The monsters have been unleashed, and the Inhumans are in the crosshairs! Good thing Captain Swain is there in Uncanny Inhumans #1.MU to help nudge them away. For someone who hasn’t kept up with the regular series, is it good?
Uncanny Inhumans #1.MU (Marvel Comics)
Never let it be said that the Inhumans aren’t heroes, ready to defend the world against the largest of threats. That even goes for Inhuman airship captains with shaky mental powers and a superfluous tail.
Swain may have met her match, though, when the beast she confronts can nudge her right back. Princess Crystal wants to know: At this difficult time, are you a hero, or just a snappily-dressed Italian translator? CHOOSE!
Is It Good?
As with a lot of mainstream event tie-ins, there isn’t a lot of meat to bite into in Uncanny Inhumans #1.MU. It’s a more or less standard “unlikely hero” story, with nothing really distinguishing it from a thousand similar ones. Writer Paul Allor does a good job of limiting the exposition when introducing Swain to potential new audiences, but really could have focused on her mysterious tail, as the ghastly appendage presumably has something to do with why the monster was able to get inside her head. It’s a pretty crucial plot point that is easily lost on unfamiliar readers.
Artist Brian Level draws genuinely impressive facial expressions and some beautiful monsters. He and colorist Jordan Boyd combine for a haunting page on the mental plane, but the overall through-panel storytelling is fairly poor. Characters appear and reappear out of nowhere, there is no progression between panels and sometimes the motion lines in action scenes even oppose the path of the reader’s eye. The colors appear almost smudged in later scenes, and the pastel palette may be the wrong choice for this type of story.
While Uncanny Inhumans #1.MU is decidedly inessential, that’s not its problem. There’s nothing wrong with simple, self-contained stories if they’re told well. The climax comes with a nice callback to an earlier discovery, but other than that, Swain’s experience is rote. The issue’s art might make for great pin-ups, but it struggles to communicate the narrative. Inhumans fans won’t learn much about the characters here, and monster-watchers likely won’t be satisfied by what they see, either.
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