Invincible is Anything But
It’s still guaranteed that this year’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Avengers: Doomsday will gross over $1 billion apiece, but the average superhero show or film is no longer attractive to an average viewer. This isn’t just an issue of derivativeness, but of commitment; to keep up with a current Marvel or DC property requires an engagement with previous shows and films, which now feels like homework. It’s no coincidence that the few comic book adaptations of recent years that are most consistent are those that are completely self-contained. Invincible is inspired by the graphic novel series by Robert Kirkman, but it’s not so insular that a non-reader couldn’t pick up the show.
Invincible is a standout among the comic book adaptations that exist beyond Marvel and DC because its interests aren’t satirical. The Boys, another superhero series on Prime Video, has existed in a similarly standalone universe, but has countless allusions to more popular superhero narratives, which are used for the sake of a larger point about hypocrisy. The Boys is an option for those who’ve felt burned by comic book fandom, whereas Invincible is alluring for people who don’t understand the unusual investment that today’s generation has placed in capes and spandex. It’s not to say that Invincible isn’t aimed at an audience that would enjoy gruesome action sequences and ever-expanding science fiction mythology, but its exploration of identity is more palatable.
What’s most distinct about Invincible is its cast, because producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are able to convince multiple A-listers to spend several hours within a recording booth. The show’s title is a reference to Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun), a teenager who’s developed superhuman abilities that mirror those of his father, Roland (J.K. Simmons), who’s also known as the superhero “Omni-Man.” In the shocking conclusion to the pilot, Invincible pulled a twist in the vein of FX’s The Shield, in which Omni-Man is revealed as a psychopath that killed his entire team of superpowered allies. Roland’s an alien from the planet Viltrum, which has reigned as one of the most powerful empires in the universe.
Invincible is pulpy, and has embodied the style of a comic book splash page better than most live-action superhero adaptations. The mistake made by recent installments in the Marvel or DC universes was to use self-effacement to acknowledge the ridiculous elements from the source material, which could never be feasibly depicted on screen. Invincible might be bound by the limitations of its 2D animation, which is lacking in a substantial budget, but it has no delusions of grandeur. What’s made the series more than just a line-for-line recreation of Kirkman’s issues is the implementation of quasi-relatable dynamics that involve its array of characters.
The most insightful sentiment about superheroes was expressed 22 years ago in the Pixar film The Incredibles, in which the character Dash stated, “if everyone’s special, then no one is.” It’s an idea that Invincible has wrestled with because Mark’s not the only superhero on Earth, and has become expendable. That Mark might be more powerful isn’t a gift, but a liability; his anger issues stem from the abandonment issues he’s faced as a result of his father’s dark turn. However, the flirtations with brutality that Mark has aren’t a result of traditional motivations like greed or ambition, but rather a desire to protect those he’s cared the most about, such as his girlfriend Eve (Gillian Jacobs), his mother Debbie (Sandra Oh), and half-brother Oliver (Christian Convery).
Even if it's not intended as a launching point for various spinoff properties, Invincible is convoluted; the desire to give every superhero in the Invincible universe a tragic backstory and a famous voice actor is exhausting. The series had been spread so thin that it was aimless, but the new fourth season is a confident step towards an end goal. The most profound question the series has asked is whether the ends justify the means, which is a more complicated discussion when some characters are centuries old, and others are indestructible. Roland’s ambivalence about the collateral damage on Earth is a result of the genocide on his own planet, which numbered in the billions. The loss of an insignificant planet with comparatively underdeveloped institutions wouldn’t seem like something he should prioritize, but the fact that it’s the home to his sons does force him to reconsider.
Even if Invincible does play into comic book archetypes, the depiction of evil is adjusted to contemporary influences. The Golden Age comic books of Marvel and DC were written in the 1930s and 40s, and the villains were modeled after a world where public enemies included Adolf Hitler and Al Capone. Invincible is set in a modern setting and drawn from more recently produced material, and the world has become more complicated in singling out threats. An antagonist like Angstrom Levy (Sterling K. Brown), a mutant with the power to create portals, is a type of self-destructive loner that served as a stand-in for mentally-ill perpetrators in mass shooting tragedies.
It might take eight or nine seasons to fully adapt Kirkman’s graphic novel, but it would require the series to make adjustments to its form to justify that. Given how quickly The Walking Dead, another series based on a Kirkman comic book run, declined in quality, Invincible should make some thoughtful edits. It’s fascinating how a graphic novel that was written before the superhero craze has become a series that has survived beyond it. Stories about caped crusaders may have reached their cultural apex, but Invincible’s fourth season is interrogative enough to make it an exception.