Hero Spotlight: Black Bolt

We decided to change Character of the Week to Character Spotlight because I don’t want everything to have Week in it. Not sure if all of them will keep to the format of how this one is written but hope you enjoy it!

Recently, Marvel Comics released a 6-part comic series titled Infinity that also had tie-ins with many other Marvel on-going series, mainly New Avengers and Avengers.

Black Bolt on the
cover to the third issue of Inifnity

With all the hype surrounding the mysterious figure that is shown for all of about 2 seconds at the end of Avengers (who everyone learned via the internet is Thanos), this Infinity story arc looked to capitalize on people’s newfound interest in the big, bad guy Thanos. To the average reader, or even if you’ve only been reading more recent modern comics, not many are familiar with Thanos, but he’s been around for a while and has shaken up the Marvel universe on more than one occasion (a la Infinity Guantlet). Now why are we talking about Thanos so much and not Black Bolt, the dude in the title of the blog? I’m getting there don’t worry. The Infinity storyline not only gave readers a story that shows off Thanos being the boss that he is, we also get a fresh perspective on the Inhuman race and their king, Black Bolt. It’s already a tease to link a story titled Infinity with Thanos, but where the story actually goes is a pleasant surprise. But M. Deanpool says we’ll save the rest of the diagnosis on Infinity for another time.

Now, more on Blackagar Boltagon aka Black Bolt, King of Inhumans and member of the Illuminati. I know, a cool superhero name like Black Bolt came from the dude’s actual name. Like I wrote above, interest grew in both Thanos and Black Bolt following this storyline (an awesome fight scene between the two helped that as well). King of the Inhumans, Black Bolt possesses typical superhuman powers such as enhanced speed and strength, and can even fly (who can’t nowadays? Sorry Batman, that gliding thing doesn’t count). But his signature power is his hypersonic voice. Imagine how X-Men’s Cyclops just destroys everything if he doesn’t keep his eyes closed or has those glasses of his on. That’s Black Bolt if he tried whispering. Let’s see him and Banshee go at it. JK, M. Deanpool says Black Bolt would win easily. The reason he has this ultrasonic voice is due to a mechanism in his brain’s speech center of his brain that produces a particle that harnesses electrons. This link to his brain causes any use of his vocal cords to spark a reaction between the particle and electrons. Whoa, science. It’s even said that Black Bolt’s “sonic scream” may depend on his emotional state. So if you piss the guy off, and he doesn’t care about the surroundings, earplugs will probably not save you. And if you’re curious about the antenna-like fork on his head, it’s supposed to help Black Bolt control his powers. He can focus his powers and channel them to his strength and speed, or to his arms and make a pretty concussive blast with the clap of his hands, or even channel all of this energy into a destructive punch. His flight abilities also stem from this manipulation of electrons into anti-electrons. With this molecule manipulation he could focus his energies to build an impenetrable force-field, use them as extrasensory probes (I wonder if he’s considered Sonar), or even utilize that energy as an EMP-type of mechanism. WAIT THERE’S MORE, he also has minor telepathic abilities, ish. Mostly just with the royal family. The main use being a way to communicate with his wife, Medusa, and she would act as a sort of translator for the King of the Inhumans to the rest of his subjects.

First issue of Inhumans
on their own title!

