Reviews
[Advance Comic Review] “Uncanny Inhumans” #0
Marvel Comics resurrects their Inhuman king Black Bolt in “Uncanny Inhumans” #0. The issue reads smoothly enough and holds the reader’s hand working quite well as an introduction to this massive chunk of Marvel’s world, but it’s the art by Steve McNiven that’s worth the price of admission.
STORY BY: Charle Soule
ART BY: Steve McNiven
PUBLISHER: Marvel Comics
RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2015
PRICE: $4.99 USD
The Inhumans are Marvel’s new mutants that much is certain. Within the last few months the focus on the X-Men has dwindled in favor of these much more interesting and vastly underused Inhumans. Now by virtue of what seems to be licensing rights these weird heroes are edging into the spotlight.
Charles Soule’s writing is standard and serviceable if nothing else. He seems to routinely play it safe with his scripts, nothing too bombastic coupled with smaller moments of action and interesting dialogue. Spending an issue following Black Bolt should be no easy task but thanks to the insanely awesome work by Steve McNiven the story never misses a beat.
The issue starts strong and immersive. Soule tells the reader that things are not going to be easy for the Inhumans. As the story progresses were introduced to a very familiar villain who will surely be one of the primary antagonists in further stories, but here he’s left to his own devices. It’s an odd gamble that pays off well.
Black Bolt has always been a little bit of an anti-hero and Soule seems to be following this thread. He’s done terrible things in the name of peace, and will continue to take chances to protect people. He’s a very absent king but his immense power puts fear on his side.
As a #0 issue goes. This works quite well at introducing the stakes of the world and the characters within it. It’s not hard to tell where the story goes from here, and despite being the story before the story it does a fantastic job at catching readers up to the world of the Inhumans.
Weirdly enough not enough happens. Everything in these pages feels like the filler that was cut out from the first issue. It certainly shows in the opening pages, and the final scene is really the only one that feels necessary to the story. Despite this it’s so pleasing on the eyes that it will make for an enjoyable albeit bland read.
As with most #0 issues this would only be for the diehard fans. Those of you who are not well acquainted with The Inhumans may find something to like here, but may find yourself more confused than engaged. It’s not quite the rollicking beginning to a new age of Inhumans that Marvel has promised but it gives the hint of that to come. So if you’re hungry for more Black Bolt than I’d say go out and grab it tomorrow, but if you can wait another month, you’ll have a much more interesting story to read.
Chuck Tingle‘s writing is embedded with a particular tonal trick that makes him perfectly suited to horror. “Propulsive” is the first word that comes to mind when I think of Tingle’s energetic prose, and when his books start wrapping themselves around characters and digging through their various complexities, it’s easy to be pulled along, absorbed in the feeling that an old friend is simply telling you a story.
Then Tingle will drop one of the single creepiest bits of imagery you’ve ever read, and you’re right back in the horror space. It’s not always a jump scare, but it is always a pulsing feeling of dread that keeps you hooked through the rest of the book.
Fabulous Bodies, Tingle’s latest horror novel, carries on these gifts, and the promise Tingle showed on books like Camp Damascus and Bury Your Gays. His fiction’s growing ever more confident and precise, and his eye for horrific detail hasn’t dimmed in the least, making this a summer reading delight for horror fans.
Poppy is a single mother determined to make a better life for her daughter, particularly after growing up in group homes and foster systems. By day, she works hard to keep up the flow of upbeat, enthusiastic content as a fashion influencer, and while that’s going well, it’s not yet making ends meet. To make up the difference, she moonlights as a grave robber, lifting bodies from morgues and funeral homes and selling their pieces on the black market. It’s grueling, dangerous work, and it’s about to pay off big. Out of the blue, Poppy gets a call to transport the newly dead body of her musical hero, the legendary Eddie Michaels. It’s a weird gig, but the payout is big enough that she could walk away from her macabre side gig forever. Poppy takes the job, and things get complicated when Eddie turns out to be, well, only mostly dead.
From the moment Eddie’s corpse enters the picture, Fabulous Bodies takes on the vibe of a road novel, as the grave robber and the undead rock star make stop after stop, and Poppy tries again and again to wrap her mind about what she’s gotten herself into, and how she might get herself out. It’s a delightful premise, and Tingle never loses his grip on the fun of it. No matter how dark the novel gets, and it does get quite dark, the narrative keeps barreling forward, delivering macabre laughs and moments of beautifully gruesome invention along the way.
Because he’s set his protagonist up as a fashion influencer, Tingle has lots of room to play in the space of how we view human bodies, both alive and dead, how we use them, and what we value in them. This is the emotional core of Fabulous Bodies, and while it’s sometimes overshadowed by the runaway train of the plot, it remains a potent source of thematic exploration throughout the book, and it gets more complicated when you consider certain gifts Eddie’s been granted in his strange supernatural state.
In essence, we’re looking at a story about a grave robber who discovers a body that not only fights back, but takes control of any given situation. That throws Poppy for repeated loops and keeps the plot moving, but it also makes us consider on a deeper level exactly what we value about our own physical form, and what might happen when we lose our grip on it entirely.
The book’s themes and emotional concerns hum through the whole narrative, but the overwhelming impression I got while reading Fabulous Bodies was just how much damn fun this book is. I couldn’t stop reading it, not just because it’s so filled with sudden swerves and ghoulish setpieces, but because Tingle has honed his horror storytelling down to a fine, very sharp point. Fabulous Bodies moves like a roller coaster, complete with a tension-filled ramp-up and a finale that’ll leave you breathless by the time the ride is over.
If you haven’t been reading Chuck Tingle’s horror work up to this point, it’s time to get on board, because he’s just getting started, and he’s already mastered the art of the scary page-turner.
Fabulous Bodies is available now.
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