Inhuman 1, New Warriors 3

Inhuman 1
Soule (w) and Madureira (a) and Gracia (c)

The Terrigenesis wave has spread across the world and it's brought out Inhumans new and old across the planet. On top of the new Inhumans who experienced Terrigenesis as a result of Black Bolt's bomb, factions of Inhumans have emerged to show off their philosophies. Primarily, that puts Inhuman Lash at odds with Attilan queen Medusa, effectively putting Attilan up against Lash's home of Orollan. Orollan had limited access to Terrigen and thus only evolved people who they thought had earned it and who they believed would help the community with their evolution. As a result, Lash and his Inhumans believe that Terrigenesis is not for everyone, as Black Bolt made it, and he wants to make sure that Inhumans only get stronger with this new wave. He captures one cocoon from Norway and waits for its inhabitant to emerge before deeming it weak and killing it. He then appears at the Des Plaines, Illinois home of a family with some amount of Inhuman DNA in them; the sick and frail mother has enough to trigger Terrigenesis but not enough to survive the process while her son Dante has enough to enter and emerge from the cocoon. Lash believes he's been unchanged and aims to kill him but Dante quickly bursts into flames a la Human Torch and attacks. Though Lash is impressed that he has indeed changed, he believes that Dante (who we may as well just call Inferno at this point) cannot control his transformation and still readies to kill him when Medusa appears to defend Dante and his still-human pregnant sister Gabriela. Medusa forces Lash to leave, though he vows that their paths will cross again, and promises to bring Dante to the remains of the Attilan family.

There are a number of questions to ask about this new series and the aftermath of the Terrigenesis bomb and almost all of them, for me, have to do with process. In this case, is this book going to have enough of an impact to make the Terrigenesis bomb and the new influx of Inhumans worth the wait? The problem with the delay (and I do believe, given what I know of the writer switch and everything, that the delays were worthwhile; you never want a writer who's writing something he doesn't want to be writing as it seems the case had become as the story broke more) is that now we've seen some of the effects of the Terrigenesis wave and, frankly, unless you're a diehard Inhuman fan, I think you're probably mostly over it. Of course, the plan had been to launch this book just after INFINITY and I think it would have had built in impact just with the timing. Now we're rather through the majority of tie-in books to this "event" and we're just starting the core book. While I do believe that the warring Inhuman factions is an interesting story and one well worth watching (hey, I finally mentioned something about this book specifically!), I worry that it may end up being too little too late. Instead of getting a boost from its well-timed release, now Soule and Madureira have to create a better book to actually entice people to pick it up in the first place. Feet to the fire and all that.

New Warriors 3
Yost (w) and To (a) and Curiel (c)

The High Evolutionary explains to Nova that the Celestials had long ago created the Eternals, the Deviants, and the Humans on Earth and that the Eternals and the Deviants fought one another while the Humans grew and evolved, much to their liking. However, all of the mutations and outside effects that have created the Marvel Universe as we know it (mutation, radioactivity, alien experimentation, Atlanteans, etc.) have caused humanity to diverge from the path the Celestials set for it and now they're coming back to erase their mistake. The High Evolutionary, then, is trying to save the world by purging it of the subsets of humanity who differed from the plan. In addition, his Evolutionaries have brought in Scarlet Spider, Hummingbird, and Water Snake (Faira) from Mexico. Meanwhile, Sun Girl and Justice come at odds with one another as they escape cops trying to shoot their new horn-headed pal. Justice believes that they should leave well enough alone and set Mark (horn-headed pal!) up with the Attilans while Sun Girl believes they have to get to the bottom of this. Justice reluctantly agrees to step up and says that their first course of action should be finding Nova. Speaking of Nova, Scarlet Spider manages to summon spiders to the High Evolutionary's machinery, breaking it enough that he can bust out of his holding cell and break everyone else out too. Nova vows to go get help but they're all quickly overrun by the Evolutionaries.

I've been a little iffy as this book has kicked off. I think Yost has done a pretty good job starting to establish his characters and giving us a story that's clearly got pretty big pieces to it but it was going to be a tough tightrope to walk (as opposed to the tightropes that are like, totally simple to walk) building the characters up while also navigating a complicated story. This issue proves that he'll be able to knock it out of the park. Really solid issue, we get a lot of character development with our team and one of the most concise and complete definitions of the Marvel Universe in the High Evolutionary's speech to kick the book off. Phenomenal work to clarify parts of the universe that are admittedly difficult to follow for an audience perhaps unfamiliar with it. Suddenly this series is not just a nice selection of characters melded together by a good writer, it's also a fully functioning story that will very clearly carry itself and which has been really well-defined for such a sweeping story. Check this book out for a great look at some neat and under seen characters and a pretty cool story to boot.