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A superhero story about knowing your limits sounds like something you'd expect to come from Marvel Comics' The Sentry. But for Sentry co-creator Paul Jenkins, it's more apt for the original Marvel Comics series, which teamed him up with his Sentry co-creator Jae Lee a year prior: the Inhumans. The 12-issue prestige series is arguably the most popular storyline for the characters outside their origin story as told by Marvel legend Jack Kirby, and the success of that series (including a rare Eisner Award for Marvel Comics) led to an open offer for a sequel.

But Jenkins said 'no' to Marvel. And continues to say 'no' to Marvel. And now to fans as well, especially compared to his and Lee's other Marvel series The Sentry, which he has resumed writing recently. 

"I am less sure about Inhumans than Sentry. I have so many stories for Sentry, and I'd like to keep writing the character (so write to Marvel if you would like more)," Jenkins says during an AMA on League of Comic Geeks. "[Then Marvel Comics editor-in-chief] Axel Alonso once asked me to write a second Inhumans and I politely declined because I thought the fan sentiment towards our original work was something we'd struggle to replicate."

Alonso oversaw a 2014 Inhumans revamp for Marvel Comics coinciding with the then-upcoming release of Marvel Studios' Inhumans TV series.

Jenkins compares the interest in him and Lee to doing an Inhumans sequel to fan sentiment over the years for Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons to do more Watchmen stories. While early on they had plans to, after the series was released, Moore changed his mind for several reasons. Jenkins, who worked with Moore afterwards on another project, said it was for similar reasons. 

"I was once Alan Moore's editor, and he and I share the same sentiment. He told me once that he'd have a hard time doing Watchmen 2 or Killing Joke 2 because people's memory of the work is far better than the work itself," says Jenkins.

Another reason is that Jenkins was never a fan of the Inhumans before writing that series. In fact, he didn't even know who they were until he got the gig.

"My Inhumans origin story is either (a) boring or (b) weird. The Inhumans were Jae's idea. I will confess, I had never heard of them," Jenkins writes. "But I read two five-pagers by Jack Kirby, and then I told my editor not to send me any more because I already saw something in Jack's work."

While that might seem sacrilege to not do more research on the characters before writing a prestige 12-issue series with the characters, Jenkins says it quickly became more about the metaphor than the continuity.

"They were a series of metaphors for the melting pot that is America," he continues. "Black Bolt, the King, could not speak - if he did, everything would blow up. It was a metaphor for the President, or a King, who creates a constitutional crisis if they say the wrong things. The Terrigen Mists story was a metaphor for puberty. The Alpha Primitives were a metaphor for the emancipation of African Americans who became 'free and not free.'"

When asked about other Inhumans comics he'd recommend since he isn't planning on ever doing more, Jenkins' response furthered the disconnect from the characters, and he says it explains why he feels he did such a good job.

"But the problem is, I don't really know enough about the history of comics to be able to recommend a different Inhumans work. I didn't really have any reference for my own work - I just looked at what I thought the characters were and built my story from there," says Jenkins. "In a sense, my advantage is precisely that I don't have a history with these characters. I have no preconceived notions."

Neither should we about a new Jenkins Inhumans project.

Want more? Make sure you've read our list of all the best Marvel Comics stories of all time.