At this stage in his tenure at the creative head of Marvel Television, Jeph Loeb has already presided over the TV debuts of some of the most beloved characters from both the comic book publisher and its Marvel Cinematic Universe counterpart, including Daredevil, the Punisher, Elektra, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Jessica Jones, Peggy Carter, and Phil Coulson and the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

But there’s a very particular reason why Marvel’s Inhumans -- which made its debut in IMAX theaters this past weekend before it joins ABC’s fall lineup on Sept. 29 -- holds a special place in his heart, as he reveals in a lengthy chat about the series with CBR.

CBR: Family seems like the central ingredient that makes Inhumans unique from the other Marvel TV shows that have come out so far. There are families who have formed, but this is a fully formed family.

Jeph Loeb: It was the thing that first got us excited. It was an opportunity for us to not have to worry about the dynamics of a team per se, and certainly not have to deal with the idea of a group of people who come together because for whatever reason, they sort of form a family. We often talk about Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as a family, too, but at the end of the day that's a job. And certainly as we saw in some of our characters, they don't make it to the end of the day. S.H.I.E.L.D. is not something that that you can stay with no matter what happens.

This is really a story about a group of people who, no matter what happens, it is that old adage, which is blood is thicker than water, and they have a responsibility to each other -- not just as Inhumans, but as the Royal Family and as cousins and as brothers and as husband and wife, and being able to talk about that and to live in that world and to have fun with that world, and then add to it a pet, the 2000-pound. bulldog that can run around and slobber on everything certainly adds to the family element of it as well.

Once you got the Inhumans in the TV realm, did you feel that TV was actually the better venue for these characters?

I don't think “better” is the right word. I certainly felt that it was something that we could tell a compelling story about because it was a story about a family. We never really approached it as something that was going to be spectacle first and family second, and so I think one of the things that we do well is to ground our characters, to be able to take the time in order to get to know our villains -- if that's what Maximus is -- and to be able to have an opportunity where you're not entirely reliant on epic and spectacle and the rollercoaster ride which are the Marvel movies; which I absolutely love and there is no bigger fan.

But this was an opportunity for us to be able to tell a story about people, even if those people were royals and that lived on the moon and that had a voice that could level a city. It's how to find and tell that story in a way that you are drawn in and you can actually watch the show and feel comparisons to families that you know and perhaps your own family.

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You guys have not been shy about pushing the envelope as far as what kind of special effect you can do on TV. You've got a whole family now of characters, each has an individual power, has that posed a challenge to rise to the occasion?

Well, look, we've been shy about saying to anybody that in the first two hours alone there are 600 visual shots. Some of those are very simple kinds of things, like we were shooting in Hawaii and there's a building that can't be there because they're on the moon, but every single time you see Lockjaw, that's a lot of digital zeroes and ones that are creating something that is an actor that's on the set and that is not something that we had ever done or ever taken on, and I think that the execution and certainly the effects house, Double Negative, has done some great work. They did all the effects on Ant-Man, of the ants, and so it's little things like that, that each thing has to work on and get to.

We have to build the city that's under a dome that's on the moon and you have to get to the moon. Each of those experiences pose different challenges while you're trying to make a regular television show, and so I can tell you this: this is the show when I was growing up that I wished was on TV, because these are the kinds of things that I read about in comics that I got very excited about, and I hoped that there was a way for me to be able to actual visualize and see in a real way, and so I hope that we can get there.

Look, the work that Mark Kolpack and Chris Cheramie have done on Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to me is nothing short of extraordinary and I wish there were better noticed for it, but a lot of people came to us at the beginning of last season and said to us, "How are you going to do Ghost Rider]? That was a feature property. How are you ever going to compare with a feature property?" I think we held up pretty well, not just for television, and I think it really stands as an extraordinary achievement in terms of the whole effects and at least a little bit that we've been able to show of what Lockjaw looks like and what the transporting looks like and what the whole world looks like.

I think that speaks to how not just challenging the show has been, but challenging in a good way. Not the kind of way that makes you feel like, "I'm getting overwhelmed", but inspires you.

You're obviously incredibly familiar with Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's work on the characters. Tell me what the impact it had on you and what you wanted to bring to the show -- both the original creations, and then the subsequent work that in the last several years that has made the Inhumans a bigger cornerstone in the Marvel Universe.

