a crack team: Swain, who can wield and manipulate affect; Panacea, Swain love and anchor to keep her balanced; Frank McGee the detective whose analytic mind might compensate for the illogicality of emotion, Noh-Varr, the Master tactician; Crystal, whose abilities to harness and control the elements could loan itself well to the same flowing nature of emotion; and Reader, whose reality warping abilities will prove key to entering into a realm where the Inhumans and Progenitors might be on equal footing: The Astral Plain.

Maximus’ mind bending strategy makes little sense to the others, especially Reader who insists that this is simply not how his powers work.  He can make real what he reads, but he has the actually understand such words… it needs to be a real world that his mind can truly comprehend.

Maximus counters… summoning his inner-Jacques Lacan, he explains that words are inexact stand-ins, mere approximations of thoughts and feelings… notions that at their heart defy the limitation of speech or writing.
Maximus creature the nonsensical word, ‘floob’ presenting it as a shorthand for the neitherworld of thought and emotion.   He’d written this term on a Braille tile, insisting that reading this tile will succeed in allowing Reader to transporting them all to this conceptual plain.

Reader remains unconvinced.  He’s not sure it could work and, more importantly, he has grown weak from using his powers to teleport to the moon.  He is going to need rest and recuperate his strength if he is to transport the entirety of the team to this  Ill-defined realm of Floob.

Yet such time doesn’t exist.  The Progenitors have arrived, laying siege to New Arctillan.  Overlord Class and Exterminator Class Progenitors attack and it will only be a matter of moments before all of Arctillan and it’s inhabitants are eliminated.

Maximus and Reader have to act quickly… there is only enough time and energy to transport one Inhuman to Floob and Maximus makes his decision in an instant, instructing Reader to send Medusa.  Before she can object, Medusa finds herself relocated to a mysterious and ethereal plain somewhere between thought and feeling (breathtakingly depicted by Del Mundo’s magnificent illustration).

In the desert like atmosphere of this strange realm Medusa views the decrepit statue of her former husband, Black Bolt, looking down upon her, as well as the ruined stature of her one time lover, Gorgon, at her feet.

Medusa is confused that Maximus had chosen her as the sole combatant sent into Floob… surely she is the least optimal candidate.  All that has transpired has been her fault.   She destroyed the Terrigen, she has suffered its revenge; it was her folly that brought earth into the crosshairs of The Progenitors, she who sacrificed Gorgon to facilitate their cowardly escape.  All of this guilt and self condemnation has hardened her, making her feel her heart has been rendered little more than a dead stone.

Exposure to the Primagen had supercharged the abilities of her colleagues, but for her it had no effect.  She sees her gift, her very Inhumanity, as dead and gone and hence the Primagen can and has offered her nothing.

Medusa has little time to wallow in her self doubt.  This realm is not without predators and a blackened serpentine energy ensnares her like a python, curling about her legs and pulling her toward a certain demise.

She struggles against this force and as she dose her mind drifts to the man whom she had once so depended on, who in the past would always come to her aide when facing such dire circumstances.   As she does, the statue of Black Bolt begins to stir, fissures cracking over its surface.

Medusa’s desperation grows and acts as a kind of beacon, a doorway that invites in a new presence.

The figure of Black Bolt bursts forth from the innards if the statue… leaping to action and coming to his love’s aide.
Fighting another’s demons can be much easier than facing one’s own and Black Bolt is able to make short work of the parasite of doubt and remorse that had so threatened Medusa.

The predator defeated, Medusa and Black Bolt are unsure what to do and find themselves trekking through the etherial desert landscape for what feels like a veritable eternity.  Soon they come across another decrepit statute, this one of Crusher Creel, The Absorbing Man.  A one time foe of the Mighty Thor, Creel was Black Bolt’s cellmate and eventual ally whist he was incarcerated in that terrible space prison.  Creel helped Black Bolt, sacrificing himself to save Black Bolt’s life and bring about an end to the oppressive and despotic Jailer.

Just as Medusa feels remorse and regret over Gorgon’s death, so too does Black Bolt feel similarly over Creel’s death.  They had both been leaders of their people, bared the overwhelming responsibilities of the welfare of others.  And both are bereft over the terrible decision of having to sacrifice their friends.

Here Black Bolt realizes that he can speak in this strange realm, that his sonic powers have no effect and he and Medusa can communicate through words.  As they continue to trek onward, they talk about all that has transpired and how the two had grown apart.  Black Bolt pushes down his jealousy that his former wife had found comfort in the arms of their friend, Gorgon; though he also must come to terms that she sought out this comfort because he had for too long denied it to her.  Medusa had turned to Gorgon not because she had carnal needs but rather emotional needs… the need for comfort and security, the need to be treated as an equal and a partner.  Whatever envy or anger Black Bolt feels over the matter is pushed aside because he knows that she is right.  He hadn’t treated her as an equal, he treated her as a child who needed to be shielded and keep int he dark of terrible truths.
Might she forgive him?  Does she still love him?

Medusa isn’t ready to say, but does admit to missing him; missing the partnership they had, how they completed each other and how Attilan prevailed when the two worked in concert.  But they haven’t the time or luxury to dwell on the past, they must move forward into an uncertain future… a future that may very well entail a rekindling of what they once had.

The two are attacked before they can discuss the matter further… The Progenitors have finally navigated their way into this strange realm, intent on eliminating this new a threat.  A maw opens up in the desert floor with the Overlord Progenitor within it, reaching up with to grasp Medusa with an intense gravity wave pulling her down.

Black Bolt desperately holds onto Medusa’s arm, keep her from falling into this terrible pit.  Medusa struggles to keep her grasp, but she is still overwhelmed by her guilt and regret.  Suddenly she realizes that in her other hand she holds the Primagen Crystal, the crystal that failed to work for her.  In that moment, Black Bolt fades away, drawn back to his own demons of the trauma bestowed onto him by the sadistic Jailer.

Medusa is left alone still grasping onto the seemingly useless shard of Primagen.  This powerful substance had not worked for Medusa… did not work because she would not let it.  She doesn’t feel she deserved it.  She brought ruin onto her people, banished her husband to a terrible fate, engaged on an odyssey that brought the Progenitors to Earth, sent Gorgon to his death.
In the moment of sadness and regret, Medusa finally lets in all of the feelings and emotion that she has tried so desperately to keep at bay.  She didn’t see herself strong enough to cope with these emotions and cut herself off from them, thinking that stoic repression was her only course of action.  In this moment, however, when all appears as lost, she lets those feelings in.  The emotion washes over her… she allows herself to be human as well as Inhuman, vulnerable as well as strong… and doing so facilitates the activation of the Primagen.

Her body is infused with the mutagenic properties, enhancing and augmenting every fiber of her being…  Her illness abates in an instant and her hair grows back in red, flowing torrent.

Suddenly, Medusa finds herself back on Ariclan.  Her hair has returned, longer than before so that it sweeps over the others like a flood of locks and curls.  It felt like she had been gone for centuries, but in reality the whole affair had transpired in a mere instant.

In its wake, the marauding Progenitors had been reduced to destroyed empty shells.  The onslaught of pure affect and emotional catharsis that Medusa had experience in astral realm overwhelmed the circuits of pure logic possessed by The Progenitors.  It was too much for them, it did not compute, and resulted in their destruction.

The world had been saved, the terrible future that Maximus had foreseen had been avoided.  Whether or not the stolen Primagen might indeed be utilized to create new Terrigen remains to be seen, but there is great optimism that The Inhumans have won themselves a new lease on a future.

But what of the Progenitors?

