Invincible (Amazon Series)

Though by the end of the comic, Mark's become one of the strongest Viltrumites around.

It helps that near the end of the comic he received a power boost thanks to Atom Eve reviving him and herself after they were killed by Thragg.

Mark's weak by Viltrumite standards near the start of the series, but that's due to both his powers manifesting late and his lack of experience fighting Viltrumite level foes. Remember that every other Viltrumite in the series is a battle hardened veteran adult warrior, while Mark is barely out of his teens, has only begun to develop powers, and had no real experience fighting. The gap closes as Mark gains more experience and grows stronger.

Edited by M84 on Feb 26th 2024 at 2:46:05 AM

Disgusted, but not surprised

I think I read it somewhere on the site but Mark's thing is less that he's Invincible and more that he's Indomitable. Like people can beat the every living shit of him but they break his will. Nolan effortlessly wins a fight with him but he's the one who ends up flying away teary eyed.

Like wise in season 2 part 1, the viltrumites win the fight, but there's no question that they broke Mark's will and he'll complete the mission for them.

It reminds me of DS9: "I cannot beat this klingon, all I can do is kill him."

Not really. Mark has had the fight beaten out of him more than once. He even made a deal with Thragg once to avoid a fight that would have led to untold destruction on Earth.

He just always eventually regains the will to fight.

Edited by M84 on Feb 26th 2024 at 10:15:47 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised

Also by tje final battle. Mark utterly decimates Thragg with the help of his friends and even his reformed foes. Which shows he's truly Invincible now

"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."

I think a better way of putting it is that the Invincible name is representative of the themes of the comic and Mark's character development. At the start, he just picks it because it sounds cool and he thinks it makes him seem badass, because he's still just a doofy teenager in way over his head. By the end, it's become genuinely appropriate both because he's much stronger and because while he himself isn't invincible, the ideals he stands for are. Basically it represents his growth from a normal teen who just happened to get superpowers and is kind of a doofus to an adult and genuinely badass superhero.

Edited by immortaleditor on Feb 26th 2024 at 10:54:20 AM

Just saw the new episode.

Sucks that Eve’s confidence got shattered so bad she went back to her abusive dad. And THAT REVEAL that the resistance is led by a vitrumite… Also, Kate and Rae might be dead…

Edited by BigBadShadow25 on Mar 14th 2024 at 8:38:39 AM

The Owl House and Coyote Vs Acme are my Roman Empire.

Heck of a cliffhanger.

Unsure about the fates of both characters. Kate assuredly has a backup clone somewhere. And Rae... okay, that's tough. They didn't show the body but it's pretty impossible to interpret that as anything but dead, unless she realized it wasn't working and shrank back down. But for a show so graphic, those are both totally survivable conditions. I like that the Lizard King's superpower seems to be "has a gun."

Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.

Oh wow Rae's apparent death reminds me of the meme back then of Ant-Man killing Thanos by going inside his body and growing inside him. This provided rather gruesome tear down of that idea, of what if you tried to grow in a person's body durable enough that you can break free.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

It's following the comics so Rae is dead for sure and Kate does indeed have a backup out there. Or rather, the real Kate is off in a safehouse while her clones do all the fighting.

The Lizard League/Sequid Parallel Conflict Sequence is one of my favorite battles in the comic and I'm so glad they did it justice here. They actually made it even more brutal than it was in the comic. Salamander gets an insanely gruesome death from Rae instead of being blown up off-handedly and Rae's own death at Komodo's hand is played way more gruesomely. Rex breaking down like that is even more understandable as a result.

Speaking of, huge kudos to Jason Mantzoukas; he was one of the casting choices I was more iffy on, but this episode - probably the singularly most important one for Rex's character development - proves he was literally the perfect pick. The way he performed Rex's Freak Out as the fight starts going sideways was amazing and his pep talk with Eve was also fantastically delivered. How appropriate that he gets to show off his acting chops in the episode where the show onlies will really start to see how awesome Rex is beneath his douchey frat bro facade.

Okay, regarding this episode's mid-credits, I can totally see what slimcoder was talking about. Allen's legit jacked up now, and it's actually acknowledged as an in-universe change with a noticable design difference.

Cecil's comically serious status made for some good dry. Especially when Rex is involved, where he just stares him out until he's done.

Considering how this episode refers some elements of the Atom Eve special, I "accidentally" watched a few of the opening minutes. I had a feeling some of the members in the modern day Lizard League looked familiar.

---

By the way, the light novel/turn-based game Invincible Presents: Atom Eve is currently free to claim if you have an Amazon Prime account connected to a free Epic Games Account (and be playable there).

It'll last until March 21, where the games become free to claim on Epic Games Store exclusively (without the need for a Prime account) until the 28.

Edited by XMenMutant22 on Mar 15th 2024 at 9:43:03 AM

I had a chance to read some the issues that this episode adapts. So it was fun comparing.

Everyone has already figured out Shapesmith is a martian in this version, as opposed to them being clueless until the appearing ship forces him to come clean. Rae does a bit more before her death, as opposed to her male counterpart, who just threw himself at Komodo in a rage and got eaten. Immortal is a bit less of a douche here as well, and it's Black Samson who says just kill them all one by one. But for the most part it's pretty faithful.

Though it's important to note that in the comics Kate and Immortal are already married by this time, but that's relatively minor.

Glad to have this series back.

One Strip! One Strip!

