Okay , what is the full version of this story I have occasionally seen brief reference to about the Inhumans' origins ~ Not within the 616 , but as comic-book characters ???????????
Specifically , this story that , before their introduction in FANTASTIC FOUR , the Inhumans , or an early version of them , were going to be the characters in an entire additional line of superheroes from Marvel ?
The story says that , in the Sixties , someone at Marvel thought that Tower?? was going to be a larger-in-publication-schedule than it proved to be and (Following that ol' funnybook " Push 'em off the stands or get pushed off yourself !!!!!!!!! " publication plan .) decided to introduce a whole - " Trunk line " ? " Secondary line " ? Great Society version of Ultimate ? - new number of titles all at once , and , after that was dropped , the characters who were going to be in it were re-tooled into the inhumans as we know them . Is this/how true is this ?????????
Would Medusa have been involved with the planned version , either ?
I tried to search for this but found nothing .
Replies
In 1965-66, Marvel was feeling the heat of competition. Sales were rising again and Archie, Charlton, Tower, and Harvey were putting out superhero books. Goodman told Stan they had to add more books or be crowded off the newsstands. Joe Simon had gone to Harvey Comics (apparently this worried Goodman the most) and Wood and Ditko were now the competition. Stan and Jack put their heads together and came up with the Inhumans and the Black Panther (originally the Coal Tiger). Apparently Goodman thought he could add more books but distribution was still dependent upon what DC would allow. It wasn't possible to add more books because of this, so the characters were introduced in the Fantastic Four book instead.
My sources for the above were Sean Howe's Marvel Comics The Untold Story (page 70) and the dcindexes.com's Time Machine feature.
...Thank you . Hm , the T'Challa pushed the " no sub-Saharan African , ethnically " characters rule...But wore a full-body costume , nds was from actual sub-S Africa , not an American " Negro " (the correct phrase then) . That true of the beta T'Challa ?
Were both the Coal Tiger (Sounds like an advertising character for an industry organization that doesn't want you to " cook with gas " !!!!!!!!!!!) and the Inhumans sked'd to launch in their own titles at #1 ? Were the beta Inhoomins 'bout the same as the eventually published Black Bolt subjects (and Medusa with 'em...Had the Inhumans been planned yet when she was first introduced as a villianess ?) ?
Here's a page from (I think) a Marvel annual that shows Jack Kirby's original version of Coal Tiger.
...Thank you .
So , they were thinking of being " in-your-face " , and showing him full-face then , eh ???
Richard Willis said:
They even were going to do that (Batman-mask style) in his Black Panther catsuit but they chickened out and covered his entire face.
Emerkeith Davyjack said:
They did try the half-mask later, but changed it back. I believe T-Challa said he wasn't trying to hide his identity but to show his connection to the panther. Thinking about it this way, the half-mask makes no sense.
Richard Willis said:
All I know is that is a terrible costume. It really hurts my eyes.
Let's get George Perez to redesign it :)
They didn't use it! The other problem is that tigers aren't native to Africa.
A villain called the Panther appeared in Two-Gun Kid #77 in 1965. I think his mask showed his mouth and chin.
It could be the above image derives from the period when Goodman asked Lee to come up with the new characters, rather than the period in which T'Challa was introduced in Fantastic Four. That could account for the weakness of the name and design. (For example, if the initial idea was Kirby's, the page might reflect how the character came out of his brain rather than how he looked after interaction with Lee.) The page is from Jungle Action #10 (1974).
Last time this came up, did someone say Black Bolt was originally conceived separately from the other Inhumans, or am I misremembering? I think Black Bolt's name likely derives from that of Blue Bolt, a Golden Age hero created by Joe Simon. "Blue Bolt" was one of the first features Simon and Kirby worked on together, and the feature continued after they left. "Blue Bolt" doesn't strike me as a particularly impressive name, but the Blue Bolt title was a long-running one in the Golden Age, although Blue Bolt himself soon lost his lead position in the comic, and later his costume and powers.
In the case of the Inhumans I'd like to know whether we can be sure the individual characters were conceived as part of that initiative, or perhaps only the "Inhumans" name. As I've argued before, Gorgon is supposed to recall Pan or a satyr. That might mean he was conceived when the idea of revealing Medusa's background came up, since her name derives from Classical mythology. Triton fits that pattern. So, arguably, does Crystal, since she was originally represented as witch-like (compare Circe). Karnak may have been intended as an analog for Ares/Mars. Maximus's hairstyle gives him a Roman look.
The origin eventually given to the Inhumans, associating them with ancient Kree activity on Earth, strikes me as reflective of Kirby's interests. As I've also argued before, the Eternals were partly a recycling by Kirby of some of the ideas associated with the Inhumans: a number were supposed to be the originals of characters from mythology, they had a hidden mountain city, and their origin had to do with ancient activity on Earth by aliens.
If Black Bolt hadn't been part of the Inhumans then who would have been their leader? Gorgon? I can see Jack trying to make Medusa, a woman, the leader of a team, but since Stan tended to like girls to faint I doubt he would have gone along with the idea.
Would Black Bolt have been a mutant? An alien? Seems a character that can't talk would be extremely limited. He'd need someone to hang out with that could explain what he wanted, like Medusa did after the two series were combined.