Back on the World Farm, The Analytic Class Progenitors monitor the feedback coming from their fellow units who had traveled to earth.  The data suggests that a power was encountered that is antithetical to The Progenitor’s base philosophy.  It is a power that cannot be defeated, it is too dangerous a threat, and the Analysts make the prudent decision that the best course of action is to avoid Earth at all cost.

A voice bellows out from off page, demanding that the threat cannot be avoided; for it is already here.  And the final page shows a Primagen-empowered Gorgon, still alive and ready to destroy these enemies once and for all.  And it is here that the tale, and the story of The Royals comes to to its final conclusion.

Wow.  This was intense!

I had been expecting an all-out fight with the full forces of all The Inhumans doing battle against a legion of Progenitors.  And I was surprised to find that instead we got an emotional journey where Medusa and Black Bolt battled their inner demons and doubts so to unlock the only thing that could possible defeat these godlike beings.  And though I was a touch disappointed not to see many of my favorite Inhumans in action, this narrative decision makes a great deal of sense.  Medusa and her journey has been at the heart of the series from the beginning and it’s a  suitable decision that she should be the focus of its conclusion.  …and it certainly helps that the other-worldly battlefield of this ordeal is so beautifully depicted by Mike Del Mundo’s peerless skill.

Emotion, poetry and magic are matters that defy rationality.  Such matters can be understood, but only in a peripheral, idiosyncratic sense.  No one poem effects two people in the same exact way.  It’s a fundamentally human quality and a matter destructively foreign and unknowable to nigh-logical beings such as The Progenitors.

Such a thing might seem a bit corny on its surface, but is also the central crux of outré fantasy fiction.  One must leap outside of the realm of logic into the loosely defined confines of madness and magic.

It’s a bold and risky move for Mr. Ewing to choose to have ‘feelings’ be the ultimate weapon that defeats these Progenitors… and some might find it unsatisfactory.  Yet it is in absolute accord with the themes that have coursed throughout The Royals form the first issue.  The Inhuman are not Mutants, fictional outgrowths of the theory of evolution.  Nor are they characters of super science, engineered by far-out ideas over the outer limits of technology.
They are something in-between.  Science, mixed with evolution, mixed with magic, mixed with poetry… something just outside of the mind’s ability to comprehend.  They are ‘floob,’ a nonsensical word meant as a stand-in for a concept that simply cannot be accurate explained via the limitations of words.

As a psychologist, and fan of the works of authors such as Frank Herbert, Michael Morecock and Ursula le Guin, this sort of stuff is right up my alley and I kind of love it.  Although I also appreciate that that this might not be the case for other readers… that some might find Ewing’s venturing into the land of the unexplainable uncanny to be something of a cop-out, denying them the standard issue knock-down, drag-out battle that these finales more often entail.   Still, The Royals has very much not been your standard issue super hero comic book, and an  wild unconventional conclusion actually fits quite well and makes a great deal of sense.

So where does the story go from here?  We still have at least three more issues of Ahmed and Ward’s fantastic Black Bolt series… and the solicitations for issue 12th issue suggests that we will get further resolution on what the future holds for Medusa, Black Bolt and their relationship.  Perhaps this will also touch on what the future holds for The Inhuman as a whole.  Will they relocated to the moon city of Arctillan, or will they remain on New Attilan on Earth?  Will Iso remain the leader, or will the people reelect Medusa and Black Bolt as once more their queen and king?
Time will tell.  The important thing that this is not the end.  There is a new future in store for The Inhumans, a future not steeped in the past, but rather one whose trajectory is moving forward.

Kevin Libranda, José Villarubia both bring their A-game for the sections they illustrate, depicting the less fantastical scenes with verve and electricity, and wonderfully lively facial expressions (especially Maximus who seems to be enjoying the prospect of total annihilation just as much the prospect of salvation).
Mike Del Mundo, meanwhile, absolutely excels in creating the weird netherworld where the action takes place.  I do miss Javier Rodriguez’s terrific work, but none can beat Del Mundo when it comes the impossible landscapes of a realm between science, magic and poetry.  It’s just a marvel to behold.

As a franchise, the Inhuman failed to capture that sense of popularity and mainstream acceptance enjoyed by other groups like the X-Men or The Avengers.  And this one-shot aptly demonstrates exactly why that has been the case.  The Inhumans are weird.  Their stories are the essence of strange, they don’t always make sense and require readers to make leaps into the unknown that not everyone is capable of or comfortable with.  The effort to make The Inhumans more mainstream, more popular has already been abandoned and this offered Ewing and company free license to go all in, embracing the weird with both hands and offering up a finale that is… well, that is quintessentially inhuman.

Of course recommend; Five out of five Lockjaws!

This wild cosmic odyssey comes hurdling toward to its climactic conclusion in this 12th and final issue of The Royals.  From the creative team of Al Ewing, Alvaro Lopez, Javier Rodríguez, Kevin Libranda, Jordie Bellaire and Jose Villarrubia.

The Royals have escaped The World Farm, the bizarre realm of the mysterious Progenitors… yet the escape has come at a great cost.  Gorgon sacrificed himself to allow the others to flee and, though they now rocket away from The World Far, The Royals are still far, far from home with little in the way hope that they might survive the journey.

His powers greatly enhance by way of exposure to The Primagen, Flint has been able to construct a crystalline ersatz spacecraft to carry him and the others through the stars.  These enhanced powers notwithstanding, the ship Flint has created can only travel so fast for so long.  Crystal’s elemental powers are able to provide a breathable atmosphere within the ship, yet it will only be a matter of time before she will run out the base ingredients needed to create oxygen.
The only thing that can save the team is Noh-Varr’s pocket battlefield, the advanced Kree technology that can bend and alter the laws of physics.  Unfortunately, Noh has been badly injured in the battle and remains comatose.  Maximus is smart, but not yet smart enough to navigate the intricacies of Noh-Varr’s tech… and yet, perhaps he might become smart enough to do so were he to expose himself to The Pimagen.
Primagen acts to incredibly augment the powers of any Inhuman who touches it.  Maximus’ Inhuman power is his advanced intellect (a power that also may have driven him quite mad).  Exposure to the Primagen should in theory enhance this intellect exponentially, allowing him the cognitive skill needed to work Noh-Varr’s tech and devise a means of rescuing his fellow Inhumans.  But Crystal objects.  Maximus’s powers might be elevated, but who is to say that his madness may not be similarly increased?

Medusa, slumped over in grief over Gorgon’s death and still reeling from the mysterious illness that has been slowly killing her, tells her sister to stand down.  They have little left to lose so why not allow Maximus this extreme gambit.  Taken a bit back by Medusa’s contrition, Maximus utters a meager promise that he won’t betray them.

Using his synthetic hands, Maximus takes one of the smaller shards of pure Primagen, pinching it so that various flakes of it sprinkle down onto his face.  This is the prima materia, the quintessence that his parents so believed was the key to the true actualization of the Inhuman peoples.  Finally, Maximus has obtained what he has seen as his birthright, his raison d’etre… he asks that it teach him everything.
…And that is what it does.

Within in instant, Maximus’ mind is flooded with a spectral cascade of memories and visions, his entire history from pre-birth to some five thousand years in the future flashes before his mind’s eye.  And he is not alone in this dizzying experience.  His older self is there, welcoming Maximus; he has been expecting him.  Some five centuries in age, he is no longer Maximus the Mad but rather ‘Maximus the Mage,’ the last Inhuman.

This older version of Maximus directs his younger self’s attention, focusing it on the last moments of their collected life, to that day in the distant future when The Progenitors finally return to extract their final vengeance on the Earth.

