Inhumans features a variety of superpowered characters and their giant, teleporting dog, Lockjaw. And he is the only one we care about currently, because look at that face. Sadly, this series has a bunch of scenes sadly lacking in Lockjaw, and we're occasionally stuck with characters we don't want to take to the park or, possibly, ride like one of those huge wolves in anime classic Princess Mononoke. So we might as well read up on them, apparently.

Inhumans king instantly cripple a Venom-infected Tyrannosaurus Rex with a single word: "Stop." Due to the nature of his powers, it didn't matter what he said, but that was still pretty badass.

And if that factoid has you more interested in this character than Inhumans does, here are 15 (other) things you didn't know about Black Bolt.

He gained his powers in the womb

Typically, Inhumans chosen to receive powers get them from the mists of Terrigen crystals. The rite comes after an extensive screening process, which includes genetic testing to avoid unstable or chaotic mutations. It’s kind of like the system for selecting hosts for the symbionts of Star Trek’s Trill; they take a lot of care to ensure that the change benefits the recipient, and weed out the crazies.

Black Bolt didn’t go through that sort of “audition,” however. His parents, leading genetic scientists, gave him his powers before he was even born. And in doing so, they created one of the most powerful Inhumans ever.

They also made one of the worst childhoods ever, because giving incredibly destructive screams to an infant is just not a good idea.

He had to live in a sound-proof room until he was 19

Until Black Bolt learned to control his powers, his parents separated him from society in a quarantine area. You can’t just have an infant with electron powers running around all willy-nilly; their first fit could kill everyone.

Black Bolt received his first suit during his two decades of training. The costume isn’t just fashionable … if “skin-tight suit with wings” is your idea of style, anyway. (Looking at you, Spider-Man.) But it’s also functional, working to keep some of his abilities under control, because of that whole everyone-will-otherwise-die problem.

Somehow, spending his formative years in isolation with the knowledge that everyone in his society feared his awesome, destructive powers didn’t turn Black Bolt into a supervillain. We can think of several comic book characters who went bad over less.

He is the master of electrons

It’s easy to see Black Bolt screaming into action and assume that his voice is his only major “thing,” but that’s really just a side effect of his foundational skill: harnessing electrons.

that the character premiered in a Fantastic Four book in the ‘60s, which means that the writers were happy to come up with things that sound like science but make little actual sense. Plus they wanted a guy who could stand up to The Thing in a fight, so this is what they settled on.

All of Black Bolt’s fighting prowess comes from his body’s ability to harness electricity from the air and channel it through his body to enhance his strength, speed, and agility. We don’t know how that works, either, but it does, and he can run really fast because of it.

The tuning fork on his head isn't decorative

That's not just a fashion accessory on Black Bolt’s dome. But if it were, we’d just like to point out how adorable it is that he coordinated with his giant dog. As it is, that’s just a happy accident.

The fork actually helps Bolt draw those electrons from which he derives his superpowers out of the environment and into his body. That sounds like it might get a little bit like something out of a movie by body-horror-obsessed director David Cronenberg, but the device is attached to his mask and not, like … attached. And that’s good news for both our stomachs and Black Bolt’s head, because we’re not sure how he’d get the mask off if he had to work around that thing.

Anyway, the device is more of a lightning rod than a tuning fork, but we know what it looks like.

His powers are linked into the speech centers of his brain

Bolt’s backstory tells us that his brain contains an “organic mechanism” that lets him synthesize electrons for his power boosts and mind-manipulation powers (depending on the needs of the plot). And as a bonus, it’s in the speech center, which ostensibly is why he can speak so loudly that he can knock a symbiote off of a T-Rex.

But again, this just sounds like weird, comic book science, since we’d assume that the relevant apparatus would be located in his vocal cords. You know, where your voice comes from.

We’re not comic book scientists, however, so we’ll just let it go. If you start picking apart the mechanics of super screaming, your head will explode once you try to figure out the actual physics of the Fantastic Four.

He communicates via sign language and telepathy

Because Black Bolt can’t talk to his subjects without either murdering them or driving them totally insane (more on that second one later), he faces a bit of a hurdle when it comes to actually leading his people.

It’s not a huge issue, however, since the TV version communicates using sign language, and the comic book one has another option based on his plot-satisfyingly vague abilities.

Whatever the thing is in his brain, it allows Bolt to speak telepathically with of his own bloodline. So typically, he just issues orders and requests via brain power to his wife, Queen Medusa, and she es them along. Lacking both of those options, however, we assume he could always just write a note.

And if you didn’t notice something strange in that last paragraph, we have bad news for you because:

He is married to his own cousin

Queen Medusa, in addition to being the other monarch of the Inhumans, has her own amazing power in the form of prehensile hair. And that’s probably just a magnitude of ridiculous less than harnessing native electrons through a couple of tines attached to your head.

She also serves as Black Bolt’s “voice,” receiving his edicts via the telepathic connection the king has with all of his family tree. That’s right: the reason this works is because they are blood relatives. But hey, we know how royal families work; this isn’t that weird. And they’re second cousins, so it could be way worse.

But when you’re watching Inhumans, and Anson Mount and Serinda Swan do romantic-type things, just try not to that one of their character’s grandmothers is the other’s aunt.

He has an almost unbeatable finishing move called the Master Blow

One of the Inhuman King’s trademark maneuvers — other than speaking — is the “Master Blow,” in which he concentrates all of the electrons he’s stored up into his fist so that he can unleash the mightiest of punches. He can do this exactly once per fight. Usually, however, once is enough, provided he lands it and the other person isn’t The Thing or Hulk.

In fact, Black Bolt brings this move out during his debut in Fantastic Four issue 46, which has him going up against Ben Grimm himself. Thing hears Bolt’s underling suggest the move and is in the middle of calling it “corny” when his opponent socks him in the chest with the awesome power of an arm bursting with electrons.

The Master Blow doesn’t manage to lay The Thing out, but neither he nor Bolt are in any condition to continue fighting.

He is resistant to mental attacks

Black Bolt’s main adversary is his crazy brother, Maximus (Game of Thrones’ Iwan Rheon plays him on the TV series). It’s kind of Bolt’s fault that this happened, but the guy was kind of rotten even before the king left his protective bubble room.

Maximus’ ability is mind control, which is exactly the sort of thing you’d want a sociopath to have. But it doesn’t work very well on Black Bolt. The reason, we suspect, is probably “electrons,” but we think it might also have something to do with that weird thing in his speech center that processes them.

Regardless, when Maximus tries to will his brother into submission in a particular issue, the king seems neither impressed nor particularly inclined to submit. It was probably the second worst day of Maximus' life.

His voice drove his own brother insane

The worst day, arguably, is the one that took the villain’s sanity in the first place.

Black Bolt was just a few days out of his childhood quarantine when he discovered that Maximus was working with the Kree (who created the Inhumans in the first place) to overthrow the kingdom. He caught the end of a meeting, after which the Kree agent tried to fly off. Bolt used his voice for the first time - intentionally, anyway - and caused the ship to crash into the main government building, killing almost the entire parliament and accomplishing by accident what his brother had been trying to do in the first place.

Unfortunately, Maximus didn’t get a chance to enjoy his incidental victory, because the sonic attack also rattled his brain like Yahtzee dice in a cup. The incident also made Black Bolt king, which was just an extra downer for him.