(see original at http://cobyscomics.blogspot.com/2013/12/inhumanity.html)

Like every other person who gave Hawkeye half a chance, I recently became a huge fan of Matt Fraction's work. Also, I struggled recently through Jonathan Hickman's extremely far-reaching and confusing INFINITY event, and I remember there being something in there about some Inhumans or something (in between "Builders" and Thanos and an intergalactic war about something... I dunno... it was very confusing). Something about their home city blowing up and causing the Inhumans that had been living among the regular humans to activate, or something. It seems like a pretty cool idea, like a whole other thing to play on, kinda like the whole mutant thing, but different a little bit. So, I decided to give Inhumanity a read and maybe get into Marvel's next big event. I got Inhumanity #1 two days ago and started reading it. I got to page 9 and my brain exploded.

This page was part of Karnak's explanation to Hawkeye (being a Fraction book, of course it's "Hawkguy" he's explaining it to!) of the Inhumans history, because "...well, there was a briefing I [Hawkeye] may or may not have slept through a little bit."

Like most casual Marvel fans, I wasn't very familiar with the Inhumans, at all. I think I had seen them in the Fantastic Four and I remember Lockjaw the dog from the Ultimate Alliance game, but, other than that, I hadn't really read any stories with them in it.

After getting to page 9 and stopping, I decided to watch the Inhumans motion comic DVD from Marvel Knights Animation, which I had just coincidentally gotten in the mail the same day. While the movie itself was extremely boring and slow, the story was fantastic. They went through the whole history of the Inhumans, how they get transformed by the Terrigen Mist and a subsequent caste system arises, all of the interpersonal workings of Black Bolt and the royal family, the Inhuman's relationship with Namor and the Atlantians, and how the Inhumans' capital city Attilan left Earth. It was great to get that back-story on these characters I wasn't too familiar with and then go back to the modern re-telling of what is, apparently, a classic Marvel story.

So, going back to page 9 of Inhumanity #1, what had happened was, a long, long time ago, aliens came to Earth and started genetically modifying the neanderthals.... That is awesome! As you may remember from my Ultimate Mole Man post, I find these far-fetched, fringe, alternate histories of weird things about our planet very interesting. With Ultimate Mole Man's origin, Marvel combined Lemuria/Mu with the Hollow Earth Theory to make him the most interesting super-villain ever. And now, with the Inhumans, we have Ancient Aliens! Mad props to Marvel for going there! Even though, apparently, the Inhumans have always had this extremely interesting origin story, reading it in this new comic is my first exposure to it, and I'm loving it!

Anyone who watched Ridley Scott's Aliens prequel Prometheus knows what this Ancient Aliens "theory" is all about. Here's some good insight. Basically, because all of these megalithic structures (i.e., the Great Pyramids, etc) couldn't possibly have been built by stone-age people with nothing more than ropes and man-power, then, naturally, it is concluded that aliens must've intervened.

The Ancient Aliens people take their "theory" one step farther and conclude that, because homo neanderthalensis couldn't possibly have evolved into homo sapiens all by themselves, they must've had some help from alien geneticists. The opening scene of Prometheus shows an alien drinking some black goo and melting into a waterfall, terraforming the Earth and infusing alien DNA with all the neanderthals, jump-starting their evolution. This is a little more metaphorical than saying Ancient Aliens directly intervened, but the basic premise of genetic manipulation is there.

I like what Marvel did there, by taking the old Ancient Aliens Genetic Intervention Theory and applying it to their Universe. They made the Ancient Aliens not just some unnamed race, but called them the "Kree Xenogeneticists". Why would the Kree stop at turning neanderthals into mere humans? Why not make them super-human? So that's what they did, and the super-human (in)humans left their more slowly evolving brethren and took to their own city. Brilliant!

My only problem is with the timing. On the first page of Karnak's explanation, he starts off with "nearly 25,000 years ago". Now, on this final page, he tells Madusa, "...my queen, if you consider the hundreds of thousands of years between than and now...". Uhhhh, what? So which is it, Karnak, 25,000 years ago, or hundreds of thousands of years ago? But I am willing to look past that typo (I'll assume he meant to say 250,000 years ago) because of the bodaciousness of this new (new to me, anyway) story. I can't wait to read more of this newest Marvel event!