The narrative switches, spinning forward to the future setting that has thus far been told in a series of prologues opening each of the previous issues of this series.  The earth has been ravaged, its population extinguished and replaced by mutated monsters and alien-looking flora.

In this future, the aged Maximus and Noh-Varr The Accuser have sought out the Moon King, to awaken him and direct his godlike powers to repel the returned Progenitors.

The Progenitor mega-dreadnaught descends from the sky over the ruins of what was once Manhattan.  The Progenitor craft is the size of small planet, its circumference flanked by enormous skyspears of pure, crystalline Primagen.

This Moon King is a translucent behemoth with a human skeleton at its center.  Maximus refers to the king as ‘my liege,’ but Noh-Varr calls him Flint, confirming that transforming into the powerful monstrosity in indeed the future in store for the young Inhuman.

The Progenitor craft descends further and a beam of energy emits from its center.  The Moon King raises its arms and takes in or deflects this beam.  It is uncertain if Maximus and Noh-Varr are confident that their king might defeat these invaders… but they know that their king will need aide.  Noh-Varr leaps into action, attacking the ship whist it is distracted with the Moon King.

Drawing his twin blasters, Noh laments how the earth had once been a glorious place filled with wondrous music.  The Progenitors had taken that all away with their initial attack and Noh is intent on extracting vengeance over this loss.  He fires his guns into the superstructure of the craft.

All the while, the elder Maximus is narrating the events to his younger self.  He explains that the Inhumans had lived for centuries as the dominant sub-species on earth, thinking themselves the kings and queens of earth.  It was all folly and delusion.  The Progenitors arrived to show then how very small the Inhumans truly were in the grand scheme of things.

The Primagen, that coveted substance that unlocked The Inhumans higher potential… it was nothing special to The Progenitors.  It was merely a power source, a kind of battery that these beings farmed, used and discarded.
The Inhuman were and have been nothing to The Progenitors, a simple matter of no real concern.  Even when The Royals ventured to The World Farm and broke its main planet in two it was all little more than an inconvenience, an utterly simple matter that only succeeded in piquing their interests.

The Kree, the forefathers of the Inhumans, were a genetics experiment conducted by The Progenitors.  An experiment that proved a failure when Kree evolution achieved its epoch and would progress no further.  And yet the Kree conducted experiments of their own.  They created The Inhumans and in so doing managed to succeed where The Progenitors had failed… creating a race that would continue to evolve unabated.  And this elicited The Progenitors interest…. a passing interest but an interest nonetheless.

The Inhumans possess the quality of potential and that is truly what The Progenitors had attempted to discover.  A potential that makes the Inhumans useful, a form of raw material that could be utilized to facilitate their own development, their own progression and evolution.

And hence The Progenitors came to earth and ravaged the planet.  The various heroes of earth fought them but proved no match.  The Progenitors took what they wanted and left behind a ruined earth in its wake.   And now they have returned once more… returned one might suspect to test out the various ways in which they have utilized the materials they had obtained.

The fruits of this labor is revealed when a Commander-Class Progenitor emerges from the craft.

It is a ghastly creature, a biological robot clearly composed of that which was extracted by Maximus’s former family.  The Progenitor has a head modeled after Medusa, a quaff of robot tentacles mimicking her prehensile hair.
A second head protracts from Progenitor’s chest, a skull-like representation of Black Bolt.  Maximus can only comment on the callous irony that at least the royal couple had at last been reunited.

The skull opens its mouth releasing a torrent of sonic energy that vaporizes Noh-Varr into ashes.  Noh’s death, however, is not in vain – his suicidal gambit was to do some degree of damage to the Progenitor craft, to jostle loose a small fragment of Primagen that Maximus rushes to find amongst the rubble.

Maximus knew the Moon King would prove no match to the Progenitors.  It was all distraction, a means of obtaining a sample of Primagen that he might use as part of one last ditch effort to make things right.

The Commander-Class Progenitor opens up its power to its fullest, disintegrating The Moon King and shattering the entire planet, destroying the final remnants of the earth.  Before this happens, however, the elder Maximus takes in that shard of Primagen, exposing himself once more to the purified quintessence.  In so doing he is able to commune with his younger self, to reach back through the millennia and speak to himself in the past.
Maximus tells his younger self that this is the future in store for them all.  The Progenitors will come to earth, they will take what they want and leave ruin in their wake, and they would return once more to test their experimentation and clean up after themselves, destroying the planet.

Still, perhaps all is not lost.  The earth was destroyed but Maximus had managed to send this warning back in time.  He has informed his younger self what is destined to come… imparting this knowledge on his younger self offers the slimmest of chances.  Act accordingly and just perhaps a better future might be obtained.                                                                                                          Back in the present, Maximus screams as his minds reels to take in and process the overwhelming information imparted unto him by his older self.

Near hysterical, Maximus tries to tell the others what he has learned.  The Progenitors are coming.  They know where they live.  They will come to earth, take what they want and bring about its ultimate destruction.  The inhumans will fight them, but to fight them is to become them, to offer them up the new weapons that will ultimately be used to facilitate the earth’s execution.

The Progenitors are legion, a massive system that annexes what it sees as possessing potential for advancing its own further development and destroying anything that doesn’t.  Maximus now knows that The Inhumans are fated to be absorbed and assimilated into the whole.  They are gods and there is no way to fight them.  Maximus proclaims that he doesn’t know what to do.

All this stirs Medusa, waking her from her despair-filled stupor.  ‘If they’re coming for us, then we come for them first,’ she says.  Added that if they cannot fight then they will cheat.  The Progenitors may fancy themselves the creators of The Inhumans, their god…  yet defying the will of their creators has been a central tenet of Inhuman society since ints inception.  The Kree had claimed themselves the creators and masters of The Inhumans in the past and The Inhumans defeated them and claimed dominion over the entirety of the Kree Empire.  Destroying their gods is what The Inhuman peoples do.     Medusa states that these Progenitor have made themselves the enemies of the Inhuman People and she will lay her harsh judgement upon them.

With this the issue, and the series, comes to a close, setting the stage for the final confrontation to take place in Judgement Day #1.

whoa…  I don’t even know where to start.  This was psychedelic mind-F#@k of a trip, equal parts fascinating and terrifying.  The Inhuman have met their god and that god is an impartial monster of growth and development that seeds its creations simply to be used as stock, raw materials that may or may not have the potential to add to this growth.  The Inhumans are little more than cattle, the earth simply a stockyard where they wait to be consumed and their bones and gristle cast aside like so much detritus.

The creative team do a wonderful job of mixing the mind-bending narrative with a kaleidoscope of equally mind-bending visuals.  Lopez, Rodríguez, Libranda, Bellaire and Villarrubia combine forces to provide a dizzying light-show that had me feelings excited, anxious, intrigued and frightened all at once.  From the abject horror of that amalgam creature composed of equal parts Medusa and Black Bolt, to the cool pastel swirl of aura emanating throughout the atmosphere.

There were a whole lot of cooks working on this visual stew, but they managed it in a wonderful concert, producing a wild, haunting and utterly memorable comic.

I’m so going to miss this series.  I’m hopeful that Judgement Day will provide a satisfactory conclusion, but that does little to offer a balm to the sense of loss that such a neat, unique and original series has come to what I see as a premature end.

Marvel’s efforts to ‘make the Inhumans happen,’ to transform them into a popular franchise, was doom from the start.  What they are just is not mainstream.  They are weird, fringe, outré wildness.  They are the B-sides of David Bowie 45s.  Those weird and unsettling tracks that disturbed the average listener and never made it onto the radio or those ‘best of’ compilations.