My experience comes sort of twofold. One is, obvious to Stan and Jack, everyone knows my love of the Fantastic Four, and the Inhumans was really the place where I caught fire, when they first came to Earth, when the Hidden Land was first discovered, when the dome was first shattered.

All of those things were such big concepts, they were just the kind of things that Stan and Jack, and Jack in particular, did so extraordinarily well. And I've said from the very beginning I've been looking for that television show that really captured the way that what Kirby drew could not be contained within a page of comics. It always felt like the borders were not big enough and that he was always reaching out beyond, that he was 3D -- that he was 4D! -- within a comic book page.

And so when we partnered with IMAX the idea of being able to do something that was that big, that you were going to be able to travel in to space, in to the moon, in to the city and be able to meet these people, and to see that kind of scope, that was very exciting to me.

I keep making this joke, which is I keep waiting for that televisions show that kids are watching and then parents are in the other room and suddenly they hear something crash and they come in the room and the lamp is on the floor, and the kid is standing there and he's going, "I didn't do it!" The dog came out of the television set and knocked it over and then went back in the television set. If we can get to that place some day, if not in reality, but in the imagination of the people that are watching the show, then I think that's the real triumph.

The secondary thing is that there was a time at which the Inhumans were in a comic called Amazing Adventures where they shared the comic with Black Widow -- because nothing says “Inhumans” like “Black Widow” as far as I'm concerned. Why they were paired together I don't know, and it was only for 12 issues because in the 13th issues the comic changed to the Beast, the X-Men character.

On a personal level – and folks – you can go check this out, Amazing Adventures #9 was when I got my first letter printed. And I go back and I look at it and I'm so proud of my nine-year-old self of writing to Stan and suggesting where the story should go. Obviously I had no idea how comics were done, but I was talking about what Maximus should do and what these characters were, and so that love of these characters goes that deep. The best part about it is nobody can argue with it -- it's in print.

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Obviously this show's got to get on its own two feet, up and running, but Inhumans have been a major part of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Is there sort of a big plan, some sort of road map that will get the two shows in alignment at some point?

Look, we got asked this question at the very beginning when we were doing the shows that were going to be on Netflix and the idea was “When? When were the characters going to cross in to each other's world?” And we've always believed is the best thing to do is to let the show settle. Let the audience get to know who they are, let the audience pick out who their favorites are, let the audience decide how they want the show to be, and then that's the time for you to be able to cross into it wherever you can.

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Being on ABC, obviously some of those opportunities lend themselves and yes, do I want to see Daisy Johnson look at Black Bolt and say, "You're not the king of anything as far as I'm concerned? Yeah! Do I know that day is coming? Knock wood. You hope that both shows are successful enough to get to that day some day.

Tell me about the differences in the episode the TV critics saw, which you called “a work in progress,” and the finished product.

It is and it isn't. I was talking to somebody earlier today and said if I were to show you an orchestra and the strings weren't there and we played the music and you went, "OK, I get it." Yeah, you get it, but you haven't heard the strings, and so when that happens the emotion of that, the movement of that, and one of the things that we talked about today is that it isn't just visual, it actually is part of the ongoing structure of the story.

So if you're watching a scene, and then all of a sudden you pull out and you're looking over the cityscape of Attilan and that cityscape is not done you're immediately out of the story. So whatever emotional hook you were on, you're now out of it. Or let's say you're not hooked and now you've got something else that doesn't work for you, you've now got two more reasons that you're going along the way. Is this the perfect way for us to be able to show something, particularly of something that we respect as much as TCAs? No. But it was the general consensus amongst everybody that it was better to get it out there.

First of all, the two hours really are of a piece. It ends in a way without spoiling anything that it is really important to watch the next hour in order to understand particularly where the show is going.

So to only look at the first literally 40-some-odd minutes and go, "OK, I get it." It's a little bit like saying, "OK, I took you to a murder scene, I showed you the body and now we're going to stop.” You're not going to meet the cop, you're not going to get to understand the real thrust and the power of the show, because it isn't about just two brothers who were fighting for the power because that balance is tipped in the very first hour.

The reality is that the show is how you live on Earth with humanity when it's being seen from the point of view of Inhumanity and for us, one of the touchstones was we talk a lot about Starman which is a film that's now 20 years old or something, probably more than that, and it isn't often that you get to see our world as seen from the point of view of the alien. As opposed to seeing our world from the point of view of us that's encountering the alien, and being able to watch how each member of our cast encounters a different person along the way and sees what that world is like. For us, that is really what the show's about.

