Inhuman 5, Ms. Marvel 8

Inhuman 5

The former king of Attilan, whose name has been stricken from the records and is referred to now as the Unspoken for the crimes he committed, has proposed to Medusa in the hopes of helping her lead New Attilan, though really to find more Terrigen. She, of course, rejects him, but does not imprison him, hoping to live up to her new welcoming stance and to find out the location of Black Bolt, which the Unspoken claims to know. As soon as he's left alone, the Unspoken enters a secret passageway which leads to a secret wealth of Terrigen, a depleted but extremely important resource for the Inhuman community and the source of the Unspoken's powers. Medusa, of course, never trusted the Unspoken and followed him down there in the hopes he would lead her to more Terrigen, assuming if anyone knew of any, it would be him. Unfortunately, he's able to take some of the Terrigen, allowing him to access his tremendous powers (he can pretty much do anything when he has the Terrigen) and he quickly takes over the city.

I've talked a lot about how the biggest flaw of this book is simply the timing. After numerous delays on the front end, this book is coming out about a year after the Terrigen Bomb went off in INFINITY, leaving Soule tasked with defining the past of the Inhumans, establishing the present of the Inhumans, and seeding for the future of the Inhumans, all while trying to do it quickly to keep up an overall series pace. The story itself is pretty interesting and the characters, when given a chance to breathe, can mostly hold their own, but the pacing tends to break down a bit as exposition wins out occasionally, like in this issue when Medusa gives a paragraph explanation of the Unspoken that is clearly only for the benefit of the reader and ends up being clunky and forced in the moment. I want to note here, because I don't think I ever really stress this, that isn't necessarily a dig at the writer; it's his job to tell a story and get people to understand that story and take interest in that story. It may even be an editor saying "hey, we need to explain who this guy is and we don't really have time to ease it out." Regardless of whose fault it is, though, it ends up hurting the book as a whole and it happens a couple of times. Hopefully the series will reach its potential as Soule gets the book to a place where he can feel confident just pressing forward.

Total Score: 3/5


Ms. Marvel 8

Ms. Marvel is having no luck finding leads back to the Inventor but is having luck finding giant Inhuman dogs as Lockjaw finds his way to Jersey and Kamala promptly adopts him. She and Bruno use the Facebook of the mutant teenager Wolverine had been looking for to try to learn more about her abduction. They use the location tracking on her last weird post to find where she was abducted and Kamala learns that Lockjaw is more than just a giant dog who likes hugs as he teleports her instantly to the spot. Together, Kamala and Lockjaw investigate the area and end up in a fight against one of the Inventor's big machines, this time powered by one of the kids she found at the house in Greenville. They take down the machine by removing the power source and she brings the protesting guy to the hospital, making her late for school and drawing more suspicion from her friends and classmates. That suspicion, sadly, isn't allayed as the Inventor sends another bot after Kamala at school after dropping a homing beacon in her bag. Will Kamala and the extremely helpful and great Lockjaw be able to save the school and keep her identity secret? Going to be particularly hard as Kamala can't seem to change her appearance!

Another great team-up as Lockjaw finds his way to Kamala on the orders of Medusa. Though he inspires fear and alarm in everyone else who sees the massive dog walking down the street, Kamala instantly takes to him, giving us another great look at the spirit and character of Kamala. One of the most impressive things about this series is that it feels like Kamala has been around forever, even if the story feels new. It's a testament to G. Willow Wilson's writing that Kamala feels so real and deep after just eight issues. Perhaps more interestingly, I'm not a hundred percent sold on the story or the series villain and I'm still totally onboard with this book as a whole. I think there's certainly still intrigue there for the story and villain but that's been a little less defined than Kamala so far, intentionally so but still potentially problematically. However, Kamala carries the book so adeptly that you're absolutely willing to give the plot a pass for a while, happily entertained by the characters in the book.

Total Score: 5/5