I greatly appreciate that Al Ewing and company understood this and fully allowed the Inhumans to let their freak flag fly.  Ewing took a bullet in this regard.  He produced a true Inhuman book, likely knowing full well that it was destined to fail, that it just wasn’t going to be accepted nor appreciated by the mainstream audience.

Of course I realize that I am likely sounding terribly elitist in these comments.  It’s not my intention.  I just really like the weirdness and understand that there are many who do not.  This is fine.

Judgement Day will not only conclude the story in The Royals, but will also likely connote the finale of Marvel so-called ‘Inhumans push.’  Looking at The Royals, coupled with Saladin Ahmed and Christian Ward’s Black Bolt, I’m happy that this finale entails The Inhuman being The Inhumans… not ersatz X-Men, not ill-suited superheroes, but rather their true selves.  Problematic weirdos thrust into bizarre sci-fi adventures.
It’s a good end.

Four and a half out of Five Lockjaws for the issue; Five out of Five for the series as a whole.

The Warriors continue their battle against Mr. Sinister, offered up by the creative team of Mathew Rosenberg, Javier Garrón, Will Robinson and Israel Silva.

The last issue ended in a rather terrifying cliffhanger as it was revealed that the Inhuman children Sinister and The Dark Beast abducted had been transformed into living bombs.   The boy the Warriors had returned home was detonated… The Warriors were able to escape thanks to Magik’s teleportation powers, but we have to assume the kid and his family were all killed.  And two other kids also detonated, likely killing themselves and their families as well.  Which is freaking horrifying!  Furthermore, it has all resulted in the Secret Warriors being suspected terrorists sought out by the authorities…

The investigators have tracked the children back to the secret laboratory The Dark Best had used.  There, the authorities found all sorts of scientific equipment – all of which could be traced back to the Ennilux Corporation, a conglomerate founded, led and staffed by Inhumans.  This has left Ennilux looking extremely suspect and the local police in Venice converge on the Ennilux headquarters to make arrests, seize assets and investigate its involvement.  And all of this had been in accordance to Karnak’s plan.

Ennilux had made the equipment that Sinister and the Dark Beast used and Karnak made sure that the authorities could track it back to them.  Furthermore, Karnak has arranged an intricate plan of asset re-allocation hiding the majority of the company’s corporate holdings.  Backed into a corner, Ahura, the current chief executive officer of Ennilux, is forced to go along with Karnak’s plan, authorizing the remainder of the assets to be transferred into the dummy fronts and extra-jurisdictional banks.  Karnak promises that doing so will act to save the company.

Which it does.  Unfortunately for Ahura and the others, Karnak’s plan did not make allowances for the company’s employees and all of them are arrested… except for Karnak whom it would appear has arranged things so that he has complete control over Ennilux.

Meanwhile, back on New Attilan, The Warriors are recovering from the terrible ordeal of the kid they had saved blowing up.  Led by Iso, the forces of New Attilan has succeeded in rounding up the remainder of the children Sinister had abducted and now have them in healing pods to ensure their safety and undo whatever it was that had done to make them into bombs.  Iso chides the Warriors for their poor decisions, suggesting that it would have been wiser to have the kids checked out before sending them home.

Many of The Inhumans of New Attilan do not appear to be too happy with the Secret Warriors.   The Warriors had led the charge to liberate New Attilan at the end of the Secret Empire ordeal, but now their actions have left The Inhumans suspects in a string of terrorist bombings.  On top of that, Naja and Grid are still quite bitter toward Inferno for his abandoning them at the beginning of the Secret Empire takeover.

Magik doesn’t have much interest in the affairs of The Inhumans, but she still feels responsible in that The Dark Beast had escaped custody on her watch.  She’s committed to making things right by ensuring that both the Beast and Mr. Sinister face justice for their terrible acts.  To this end, Magik gathers up Inferno and the two teleport to Venice to try to confront Karnak… also she ‘accidentally’ take the television remote with her…

The two don’t find Karnak in Venice but do encounter Ahura, who is in the midst of allowing Karnak to transfer holdings in the effort to save the company (he doesn’t yet realize that Karnak is going to betray him).  A quick skirmish arises between Ahura, Inferno and Magik when Ahura refuses them access to Karnak.   The Italian police are closing in and Magik and Inferno realize they are not going to get the answers they seek.  As they leave, however, Ahura does offer Inferno a clue, noting that Mr. Sinister may be found at a specific abandoned Shield facility in the states.

The two return to New Attilan where they are once more admonished by Iso.  Inferno has had enough and storms off.  Ms. Marvel is concerned for him and wants to go talk with him, but Quake dissuades her, suggesting that Inferno just needs time to cool off.
Some time later, Ms. Marvel brings lunch to Inferno’s quarters.  She discovers that Quake is there and that the two had just had a role in the hey.  Ms. Marvel is kind of heartbroken and leaves in a huff.   Inferno is a bit confused by this and Quake explains that Ms. Marvel has had a bit of a crush on him and is likely jealous and saddened to see that he has hooked up with Quake instead.

Quake then proceeds to make it very clear to Inferno that their getting together was merely a hook-up and not anything more.  She’s rather harsh in making this clear, so harsh that it appears Quake may be overcompensating – preventing herself from getting close to someone for fear of losing them the way she has lost so many others she has been close to in the past.  Of course this goes right over Inferno’s head and he is left hurt and angry by it all.

Meanwhile, Moon Girl reveals that this whole time she has left Karnak’s son, Leer, in the care of her pal, Devil Dinosaur… who it turns out is the best babysitter ever.

With Magik’s aide, Moon Girl recovers Leer and Devil D, bringing them both back to New Attilan.

Still stewing over Quake’s comments, Inferno comes out to say hello to Leer.  Leer feels partially responsible for Sinister having abdusted Inferno’s niece, Ariella.  Of course none of this is Leer’s fault, but he feels that had Sinister been able to utilize Leer’s genome to unlock the secrets of Terrigenesis then Sinister would not need Ariella as a bargaining chip and none of this would have happened.

Inferno tries to convince Leer not to blame himself.  Leer explains that what Sinister truly needs to fulfill his goal is a sample of Terrigen, the crystalline substance that triggers transformation in Inhumans.  Furthermore, Leer recounts a riddle his father used to tell him about how the Inhumans would bow before Terrigen when they knelt before the royal throne.

It’s not a particularly difficult riddle and even Inferno is able to figure it out.  In short, a Terrigen Crystal has been hidden inside the Throne of Attilan.  Desperate to save his niece, Inferno makes the rash decision to obtain the crystal, steal a ship and head to Sinister’s secret lair, hoping that he might trade the crystal in exchange for his nieces’ freedom.  And it is with this gamble that the issue comes to a close, to be continued with the next installment.

Although substantially lower in the action department, this is another thrilling installment of Secret Warriors, with lots of plot twists, some terrific laughs and a great deal of fun and interesting character development.

All that has unfolded has been an intricate chess match between Karnak and Sinister with everyone else, from the Warriors to Ahura, Leer and Ariella, even the Dark Beast, made to be mere chess pieces, pawns, knights and rooks.  What the end game is, how the final gambit resolves is yet to be seen.  And once more I’m left at the end of the issue very much looking forward to the next one.

As deduced by Moon Girl, Karnak’s goal is the recreation of a means for Terrigenesis… a way to offer his people a new future.  Apparently to achieve this goal Karnak has needed to steal the Enillux Corporation and all its holdings, leaving poor Ahura to twist.  One would think that with his psychic abilities Ahura might have foreseen Karnak’s betrayal.  As it stands, it looks as though Ahura is out at Ennilux.

