Issue(s): Inhumans #3, Inhumans #4, Inhumans #5, Inhumans #6
Cover Date: Feb-Aug 76
Title: "Panic in New York!" / "The doom called Shatterstar!" / "Voices from galaxy's end" / "A king of ruins (The long silence after a loud scream)"
Credits:
Doug Moench - Writer
George Perez / Gil Kane - Penciler
Mike Esposito / Vincent Colletta / Frank Chiaramonte - Inker

Review/plot:
Since last issue, the Great Refuge has been subjected to a number of earthquakes.

Gorgon (superstitiously?) believes it's because Black Bolt allowed Iridia to use the Terrigen Mists in the previous arc...

...but Black Bolt has discovered a strange monolith in the caverns under the Inhuman city.

Oddly, he's unable to communicate that information even to Medusa.

Medusa often speaks for Black Bolt, and i like to pretend that instead of reading his slightest facial expressions and hand gestures, she's just making stuff up. This issue seems to confirm that. But couldn't he at least write it down?

Anyway, Medusa decides that they should go ask the Fantastic Four for help. Lockjaw teleports them to the middle of a busy street in New York, to the anger of the local commuters. The Baxter Building turns out to be empty at the moment, but before they can decide what to do next, a Kree UFO lands and an alien warrior emerges. It is Shatterstar, a refugee from the Mojoverse wielding two double-bladed swords guy in a goofy suit.

Actually, i think the suit wouldn't seem so goofy if it were colored differently. He's got the Spartan-style Kree helmet, which is cool. If it wasn't for the yellow, red, orange, and green color combination, plus the color wheel on his chest, he'd probably be fine.

The color wheel is definitely part of his motif, though, because he attacks the Inhumans with rainbows.

Medusa (or "Medula") tries to get the Royal Family to attack Shatterstar using the teamwork that she learned as a member of the Fantastic Four, but Gorgon has no understanding of the concept, and winds up using his hooves against his cousins.

Ultimately, Black Bolt manages to defeat Shatterstar using the weaponry in the Kree UFO.

This is to the dismay of Falzon, another Kree that turns out to be the father of Shatterstar. Earlier, we saw Kalzon arguing with other Kree leaders about using the Inhumans for their War with the Three Galaxies (a lot could be said about the conversation below; there's some things in there that don't really fit well with my understanding of the Kree).

When Falzon was overruled, Shatterstar was sent, and Falzon followed to try to stop him. He reveals that Shatterstar was taken from his wife at an early age and artificially grown into a soldier. (By the way, to avoid confusion with the X-character, i'm tagging Shatterstar as Arides, the name his parents gave him.) Due to previous exhibitions of disloyalty, Falzon's wife was killed and Falzon was imprisoned and "re-educated" once before, but obviously it didn't stick.

It turns out that Shatterstar isn't dead yet, and Black Bolt agrees to take him back to the Great Refuge for healing. As the Inhumans leave, the angry New Yorkers suddenly decide that they like the Inhumans after all. I don't know where this is coming from; the Inhumans showed up in the middle of their streets, got into a fight with an alien that destroyed a lot of property, and then went home. But even if you accept that the New Yorkers wouldn't just blame the Inhumans for the alien, the sequence is very cornily done.

The Royal Family returns to the Great Refuge to find out that - yaaaaaaawwwwn - Maximus has staged another rebellion.

With that, George Perez is replaced by Gil Kane.

Maximus is working with the Kree, and he forces the Royal Family to submit to imprisonment or he'll kill Crystal and Quicksilver. Lockjaw teleports away with Triton and Karnak and brings them to a group of resistance fighters, including Iridia.

In a nice ironic twist, the counter-rebellion is successful but Black Bolt is unaware of it, and he's been tortured to the point where he decides that he's got no choice but to use his voice to prevent his people from being taken into space to the Kree.

So he winds up shattering the Great Refuge after Maximus is defeated.

This results in some really catty attitude form Gorgon.

Black Bolt decides to issue a written apology to his people (he apologizes for using his voice to destroy the Refuge, not for failing to ever find a solution to the problem of his mad brother Maximus) and also decrees that the Royal Family will be going off into space.

Not to launch a retaliatory strike on the Kree, which would have been awesome, but to find a new planet for them to live on.

Doug Moench started this series off fairly well but it is already starting to peter out here. The weird moral ending to the Shatterstar fight in New York, the in-fighting among the Royal Family, and a two issue battle with Maximus that doesn't really further the potentially interesting Kree conflict are all disappointing. Add that to Gil Kane not being a good substitute for George Perez...

...and there's definitely a decline here.

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: Lockjaw returns from his visit with the Fantastic Four at the beginning of this arc; i've therefore pushed this back a bit in publication time so it doesn't take place too long after FF #161.

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Marvel Masterworks: The Inhumans vol. 2

I never could figure out why nobody in Attilan could whip up a machine to translate Black Bolt's thoughts into speech, or why there seemed to be no telepaths there to serve as translators.

There was also an evil Inhuman who apparently only existed as a shadow. Does he show up at all?

That is Nebulo. He doesn't appear this time.

Shatterstar is apparently killed in this arc by the old trick-the-bad-guy-into-zapping-a-mirror trick. He shows up later in Avengers as an energy being.

According to Perez, Moench's original plot for #3 was so overstuffed that it was spread out over #3-4. He also stated that he found Moench hard to work with because he kept overcrowding all his stories.

"Shatterstar is apparently killed in this arc by the old trick-the-bad-guy-into-zapping-a-mirror trick. He shows up later in Avengers as an energy being."

And when he does, they do exactly what fnord does here and call him "Arides" because the X-Foce guy is around by then.

So... What we must think about the monolith? It´s still there, under the old site of Attilan? The monolith have been forgotten for ever?

If the Kree can create a loyal super-soldier that can take out the entire Inhuman Royal family...then why not make more of those instead of traveling halfway across the universe to pressgang the Inhumans?