We're just looking forward to when that shows premieres in IMAX, because people will really have a sense of how big it is, what the scope is like, but also where the show is going and where the thrust of the show is going.

With the IMAX experiment, assuming it's a success, is there a broader plan to continue with IMAX? Either for the finale of Inhumans or something with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.? Or with the other Marvel shows?

I can't speak to things that are being worked on, I can only tell you that our partnership with IMAX, particularly with Greg Foster has been nothing short of extraordinary. This was their idea. They looked at the landscape.

I don't think people know this, but there are certain weekends of the year. One of them happens to be, if you're in America, Labor Day weekend, where IMAX theaters are dark and there is no IMAX film that is playing during that time. Even if Dunkirk is Dunkirk, by the time it gets to Labor Day it's not going to be in the theater anymore and so they came to us and said, "We really want to try to create something that is a television experience, but bringing it on to an IMAX screen."

We're not in any way saying that we made an IMAX film, we're not in any way saying that this is a movie. This is a premiere of a television series that was shot with IMAX cameras and will be presented in an IMAX epic way of doing things, but it's not fair to process when you think about it that if someone is going to compare us to Dunkirk, which is a $200 million movie and we're a television show.

But look, we lived through this when Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D first came on the air and everyone said, "Well, where's Iron Man?" And we said, "Iron man's is not going to be on this show. In fact, he's never going to be on the show. Nor is the Hulk. They're not coming by, guys.” We're making a television show, so the idea of being able to present ourselves in this tremendous arena is very exciting for us, and obviously if it's successful we would love to continue. But that's really as much IMAX's call as it is anything else. They invited us in to their house. We think that we served a gourmet meal and we certainly hope that they ask us back. We like dating them.

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Is there anything percolating immediately for more Marvel-ABC collaboration?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Obviously these aren't things I can talk about. But look, as it is with every single one of the networks that we have gotten with that this is with, and whether it's Fox or it's FX or it's Freeform, or it's Hulu, or it's Netflix, ABC is always going to be our mothership. It is a Disney-owned network. We are a Disney-owned corporation and we're a good fit for each other.

We speak a lot of the same language and the kinds of things that are important to them, which is people rising up again adversity; real emotion; a strong female character, but also a strong sense of family and questions of identity. All of those things are key to being a successful ABC show, but they're also key to being a Marvel show. So in that way we're going to go and see what happens along the way.

I think people confuse the fact that we go to other networks as a sign that we're not on ABC. The truth of the matter is that those shows weren't appropriate for us to be on ABC. How do we know that? We talk to ABC and we talk about what is it that you're looking for? What they got excited about Marvel's Inhumans was the family drama aspect of it and the possibilities of something that had a big epic feel to it, but at the same time something that was small and intimate enough that they could get an audience hooked on it and so that's where we started.

This month marks the 100th anniversary of Jack Kirby’s birth, one of the foundational pillars of the Marvel Universe. I know it's hard to put in to a small amount of words, but tell me about Jack's contribution to what you guys are doing today.

I can't describe it in any other way than to say that there are two things that I look for in any published work. One is the storytelling, and it is a world in which there is nothing that you cannot imagine that you can then not create, and Jack challenged us every single time. The idea that there is a teleporting bulldog that weighs 2000 pounds -- who thinks of that? Who draws it? Who then makes it come to life? Only Jack would go down that road.

Then secondarily, I think this had a great deal to do with the man that he was and how we grew up and his stint in the Army and his being a Jew, that all of those things led him to a place where the nature of a hero is not based upon how they look or what race they are, or what religion they are, or what diversity they are. A hero is someone who stands up when everybody else is told to sit down and that is something that without knowing the man personally, although I did have the opportunity to meet him, I believe it's instilled into every single one of his stories and whether or not that's Captain American or whether or not that's the Inhumans, or whether or not it's the concept of S.H.I.E.L.D.

When you look at any of the Marvel Universe, somehow Jack's hand was there and sometimes I mean literally, because he was drawing it, but there's no way that you can understand the capacity of storyteller that this man was and how in his partnership with Stan Lee, that they would create something more than 50 years ago and in many ways I think he started at birth, 100 years ago, so that enabled us to tell stories that are now enjoying a kind of explosion, that I wish Jack were here to see.

The first two episodes of Inhumans are currently playing in select IMAX theaters for a two-week run, before the series debuts Sept. 29 on ABC.