Mr. Sinister’s goal, as we learn from Leer, is to unlock the secrets of Terrigenesis.  Sinister’s purpose has always been the advancement of the Mutant genome and perhaps he is hoping that there might be something in the mutagenic properties of Terrigen that will further facilitate Mutant evolution.
Whatever the case, Leer may be much more like his father than he lets on.  He plays up being all innocent and naive, but I’m starting to suspect that he may be as much a manipulator as his father.  He all but spells out to Inferno what it is that Sinister wants and how Inferno can get it to him.

Anyways, let get into the juiciest part of the issue…  Daisy and Dante totally hook up!  Wha!?!

Wow, that was fast (figuratively and literally).  Nine issues of rather subtle hints the two were into one another and them *boom* before you know the two have knocked the preverbal boots.  Must admit I did not see that coming (ahem).

Daisy is rather forward in letting Dante know that their getting together was simply a means of stress-relief and not to read more into it.  Daisy’s being so harsh with him leaves me feeling that she is actually trying to protect herself.

Everyone who Daisy has cared for has been taken away from her, and the prospect of being in a romantic relationship is likely very daunting to her.    Understandably, she doesn’t want to get hurt again so she keeps a distance by pushing Dante away.  Of course this is not how the mind nor heart actually works, but people often act irrationally when trying to protect themselves from emotional hardship.

Unfortunately, Dante is an impulsive guy who doesn’t always think things through.  Daisy’s efforts to protect herself are kind of overt, but it flies over Dante’s head and he just reacts to base insult of feeling rejected.  Which is understandable… Dante’s in a pretty anxious place.  He is so worried about his niece that it’s difficult for him to be mindful of the bigger picture.  And this also helps to explain how he could be so dense over why seeing him together with Daisy might be hurtful for Kamala.

My fellow Ms. Marvel fans are likely to object to the idea that Kamala could have had a crush on Dante.  Kamala doesn’t want to date anyone.  She’s rather traditional in her attitudes toward romance, seeing it as something that should be waited on.  Yet that doesn’t preclude her from having passing fancies on cute boys.  She’s crushed pretty heavily on Kamran, and Kareem after that.   Tall dark and handsome is definitely her type and Dante very much fits the bill.  Of course he’s too old for her and I doubt Kamala had any real interest in the two getting together, but that certainly doesn’t stop her from feeling hurt when seeing he has been with someone else… especially when that someone else is Daisy, someone who has very much been Kamala’s opposite in terms of attitudes and values.  That must really sting.

I’m kind of a sucker for these soap opera style tropes.  Matt Rosenberg has such a great feel for these character and knack for dialogue.  It all becomes fun, funny and totally engrossing.

Not to be outdone by the writing, Javier Garrón’s illustration continues to impress.  The action scenes at the Enniulx headquarters are especially cool.  And I love the wall art Enilux has chosen to hang up in their foyer.  ‘Hey, you know what would really bring the room alive… a big ol’ group portrait of The Celestials.’   This is a great touch.

Garrón’s use of exaggerated facial contortions to relay emotion and add punchlines to the jokes just kills me.  I didn’t think Daisy’s look of exasperation toward Kamala in the previous issue could be topped, but Lunella’s reaction to Daisy and Dante’s hook-up is just priceless.

Once again, I’m totally looking forward to the next issue and another terrific job by Rosenberg, Garrón and company.  Highly recommended.  Four and a half out of five Lockjaws.

The sinister machinations continue in this latest installment of the Secret Warriors, from the creative team of Mathew Rosenberg, Javier Garrón, Wil Robinson and Israel Silva.

The last issue saw The Warriors in pursuit of The Dark Beast, the evil Mutant who had abducted Inferno’s niece.  They were aided in the mission by the former X-Man, Magik.  By way of Magik’s ability to teleport, The Warriors were able to follow leads and eventually track down The Dark Beast’s liar, where they battled a horde of his patchwork monsters.  The monsters were defeated and though the Warriors did not find Dante’s niece, they did locate a large number of abducted children fastened into strange stasis chambers.

This issue opens up with the team finishing up the task of returning these various children to their homes.  Once more, Magik’s power of teleportation proves invaluable as she, Quake and Ms. Marvel crisscross the country, returning the children to their parents.  Ms. Marvel keeps insisting on specifying that they weren’t the ones who abducted the children in the first place; which annoys Quake to no end in that it inadvertently makes them seem guilty.

Also, none of the children vomit after Magik’s jarring process of teleportation, which annoys Dante to no end because he always had and has a running bet with Quake that at least one of these kids will puke.

Back at the Beast’s former laboratory, Moon Girl has been studying what The Beast had been up to.  She hasn’t found any leads regarding the location of Dante’s niece, but has discovered that each of the children the Beast had abducted were latent Inhumans whose Inhuman genes have yet to be triggered into bloom via Terrigenesis.

The narrative then shifts to the Ennilux Corporation headquarters where young Ahura is conducting a board meeting.   Karnak enters the meeting asking for an allocation of funds; and in so doing outs one of the trustees who has been embezzling money from the corporation.

Having once more proved his worth, Karnak again requests funding for a side project he has cooking.  What exactly Karnak is up to remains a mystery (for now).

Back in Florida, Magik, Quake and Ms. Marvel return to the Beast lab from reuniting more of the abducted children with their families only to discover that The Dark Beast has returned with his monstrous forces and have captured Inferno and Moon Girl.  The Beast had tried out Quake’s ‘advanced interrogation’ methods (re: torture) on Inferno sans the questioning… in short, he beat the kid to a pulp.

A fight ensues.  Magik frees Moon Girl who in turn frees Inferno and the team takes on the Beast and his monsters.  The Warriors are tired and outmatched and soon bested by the Beast’s forces.  The Beast manages to get the drop on Quake, clutching her around the neck with his massive paw and suggesting that Quake would not have the time to use her powers before he chokes the life out of her.

The fight ends when Mr. Sinister enters onto the scene and orders The Beast and his monsters to stand down.  Sinister is also able to get the Warriors to stand down by presenting Dante’s infant niece and commenting that a super powered battle is not exactly safe for babies.

Also, we finally get to learn the name of Dante’s niece… it’s Ariela.  That’s a nice name 🙂

Sinister introduces himself to the Warriors, presenting himself as a man of science and discovery who actually has no bone to pick with these heroes as long as they allow him to continue his work.  He promises not to harm young Ariela if the Warriors can convince Karnak to allow Sinister to finish the project the two had started many months ago.

Ms. Marvel claims the Warriors have nothing to do with Karnak, yet the Dark Beast suggests that Moon Girl knows exactly what Sinister is referring to.  Moon Girl has secretly remained in communication with Karnak and hence has the means to reach out to him and relay Mr. Sinister’s demands.  With that, the villains take their leave.  Inferno chases after them desperate to get his niece back, but they have disappeared.

In the wake of all this, the team turns to Moon Girl, demanding explanations.  Off the bat, Lunella doesn’t care for her teammate’s sanctimonious tones.  Each of them have done unscrupulous things, none of them are innocent.  She then goes on to explain that she has continued to maintain contact with Karnak because what he is seeking to achieve is a worthwhile endeavor.  She states that Karnak is attempting to obtain a new method of Terrigenesis, a way of offering the doomed Inhuman race a new future.

The team then contacts Karnak over the video conference application on Moon Girl’s laptop.  Karnak admits that he had helped Sinister in his research because they shared a mutual goal, yet Karnak had cut of his assistance over a disagreement with Sinister’s methodology.