The show sticks REALLY close to the comic, as close as it can get while also allowing for practical changes for formatting and simple improvements on the comic's weaker moments. Robert Kirkman has actually said a big part of how he's approaching the show is as a chance to retell his big breakout series with the experience and skill he's built up since he started it way back.

I saw this pointed out, man the power variety in the Guardians is terrible.

Way too many strong punchy guys, like Rex and Robot were the only long-rangers in the group. This especially evident in the operation here as barring Robot and Eve the only thing anyone else can do is throw a punch.

Amusingly despite being a reference to shrinking heroes like the Atom or Ant-Man, Shrinking Rae shows no use of gadgetry or anything, relying on pure physical ability offered by her shrinking powers. Which wound up backfiring horribly as it means she could do nothing to Komodo Dragon.

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 15th 2024 at 5:17:57 AM

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

Yeah. The Guardians definitely need to branch out. Not having a wider variety of powers in their membership screwed them with both fights we see. While the stronger members couldn't be infected, their lack of options for killing Sequids beyond with our bare hands meant they would have been overwhelmed eventually.

And the ground team had even less options once Kate went down. In fact, the Invicible Universe doesn't really seem to be a universe of Combo Platter Powers or Flying Firepower. There are a few like that, but not many.

The Classic Guardians had more variety than the new group. And they got wiped out.

One Strip! One Strip!

By a guy who ironically, was mostly just a punch guy.

Yes!

Though maybe that says something about the quality of powers in Invincible.

Yeah, more wide ranging powers are useful, but sometimes, punching hard works.

Though lets also remember that in both versions, Omni-Man used the element of surprise when he took out the Guardians too.

So he punched hard in the dark.

Edited by HandsomeRob on Mar 15th 2024 at 6:28:38 AM

One Strip! One Strip!

The setting is overall a bit more simplistic in how powers work.

As mentioned with Shrinking Rae she doesn't use any cool gadgets or anything. Like Atom and Ant-Man are famously geniuses who use their smarts and ingenuity to come up with nifty stuff themed around their shrinking abilities. Meanwhile there isn't any indication that Rae is particularly intelligent with Robot being their sole smart guy.

And most of the Guardians don't have much have extra utility powers or weapons like say Aquaman's trident and his fish communication in conjunction with his super-strength.

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 15th 2024 at 6:26:48 AM

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

Yeah, in general, Invincible doesn't go for fancy and super-varied powers like Jojo or X-Men. Fights are very directly physical in nature (remember that Dragon Ball Z was a major inspiration) and powers tend to be picked based on how they play into that.

The comic actually notably had a bit of Early-Installment Weirdness with this that resulted in a lot of the Earth-based heroes and villains really falling behind in terms of power levels because they tended to be given more "classic" superpowers that weren't at all suited to the DBZ-style fights that the series settled into; as the comic went on, characters more and more were designed to function in that kind of environment or got training arcs/power-ups that helped them out (e.g., Allen's Zenkai Boosts or Eve perfecting her powers).

Shrinking Ray was an example of that, with later issues having Kirkman actually engage in a bit of Self-Deprecation mocking how Ray was becoming kinda useless because he didn't have any particular strong powers beyond shrinking, which wasn't very good for offense and ultimately led to his death by making it easy for Komodo to munch him.

The show generally is making a concerted effort to avoid that early problem and balance power levels so that the Earth characters don't start to feel irrelevant next to the space ones, especially the Viltrumites.

It gets pretty egregious since magic and demons exists, yet there apparently aren't any Doctor Fate or Zatanna equivalents of hard-hitting mages. Its a consequence of the setting's concept of Omni-Man and the Viltrumites being the end all be all of power-levels.

Amusingly whenever a DC story that goes "Ahaha Kryptonian stomps all" thats usually considered bad writing as the idea of having Superman and Kryptonians as this unstoppable apex race is a rather uncreative usage of the setting's mythology.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

The lack of more flashy powers does serve to make fights way more brutal instead of cool.

Disgusted, but not surprised

That's a big part of why there isn't an emphasis on flashy powers. Having fights generally boil down to brutal fistfights with DBZ strength fits in with the series' themes of how brutal super battles would be in real life.

I think Eve is the character I wish they would explain a bit more. Like what she can and cant do.

From what I understand she can change anything into anything else on a molecular level, with the sole exception being that she can't directly transmute living beings, and even that's only a limit because of a mental block.

And yet... she mostly seems to use her powers for shields and energy blasts and flight. I feel like she should still be a god even with the mental block. Like, in the special she turned some thugs' masks into metal to weigh them down to the ground. I feel like she should be doing more stuff like that but she doesn't.

It sounds like she should be Doctor Manhattan only without his ability to just make people explode. She should be turning bullets into steam, guns into snowflakes. all that jazz.

Edited by GNinja on Mar 16th 2024 at 8:04:32 AM

Kaze ni Nare!

Unlike Manhattan she is limited by her ability to focus and reaction times. When dealing with a bullet in flight she'd need to pinpoint it for a transmutation - or she can create something in a fixed place that isn't going anywhere and will work against multiple bullets.

Yeah. Her biggest issue is being fast enough to change a thing.

It might happen once or twice in the middle of a fight, but for the most part, she's better off either creating a forcefield around herself or others, or changing into a twinkie or whatever before the other dudes know she's even there.

Manhattan seems to be much faster in terms of reacting (he's stated he can even see the future, right? Ozymandias had to jump through a lot of hoops to keep him from knowing about his plan until it was too late).

One Strip! One Strip!

Still don't see how Killcannon works as her main foe since she could turn his arm into a pepperoni.