Blackagar Boltagon

Jae Lee drew your “Inhumans” series for Marvel Knights. What was it like working with line editors Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti during the early days of Marvel Knights? Were you approached to do a series or did you ask to be a part of it?


Jae and I had been talking about a Hellshock/Hellblazer crossover, which was a truly horrendous idea that we could never wrap our heads around. But we had definitely expressed a mutual desire to work together at some point. One day, he called me and told me that Marvel was creating a new imprint. Doing the Inhumans was Jae’s idea; not much of a surprise, really, since I had no idea who the Inhumans were. They sent me three short stories, four pages each. That was all I ever had to work from, which, again, I think works to my advantage. The idea of a teleporting dog with a pitchfork on his head is pure genius. The idea of a lady who punches people with her hair is just so awful I can barely bring myself to think about it. But I’d like to think we made it all work.

So I went into the city from my home in Massachusetts and ran over the pitch with Joe and Jimmy. Again, these were the best of days and the worst of days. Marvel was in Chapter 11 bankruptcy at the time, the editors were continually having to look over their shoulders, and in my opinion they were being given very little direction and contradictory information.

Joe and Jimmy truly believed in the pitch for “Inhumans,” even down to the fact that I felt it should be twelve issues and that Black Bolt would be standing around doing nothing for six of them! I think they were meeting a little resistance internally at the time – they were the new guys on the block and had kind of barnstormed in ready to kick arse. This resistance, by the way, came from some of the old guard and not the editors who I seem to remember were quite enthused. At one point I was accosted in the hall at the old building and informed that “Inhumans” would “probably be cancelled after two issues.” Good job we made it to at least six since I think that is the minimum for Eisner consideration.