Inferno is livid.  He introduces Karnak to one of the kids Sinister had abducted; he states that first the team is going to finish returning these kids home and then they are coming for Karnak and force him to make things right and get Inferno’s niece back.

The call ends and Karnak ponders for a moment the situation.  Then he makes an interesting decision.  Inferno had stated that the child they were going to return home is from Des Moines, Iowa.  Karnak telephones the local news affiliate in Des Moines and informs them of a scoop for a feel-good story about a superheroes returning a kidnaped child to his family.  Why exactly Karnak does this, what the matter is meant to achieve, remains a mystery.

The Warriors teleport to Iowa to return the child home and are met there by a bunch of news crews looking to report on the event.  Quake and Magik are bemused by the presence of these reporters, but Ms. Marvel doesn’t see why it’s so bad… they’re heroes after all, what’s so bad with the public knowing about their heroic deeds?

The child’s parents are overjoyed to have him home.  The boy’s mother gives the Warriors big old hugs as thanks.  Again, Quake and Magik are disquieted by the display of thanks and affection, but Ms. Marvel is happy to receive it.
The boy then steps up to the news team to make a statement.  He says that he is an Inhuman and for far too long the human world has not respected his people’s power.  He then states something in the ancient language of Tilan.  Karnak watches the news broadcast from his office.  Upon seeing the boy issue this statement he remarks, ‘Sinister, what have you done?’  Clearly this boy has been implanted with some sort of brain washing, perhaps something more.

The child’s parents are perplexed by his bizarre outburst, attributing it to the ordeal he has been through.  The Warriors are similarly mystified, until Ms. Marvelk comes to a terrible realization.  She shouts for everyone to get back and then uses her embigoning powers to reach out and grab the boy.  It’s too late.  The programing Sinister had instilled in the child has triggered some sort of chain reaction.  His body glows with a yellow energy and he suddenly explodes, a detonation that appears to envelope the entire areas, the Warriors included.
And it is with this harrowing cliffhanger that the issue comes to a close with the promise of continuation int he next installment.

Holy crap, what a frightening turn of events.  Are the Warriors okay?  Is that little boy dead?  Did his making that statement in Tilan on TV activate the other latent Inhuman children Sinister had abducted?  Will they blow up too?  Did Karnak suspect that this was going to happen?

…Daunting questions that I’m not sure I want to know the answers to…

Rosenberg and company kick things up a notch in this thrill ride of an issue that acts to answer a number of longstanding questions, but doing so in a fashion that asks all new questions.  There’s lots of thrills and intrigue, as well as the fun character beats and moments of levity that has been the hallmark of this series to date.

We now know that Karnak has set upon a mission to find an alternative means of bestowing Terrigenesis without the Terrigen Mists.  He had previously given into despair over the looming end of the Inhuman race, but now appears to have taken action (drastic action) to attempt to offer his people a new future.  And he has been willing to go to extreme ends to achieve this goal… namely aiding the research of the diabolical Mr. Sinister.

Yet what is Mr. Sinister’s interest in all this?  In the past, Sinister’s central goal has been the forced advancement of Mutant evolution.  He believes that the Mutant race is destined for greatness and that this greatness must be forged by fire… that the weaker Mutants must be culled out and the stronger ones forced to adapt and evolve via dire adversities.  To this end, Sinister orchestrated the Mutant Massacre, where his team of Marauders killed off the majority of the Morlocks, believing that Mutants with weaker genes needed to be killed off less they pass on their less powerful DNA.  Of course this is not at all how evolution works and Sinister’s basic grasp of natural selection could use some serious brushing up on, but this is comics so we’ll let that one go.

More recently, Sinister became quite interested in the Inhuman genome when the Terrigen Cloud was poisoning and sterilizing Mutants all over the globe.  Sinister sought to attain a solution to this threat by combining Mutant and Inhuman genes to create an aggregate species; yet his scheme was thwarted by the intervention of the Extraordinary X-Men.

So what is Sinister up to now?  It’s clear that he doesn’t see the Inhumans as possessing superior genetic stock.  When he sees that Magik has joined forces with the Warriors he comments that her standing amongst them was tantamount to ‘slumming.’  My guess is that Sinister’s end goal is to either kill off The Inhumans in that he sees them as a threat to Mutant evolution, or that he might find some aspect of the Inhuman genome that will help to facilitate some sort of jump in Mutant evolution.  Whatever Sinister is up to, it’s no good and Karnak made a significant error in facilitating his research.

Which asks yet another question…  how is it that Sinister is so in need of Karnak’s assistance?  What knowledge or resource does Karnak possess that Sinister so requires?  Karnak is a rather smart and knowledgeable fellow, but Sinister and the Dark Beast are both geniuses (diabolical geniuses but geniuses nonetheless).  It all leaves me quite curious as to what it is that Sinister so needs from Karnak.

A final question is how did Karnak know where to direct those news teams?  Des Moines isn;t a booming metropolis, but it’s still a rather large city.  Did he know the actual location of this kidnapped boy because he helped Sinister in locating him, or did he simply deduce the location by searching out missing persons notices for the city?  Or was it just a plot hiccup in the narration?

For me, having these sorts of excited thoughts and burning questions is a sign that a comic has definitely succeeded in offering up the kinds of thrills and intrigue that have made me a lifelong fan.  I already cannot wait for the next installment, so mission accomplished to the creative team.

The issue being heavier on plot squeezed out some of the fun character building beats that Rosenberg and company so excels at.  We only got a little bit of flirting between Daisy and Dante and only a hint of Magik and Quakes exasperation over Ms. Marvel’s un-jaded idealism.

Although Quake does not appear to be the central character in this arc, the central premise contrives to relate to her character development.
By this I mean that Quake is continuing to struggle with the basic question of whether or not the ends can justify the means.

The idea of ends justifying the means is a notion attributed to Niccolò Machiavelli from his 1505 work, The Prince.  Although to be fair, Machiavelli never actually used the term but rather suggested the idea that embracing vice is acceptable as long as the ultimate goal is virtuous.  This is the core tenet of the theory of consequentialism… that the consequences of one’s conduct are the ultimate basis for any judgment about the rightness or wrongness of said conduct.

Karnak has clearly embraced a consequentialist approach in his efforts to find a new means of Terrigenesis.  The end result of saving The Inhuman people is viewed as justifying Karnak’s decision to out his own son and many other children in great jeopardy.  The means (which are terrible) is seen as outweigh the strived for ends (which is nobel).
The rest of the team sees this as abhorrent, but Moon Girl aptly points out that they have each acted in a fashion that is not all that different.  Quake resorted to torture in her effort to take down Hydra… is such a terrible act truly justified by the virtue of what she was trying to achieve?

It’s a tough question and not one for which there is an easy answer.  Are terrible acts forgivable if they are done to attain a virtuous goal?  At first blush this may seem to be a question easily answered.  One might think: yes, the ends justify the means if the ends provide for the greater good.  Yet this creates a rather slippery slope wherein what is virtue and what is vice becomes an arbitrary matter rationalized by countless factors.  A person can be murdered and their organs used to save ten people’s lives… surely ten lives are more valuable than one life, so is the murder justifiable?  And who gets to make this decision?

Of late I’ve received a good number of ‘asks’ in regards to Quake and whether or not she should embrace a more bloodthirsty approach to achieving her goals.  A lot of her fans are annoyed by Ms. Marvel and how Kamala has acted as a foil to Daisy’s trajectory of taking on a harder edge.  Some fans want to see Quake become more like The Punisher, basically a ‘consequentialist hero’ wherein deadly means are justified by nobel ends.

