With the upcoming "Inhumans" series pulling off the note-perfect casting of Iwan Rheon (Ramsey Bolton from "Games of Thrones") as Maximus, we figured that it would be nice to provide a spotlight on the main villain of the "Inhumans" stories, who also happens to be the brother of the most famous member of the Inhumans, Black Bolt.

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Maximus is one of the rare supervillains who made his first appearance after his master plan had already been successful. When we first meet Maximus in "Fantastic Four" #47 (by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee and Joe Sinnott), he had already taken control of the Inhuman people, wresting the crown from his brother, Black Bolt.

However, like many Marvel villains from the Silver Age, Maximus' undoing proved to be his obsession with a woman who wanted nothing to do with him. The first Inhuman to be introduced in the pages of Marvel Comics was Medusa, who we first met as a criminal as part of the Frightful Four. It later turned out that she had lost her memory after she left the Great Refuge, the hidden city where the Inhumans lived. The Fantastic Four then met the rest of the Inhumans when Maximus decided to send Gorgon to find Medusa, with the intent of then forcing her to marry Maximus. This was enough to get Black Bolt to get his head together and decide to take control of the Inhuman race once again.

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The scene where Maximus loses his crown to Black Bolt is both a stunning example of Jack Kirby's storytelling brilliance, and a sign of just how quick Maximus is to adjust to new situations. When Black Bolt takes the crown back, Maximus is at first shocked and angry, but almost instantly he realizes the best play is to suck up to Black Bolt, so he goes from anger to fake happiness in a matter of seconds.

Of course, since he's a comic book villain, Maximus still tried to play not one, but two trump cards. First, he unleashed a device that he thought would annihilate the human race, leaving only Inhumans on Earth. He figured that his brethren would totally be cool with the genocide if it meant that they were now the undisputed rulers of the planet, and moreover that they would overthrow Black Bolt and give control of the Inhumans to the man who killed the humans. When that device did not work, he went to his back-up plan, creating a "Negative Zone" (different from the other dimension that we would learn of just issues later) that would cut off the Great Refuge from the rest of the world. He figured his plans would have a better chance of succeeding if he had the humans out of his way.

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Black Bolt used his powers to eventually break through the barrier created by Maximus. After a plot with some Inhuman criminals failed, Maximus once again successfully conquered the Inhumans when he used a hypno-gun to mollify the masses and get himself declared ruler of the Inhumans in "Fantastic Four" #83 (by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee and Joe Sinnott). This time his reign involved an awesome Jack Kirby/Joe Sinnott full-page splash...

Luckily, Black Bolt and the rest of the Royal Family broke free from the prison Maximus threw them in and they helped prevent Maximus from successfully using his hypno gun on the rest of the world.

The Inhumans then gained their own ongoing feature in the pages of "Amazing Adventures," initially written and drawn by Jack Kirby, but he then left Marvel. Roy Thoams, Neal Adams and Tom Palmer took over the creative duties on the title and they revealed that after Maximus has attempted (and failed) to cause a war between the Inhumans and the Fantastic Four in the opening story arc in "Amazing Adventures," Black Bolt had locked him up in suspended animation. Gorgon and the other Royals thought that that is was cruel and unusual punishment, so in "Amazing Adventures" #5 they let him go, but they quickly learned that Black Bolt had discovered that Maximus' latent psionic powers had returned and that if he was free, he would use his abilities to take control of Attilan, which is precisely what he did as soon as he was freed.

This storyline ended up resolved during the "Kree/Skrull War," as the Avengers helped Black Bolt take back Attilan, where Maximus was in the midst a plot to sell Inhuman soldiers to the Kree.

That same basic idea was used the fourth time that Maximus took control of the Inhumans in the mid-1970s "Inhumans" ongoing series, namely "Inhumans" #5 (by Doug Moench, George Perez and Mike Esposito), where Maximus captured Crystal and her new husband, Quicksilver, and forced Black Bolt to abdicate the throne to him in exchange for their safety.

This one was the coup that finally made Black Bolt snap. Up until then (outside of the suspended animation period), he had insisted on keeping his brother around even as he kept trying to take control of Attilan, as he was his brother and he loved him. In addition, we eventually learned that Maximus had been driven mad when he and Black Bolt were children. The thing that had driven him mad was the first usage of Black Bolt's tremendous sonic powers (the trauma from that usage also caused Maximus' psionic powers to become dormant). Here, though, he ended up punching his brother and locking him up.

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For the next two decades, Maximus certainly tried to take over Attilan a number of times, but eventually he settled in as a sort of behind-the-scenes manipulator. It was in this role that he helped to almost cause an invasion of Attilan by the United States government in the classic "Inhumans" maxiseries by Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee. In that series, Maximus really embraced the whole "mad" aspect of his identity, as he began acting exceedingly disturbed, but mostly worked more as a manipulator than as a direct aggressor.

However, all of his manipulations ultimately paid off big time in the miniseries "The Silent War" (by David Hine and Frazer Irving), where he manipulated Medusa into using Crystal's daughter, Luna, to try to "cure" Maximus' madness, but instead it unlocked a dark ability where Maximus was able to take control of the Inhumans people.

This did not last, and Black Bolt once again took control of the Inhumans. However, after Black Bolt's death in the crossover "War of Kings," for the first time Maximus did not try to thrust himself into the seat of power, choosing instead to let Medusa take the crown and then try to manipulate her from behind the scenes.

Even when Black Bolt returned, Maximus chose to work with his brother and honestly, it seemed as though Maximus' motives are somewhat purer than they were in previous years. He helped his brother create the Terrigan Bomb, the game-changer where any distant descendants of the Inhumans living as humans in the world would have their Inhuman heritage activated.

Maximus also discovered his brother's role in the superhero Illuminati and Maximus soon found himself as part of the villain counterpart to the Illuminati, the Cabal, as they took it upon themselves to destroy alternate Earths to protect this Earth during events known as "incursions" when it was a choice of having two world collide or having one destroyed so that the other could live. He and his teammates chose "destroy the other worlds." Eventually this failed and that led to the event known as the most recent "Secret Wars."

Most recently, Maximus' madness has led to him just coming up with plans to mess with people mostly just to entertain himself. He rode both sides of the Inhumans vs. Iron Man conflict during "Civil War II" and he is currently helping to push along the "Inhumans vs. X-Men" crossover event, just for kicks.

The most interesting thing about Maximus is that his madness allows writers to pretty much do whatever they want with him. If they need a Machiavellian villain, he can be it. If they need an outright villain, he can be it. If they need an almost anti-hero who the Inhumans need despite themselves, he can be that, as well. He is almost the comic book version of the Man For All Seasons.