REVIEW: ‘All-New Inhumans #1-2 are a breath of fresh terrigen air

The Inhumans are here to stay with their all-new ongoing series. After Black Bolt exposed the world to the terrigen mists in Infinity and Inhumanity, many NuHumans have been popping up with latent inhuman genes. The incident has sparked political outrage across the globe considering how the terrigen mists are viewed as a chemical attack by Inhuman royalty. This and the added predicament of the terrigen poisoning mutants worldwide spells trouble happening in All-New Inhumans by Charles Soule, James Asmus, Stefano Caselli and Andres Mossa.

First off, I feel that the first two issues – All -New Inhumans #1-2 have to be reviewed together since they both compliment each other and further the story as well as establishing the Inhumans as a dominant superpower in a now post-Secret Wars and post-mutant world. As such, the Inhumans are now the face of Marvel and I think it’d be fitting to delve into the new world that the new team is bringing.

Charles Soule and James Asmus function as the writing team for the first arc and they do a great job pushing the Inhumans onto the global scale. It’s pretty noticeable how they’ve started writing Crystal as the resident badass with edgier dialogue and even some comedic panels. Compared to past iterations, it’s a breath of fresh air!

Charles Soule’s writing has seriously improved considering his recent run on Superman/Wonder Woman and Death of Wolverine. Both critically fell a little short on story and impact. Marvel does a great job at placing their artists right where they need to be and man is Soule feeling comfortable at his new station with a bit more creative liberty.

Crystal, sister to Queen Medusa and acting royal dignitary is the main focus of the first arc. And man does she wear it well. The first two issues, though focused on the various politics of the terrigen, also serves as a new look at Crystal. In the past, she was always just used as a varying plot device romantic (to Quiksilver, Johnny Storm, Ronan) or otherwise. But in these two opening issues, her power set as an elemental is properly utilized with Soule and Asmus portraying her as a superpower, glowing eyes and all, blasting purist anti-inhuman rioters with gale-force wind and hydroblasts. Just look at that panel!

If the art seems familiar, you might have seen it on the short-runned Avengers World series by Stefanno Caselli. His edgy sketches make the inhuman costumes pop as a modern-time uniform. Caselli’s art seems to have upgraded with more comedic facial expressions, something missing from his work on Avengers World. The coloring is interesting because of how Andres Mossa uses the tones of his colors. It seems that he uses a darker tone of every light color he uses to accentuate another bright color in his panels. In other words, he darkens everything else so that choice primary colors pop up like neon. You can also see some of his work on the recently released Star Wars series: Obi-Wan and Anakin.

The series also serves as an introduction to some NuHumans like Flint and Grid who are being trained by the now wheelchair-confined Gorgon; exposing them to bring out their power set. Even including Grid, a NuHuman with the ability to manipulate the electromagnetic spectrum. The first issue also features a great little appearance by Daisy Johnson aka Quake; the latest character rewrite to function as S.H.I.E.L.D’s Inhuman liaison.