Quake remains balanced on the edge of a knife, she has not yet decided what kind of hero she is going to be.  Is she going to be more of a manipulative and Machiavellian hero, like her first mentor, Nick Fury Sr.?  Or is she going to be a more deontological and idealistic hero like her second mentor, Phil Coulson?  She has yet to decide and it is possible that seeing Karnak and Mr. Sinister take terrible actions so to attain what they see as the greater good may help her make this decision.

cool stuff!

It might be just me, but Javier Garrón’s illustration seemed more crisp and better detailed in this issue compared to the previous issue.  There was a bit less compression of the panels on the page and it allowed Garrón to illustrate the characters with greater detail.  This made the Dark Beast and his monsters seem less cartoony and more frightening… cooler looking.

Having more space on the page also helped hammer home the humorist bits, such as Quake’s side-eyed bemusement with Ms. Marvel as she tried to assure the parents that they had not abducted their kids.

Once more, I’m not a huge fan of pairing Garrón’s illustrative style with that of Will Robinson.  I found the switching back and forth between these styles to be jarring.  Once more, however, this is merely an issue of personal taste.  Plus, if Will Robinson’s drawing several of the pages allows for Javier Garrón to take more time and put better effort into his pages, then I suppose the ends justifies the means…

(sorry, couldn’t help myself :3)

Again, Israel Silva’s coloring is all but flawless.
Another great issue and definitely recommended.  Four out of Five Lockjaws.

Even in paradise there is death.  The Royals succeed in their quest to obtain the Primagen, yet it comes at a terrible and deadly cost.  From the creative team of  Al Ewing, Javier Rodriguez, Alvaro Lopez, Kevin Libranda, Jordie Bellaire and José Villarrubia.

The team has traveled to the World Farm, the mysterious home of the equally mysterious Progenitors.  These godlike beings appear to be equal parts organic and synthetic, their lifeblood the ultra-potent mutagen known as Primagen.  It was through this Primagen that the savage prehistoric Kree were transformed and developed into an advanced space-faring race.  The Kree used a derivative of the Primagen, Terrigen, to transform mankind on earth into subspecies known as the Inhumans.
And yet the Terrigen was lost.  It’s aerosolized form proved deadly to The Inhuman’s cousin race, The Mutants, and the entirety of it had to be destroyed so to avoid the Mutant’s genocide.  The future of The Inhumans was lost unless their former queen, Medusa, and her team of Royals might venture into the stars and discover a new source.

This quest has brought the Royals to the World Farm, an entire solar system condensed into a singular world… a kind of laboratory wherein the Progenitors use the Primagen to grow and cultivate new forms of life.  Yet The Royals are unwelcome guests on this world.  They are unaccounted for variables that threaten the precision of the Progenitors’ experiments; they are vermin that must be exterminated.

The Progenitors have seeded life in many corners of the universe.  The created the Kree and in turn many different species of Inhumans on many different worlds.  And they monitored the progress of these new forms of life by sending Sky Spears to collect data on this life and transmit the information back to the World Farm.  It turns out that these Sky Spears are crystalline shafts of pure Primagen.  Young Flint of The Royals had touched one of these spears on NovaHalla and it has unlocked in him enhanced power and awareness.  An awareness that enables him to lead the others to the heart of the planet where they might obtain a purified sample of the Primagen; a sample that they might be able to refine into Terrigen so to bestow their people and way of life a future.

But they must hurry, fore an Exterminator and Destroyer Class Progenitor follow them in hot pursuit.

Before she can formulate a plan of action, Medusa is seized by a coughing fit.  She has been slowly dying throughout this entire affair.  She was the one who chose to destroy the Terrigen on earth and in some fashion the Terrigen has been taking its revenge.  A mysterious illness has besieged Medusa, an affliction that Noh-Varr has only been able describe as ‘a poetic revenge’ in which the Terrigen is attempting to kill her in response to her killing it.  Medusa has done her best to fight off this malady until her mission is complete, but the end appears to be drawing near.

The Exterminator and Destroyer Class Progenitors enter into he antechamber.  They are enormous, fearsome beasts that dwarf the Royals.  Hopelessly outmatched, The Royals fight on anyway.

The team’s pilot, Swain, has never been much of a combatant and is unsure what to do, how she might contribute.  She dashes closer to the central Primagen structure.  Drawing closer to giant crystal has the effect of greatly amplifying her Inhuman power.  This power is the ability to read and manipulate emotion.  At first she is swept up in the sheer intensity of her enhanced abilities.  Her mind reaches out and somehow communes with her love back on earth.

Swain’s girlfriend on earth is a fellow Inhuman named Ash.  Ash’s own Inhuman transformation has altered the way she experiences emotion.  She no longer feels emotion in the traditional sense… rather she seems to experience it as matters of logic and consequence.  At first, Ash’s apparent lack of emotion made her an ideal match for Swain.  Swain lived in fear that she might not be able to fully control her powers, that she might inadvertently manipulate a partner into loving her as she loved them.  Yet Ash was functionally immune to Swain’s powers and Swain could feel assured that their relationship was mutual and authentic.

The specific way in which Ash processes emotion enabled Swain to feel assured their relationship was legitimate, but it also left her feeling in some ways unfulfilled.  While Ash cannot be emotionally manipulated, she also cannot relay feelings in a more conventional fashion.  She cannot tell Swain that she loves her and not being able to hear these words has weighed heavily upon her.  Indeed Swain had accepted this mission to venture off into the stars as a means of getting away from Ash, escaping the mounting sense of dread that not being told ‘I love you’ would ultimately lead to an ending to their relationship.

All these fears and doubts wash away as Swain is bathed in the elevated levels of her Inhuman powers.  She is able to reach out to Ash, hear her and communicate with her unencumbered by the limitations of language.  Words are simply placeholders, ways of communicating feelings in an approximated fashion.  The different ways in which Swain and Ash experience emotion are neither better nor worse; they are simply different… and its essence, its source code is the same.  Ash cannot say ‘I love you’ to Swain, but she can say, ‘you fascinate me,’ and in this moment of clarity Swain realizes that these two phrases are for all intents and purposes one and the same.

Swain is shaken free from it all when Noh-Varr’s body lands with a thump near her.  He has been struck by one of the Progenitor’s rays, causing him to be engulfed in fire.  He’s not dead, but dying and seeing her friend in such a condition fills Swain with rage.  She stands up and reroutes her augmented powers against The Progenitors.  She transmits the feelings of rage and contempt into the two Progenitors, causing the two beings to hate each other with the same fervor that Swain hates them.  The Progenitors attack one another and quickly tear each other to pieces.

The threat has abated, but only for the moment.  The others look outside the antechamber to see a variable army of Progenitors bearing down on them.  Medusa recollects herself and formulates a plan.  She orders Flint to form a crystalline shape around them, a de facto spaceship that he can use to send them home; Crystal will use her own powers to generate a breathable atmosphere within this ship; while Maximus is order to collect a grouping of the smaller Primagen shards.  His hands were destroyed in a past battle with his brother and are now replaced by robotic prosthetics.  The artificial hands allows him to handle the Priagen without it effecting him.

They all hurry to their duties; it’s a good plan, but they lack the time to fully execute it.  The Progenitors are upon them and they will not be able to escapee unless someone stays behind to delay them.  Gorgon volunteers.

Medusa objects.  She cannot, will not leave a man behind and the prospect of Gorgon’s nobel sacrifice fills her with dread.  Yet Gorgon will not be swayed.  He has been the Royal guardian and viceroy since his youth and he feels it his duty and destiny to give his life in the service of his queen and family.  Medusa realizes quickly that Gorgon will not be dissuaded from this course of action.  She kisses him goodbye and turns away.

