The Inhumans is a title that really helped change the face of the current Marvel Universe. It made the Inhumans relevant and solidified the value of the now defunct Marvel Knights line of books. Shout Factory teamed up with Marvel Knights Animation to make what I can only describe as an animation using the motion comic format properly. I’m not a fan of motion comics as they look cheap and the voice acting is usually terrible, but I found with Inhumans that my lack of knowledge of the source material made it far more interesting; especially when supported by a great cast and animation. The animation keeps Jae Lee’s original art, but rather than bending the drawing to form a 3-D visual one is actually created. The animation is broken up in the same amount of issues as the comic which was good and bad. When hitting play all you were still forced to watch all of the opening titles and ending credits and since it’s not extremely long it means that ever fifteen minutes or so you’re fast forwarding to the next chunk of the animation. It would have been ideal to have one large track on the DVD that removed the credits and left a quick bump in-between an episode’s opening, but that was not the case here.

The voice acting was actually very good and while I didn’t recognize any of the voices from other animations, that was a good thing. The narrator plays a huge role in driving the story forward and thankfully Eli Cabay does a great job with the role. The entire cast only consist of ten actors, so there are some that play more than one role but it’s never distracting or out-of-place.

Overall, I was actually really impressed with this animation and will definitely call it an animation. If motion comics had come out at with this level of production and quality then they might not be considered such a joke in the industry. As it stands though, this is well worth the $15 bucks you’ll pay for it. I even got my wife to watch it and she was on the edge of her seat waiting for Black Bolt to take action. On that note, this may actually be a great gate way for people to introduce their friends and loved ones to the world of comics.

Score: 4/5

Produced by: Shout Factory and Marvel Knights Animation

Price: $14.97

Format: DVD

Release Date: 4/23/13