If you’re next question is, “What exactly is an Inhuman?” then keep reading! Digging into the Comic-Cave database (not to be confused with the archives on the right-hand side), we have to go waaaaay back, millions of years ago there was a war between two aliens races, the Kree and the Skrulls. The Kree set up camp on Uranus (hehe) and discover the primitive Homo-Sapiens on Earth nearby. Basically, they start doing experiments on these Homo-Sapiens in hopes that they prove to be potential genetic specimens to become an army and gain an advantage in the war against the Skrulls. You can probably guess that this led to the Inhuman race. They successfully created a race of once primitive beings super-abilities. However, they abandoned the project and Earth altogether because some prophecy said that their creation would one day destroy the Kree empire. These Inhumans went on to create a secluded society of their own much more advanced than the beings of their time. Through a process called Terrigenesis, they use this Terrigen Mist to unleash their various powers. There is some backfire as the Mist may cause abnormalities or deformities. Thus they made this process more selective in order to contain the mutations. The Terrigenesis process has become more of a “coming-of-age” ritual when one of their own enters puberty. Black Bolt, however, was exposed to the terrigen mist while still an embryo! So as an infant he had these energy-manipulating abilities and that quasi-sonic scream! Uh, imagine if young Blackagar Boltagon ever had a temper tantrum. Sike, they put him in a soundproof chamber and an energy-harnessing suit until he learned to control his powers. Well that sucks. Fun fact: Sorry bringing up Infinity again, but in the story Black Bolt calls the New Avengers, or the Illuminati (we'll blog more of this group another time), to a meeting in a pocket dimension where every sound is reduced to a single pitch. The Silent King speaks without his powers being unleashed and shocks the New Avengers. Quite funny amongst all the seriousness of their meeting. In short, they’re mutated alien-human hybrids. Cool right? Because they’ve been developing such advanced technology for so long, their advanced city of Attilan is essentially a floating city/island/kingdom (the point is that it’s floating! Reminds one of Bespin, the cloud city in Star Wars). Their society, however, is a more rigid social class system. The Inhumans believed that the Terrigen Mist would show an individual’s true abilities and appearance, which will ultimately also show where they belong in the society. At the top of this system, you have the king of the Inhumans, Black Bolt, and then the rest of the royal family: Medusa (Black Bolt’s wife), Maximus the Mad (Black Bolt’s brother), Karnak, Gorgon, Triton, Cristal, and a dog named Lockjaw (M. Deanpool’s favorite, he teleports!).

Lockjaw, the teleporting canine.
Though drawn a bit more comical.

In one story arc, Ronan the Accuser (a Kree) attacks Attilan and reveals to the Inhumans how they were intended to be weapons and that their abnormal appearances were part of a bigger plan to have the Inhumans look like various alien races. With this, the Kree would have their Inhuman slaves infiltrate enemy planets and carry out assassinations or other espionage. Of course, Black Bolt took back his city and fought the Accuser off… Only to be kicked out by his own people, but that’s a different story.

Cover of Inhumans graphic novel.

Com-Economics: Anyways, Black Bolt first makes his way into the Marvel universe in Fantastic Four #45. A pretty pricey book right now (again, his popularity is rising) but M. Deanpool believes it is a key issue to have in your collection and may only rise in value as Marvel will be starting a new on-going series called Inhumanity in the next month or so. If you want to read more with Black Bolt and the Inhumans before getting into this new series, which M. Deanpool highly recommends as well, there are 4 other volumes of series that centered around the Inhumans. The first dates back to 1975, and has some really cool bronze-age-esque covers. The first issue from this volume, and essentially the first ever issue with the Inhumans on their own title, has a wide range of prices depending on condition but if you see a nice conditioned one for less than $50 you won’t want to sleep on it. The more popular, in Mr. Deanpool’s opinion, is the 2^nd volume that came out in the late 90s that can be found in a graphic novel called Inhumans. It collects all 12 issues from the series. A very popular novel that can be found as a hardcover for $30 and even has its own DVD adaption that came out recently. The drawings, at least based off covers, look to have darker style but still looks to be just as compelling. M. Deanpool doesn’t have much intel on the other two volumes but looks for Inhumanity to be good new series from Marvel. The Inhumans are an intriguing oddity for the Marvel universe, but still have plenty of potential (especially after Infinity) to still have a breakout series given the right creative team. Heck, a group of genetic freaks not named the X-Men already sounds like an interesting television show (M. Deanpool thinks it’s a stretch to go on and say movie).

So now you know Black Bolt and the Inhumans. M. Deanpool apologizes for describing Black Bolt's hypersonic voice about three different ways. Quite an interesting race and quite a different group when you look at Marvel’s headliners of Avengers or X-Men. While there's so much more that could be said about this intriguing character, we'll leave it at that and hope that more comes through reviews of other books. Think we've discussed enough to consider this a "quick" character profile. Well thanks for reading the first of these Character Spotlights. I’d hint at what’s next to come, but M. Deanpool doesn’t even know at the moment. So look out for more soon! Here’s Black Bolt unleashing his powers on Thanos… kinda.