Flint creates the ersatz spaceship around the Royals as Gorgon faces his foes.  He lays hands on a nearby structure of crystal primagen, its properties imbuing him with greatly intensified power.  He them leaps forward to into the horde of Progenitors, proclaiming that he is ‘Gorgon of House Petragon’ and that his son, Petras, will know his name and know that he had fulfilled his promise.

Power coursing through him, Gorgon slams his cloven hooves into the ground below him.  It generates a massive explosions that cracks the central planet of the World Farm in half as the Royals’ spaceship makes good its escape.
The issue ends with the others looking back, knowing with great solum that their freedom has come at the cost Gorgon’s sacrifice.  A panel reads that the tale will continue with the next installment.

As has been the case with each issue off The Royals to date, this installment opens up with a prologue set some five thousand years in the future.  There Noh-Varr The Accuser and Maximus The Last Inhuman have traveled the wastelands of a ruined earth to awaken the Moon King in order to meet the inevitable return of the vengeful Progenitors.

It remains to be seen how exactly these series of prologues will ultimately connect to the narrative unfolding in the main story.  What does appear to be the case, however, is that this Moon King is the future version of Flint – his transformation into this giant crystalline creature the ultimate result of his touching the pure Primagen.
At the center of the Moon King’s translucent form is a human skeleton, mounted upside down, with one leg crossed and its arms out at the sides.  The visage of this skeleton is evocative of the twelfth card of the Tarot de Marseille, The Hanged Man.

There are multiple meanings to the Hanged Man, the most common of which entail patience on the path toward spiritual growth, martyrdom, and sacrifice to the greater good.  It makes for an interesting use of symbolism and foreshadowing.  Flint may be the one whom must patiently grow toward actualization of his destiny, yet it is Gorgon who ended up sacrificing himself for the greater good.

The main crystal structure of Primagen that the Royals encounter at the hub of the World Farm is in the shape of a large tuning fork.  The tuning fork glyph has been a constant and recurring symbol in the Inhuman mythos… appearing in their architecture, on the foreheads of Inhumans such as Mosaic and Lockjaw, and as a symbol on the royal garb of Black Bolt; it additionally shows up among the iconography of The Universal Inhumans.   It would appear that this symbol represents something of a collective memory of all Inhuman peoples, a unifying tether connoting that they were all created and connected by way of the Primagen, the ‘prima materia.’

Way back in issue number three, it was revealed that Maximus went through Terrigenesis in utero, exposed to an ultra purified rendering of the Terrigen.  Maximus’ parents were obsessed with understanding the Terrigen, uncovering its connection to the prima materia.  Their experiments imbued Maximus with an enhanced awareness that has allowed him to see and understand the true mechanisms of Primagen.  He could see that Flint was able to lead them to the hub by way of a pre-programed knowledge sewn into the fabric of his being (into the fabric of all Inhumans).  Likewise, Maximus understood that proximity to the central Primagen crystal augmented Swain’s power.  The others were shocked by Swain’s ability to fell the two Progenitors, but Maximus was not.  He understands that the Primagen is the key to unlocking unlimited powers in Inhumans.

It is Medusa’s goal to provide the earthly Inhumans with a new source of Terrigen, yet it is unlikely that Maximus will be satisfied by such a relatively small accomplishment.  Maximus feels it his destiny to bring far greater things to his people; he wants them to ascend to godliness, and it is likely that he sees the Primagen as the key to achieving such a thing.

Swain’s experience of having her powers bolstered via proximity to the Primagen offered a very interesting interlude in the action.  Her quasi-communion with Ash and reconciliation over the nature of their relationship made for kind of a jarring intermission.  Still, it proved a stirring and emotional scene as well as a compelling exploration of the nature of affect.

Because Ash does not experience or process emotion in the more mainstream conventional sense, it can be possible to arrive at the erroneous conclusion that she cannot feel or express love… that she is unable to reciprocate the affection that Swain gives her.  Yet the difficulty here is not with Ash and her emotional functioning… rather the difficulty lies with Swain and the confines and limitations of ability to understand emotional in a multidimensional fashion.  This is a common dilemma faced by many individuals identified as being on the further-left end of the so-called ‘Autistic Spectrum.’  Quite often these individuals are mistakenly viewed as being unable to feel or express emotion.  This is incorrect.  It’s not that they cannot feel or express emotion, but rather they do so in a fashion that is different then the predominant conventional norm.  Emotion is far too complex and multifaceted to be confined to a narrow modality of expression.  Accepting the possibilities of a multitude of different pathways for relaying and understanding affect helps to open a broader understanding of emotion as a whole.

The boost in her powers that Swain experiences provides her a crash course in multidimensional emotion.  It allows her to better understand the different but equal ways in which Ash experiences affect as well as enabling her the ability to utilize this enhanced power to take out the attacking Progenitors.

very cool stuff!

Right from the onset of this series we were told that one of the cast members was destined to die.  It was part of the hook that writer, Al Ewing, dangled out there to create dramatic tension and a sense of looming peril.  Plenty of clues and red herrings were offered up regarding which member of the team was destined to perish.  Medusa’s illness made her the first likely candidate, and she is still by no means safe.  She continues to be bedeviled by this mysterious illness; yet if she is able to succeed in bringing Terrigen back to earth it stands to reason that her ailment will remit.   Flint was the next potential candidate after it was revealed that his laying hands on the Sky Spear had initiated a significant change in his being.  And he too is not exactly safe.  He may not die, but it looks as though he is in the process of transforming into the mysterious Moon King, a creature destined to lay in doormat stasis for thousands of years.
Yet neither of these two ended up being the one to die.  Rather it was Gorgon who valiantly sacrificed himself to allow the others to escape.

Gorgon was actually my earliest guess as to which character was going to perish.  I’m certainly not happy about it, but can nonetheless understand the decision to have him be the one to die.  Gorgon has changed and grown a great deal over the last few years.  He has transformed from the impulsive and headstrong brawler into a more introspective and compassionate soul.  The time in which Gorgon was paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair forced him to reconsider and reevaluate his ways and his legacy.  He let go off his violent and hedonistic ways and instead fully embraced his role as a teacher and parental figure.  He owed up to his failings as a father to young Petras, making amends by taking under his wing lost souls in need of guidance such as Flint, Naja and Dante.

Gorgon was even able to finally express his love for Medusa, a forbidden love that he kept buried for years in fear that it was inappropriate and would prove unwanted.  Seeing herself as dying and freed from the confines of her duty as Black Bolt’s queen, Medusa was able to reciprocate this love and Gorgon came to know a brief albeit fleeting happiness in Medusa’s arms.
That and Gorgon was granted the kind of death befitting what he had always aspired to be – a nobel warrior and guardian of his people.

A constant in the world of superhero comics is that death is not a constant.  Mr. Ewing has stated that the Inhuman who dies in his story will remain dead as long as he is writing the book.  And yet it appears quite possible that Mr. Ewing’s tenure stewarding The Inhumans may end with the conclusion of the upcoming event, Inhumans: Judgement Day.   In short, it is possible that Gorgon may return some time in the future.  It may not be for a long, long while, but in the world of comic book super heroes anything is possible.  I’m normally not a fan of resurrecting characters who have died… I feel it undermines the emotional heft of a given story.  In this case, however, I wouldn’t mind at all in that Gorgon is awesome and I already miss him.

Intense action, wild, way-out concepts, cool character development and fantastic art.  It doesn’t get much better than this.  Five out of five Lockjaws.