Marvel has announced that the Inhuman king Black Bolt will soon get his very first ongoing series. The new “Black Bolt” ongoing series will be written by novelist Saladin Ahmed (“The Crescent Moon Kingdoms”) and featuring art by Christian Ward (“The Ultimates”).
While the “Royals” ongoing will send Black Bolt and his family to outer space, “Black Bolt” will see the silent leader trapped in a mysterious prison packed with alien criminals. In order to break free, the powerful Inhuman will have to team up with some unlikely allies.
“[H]e’s a very compelling guy, because he can’t speak,” said Ahmed, who will make his comic debut with the series. “He’s one of the most powerful characters in the Marvel Universe, really. Although we rarely see his power unleashed. It’s not like the Hulk’s sort of massive beat downs on a regular basis… rarely does he get his powers demonstrated. Nobody knows quite how powerful he is. Which intrigues people. But has not really been explored deeply. Part of his story is that he’s always — him and the Inhumans are a real family. And he always has people speaking for him and, you know, we never get deep into his head. That was kind of one of the challenges of working on a solo title.”
Ahmed says he gave a lot of thought to pitching to Marvel, and was intrigued when they offered him the “Black Bolt” series. “[A]t the same time I had a back pocket pitch about incarceration, and some other stuff that was missing a piece. And I knew that the co-star of this [pitch] book was Crusher Creel, the Absorbing Man — it was a book about being locked up, basically. But I only had these very dim concept of this project, I didn’t know who the real star was. So when Marvel came to me and said, ‘Hey, would you consider doing a Black Bolt book?’, for plot reasons I can’t get into, it happened to sync up really well. This kind of nascent idea of a prison book I had. And they’re picking me for the Black Bolt book ended up linking really well for reasons that will only become apparent to the readers once we’re amidst the plotline.”
In addition to Absorbing Man, Ahmed added that there are a “few familiar faces that may pop up” in the series.
“Black Bolt” #1 will arrive in stores in spring 2017.
