So here’s one of two superhero properties I never got around to reviewing, but fascinated me so much that I couldn’t help but give some late thoughts on them. One of them is Invincible, the Amazon streaming cartoon adaption of the hit Image series. Creator Robert Kirtman is also responsible for haunting stories like The Walking Dead among other things, so just as a superhero show, it’s as bloody and bombastic as you’d want from something like this. But its plot progression and how the main threat is revealed kept reminding me of another popular crimefighter who doesn’t have any superpowers, unless you count “understated deduction ability” as a supernatural skill.
The show details the exploits of the title hero Invincible, played by Steven Yeun who’s trying to fit his newly developed powers with his high school life as Mark Grayson, the teenage son of legendary hero Omni-Man who’s voiced by J.K. Simmons (he hides as Nolan Grayson, a travel author in his civilian life). When a popular superhero team called the Guardians of the Globe are found brutally murdered, Mark is recruited into a brand new version of the Globe team, battling supercriminals and alien invasions alongside the cocky Rex Splode (Jason Mantzoukas), fellow super-schoolmate Atom Eve (Gillian Jacobs), a robot named, well, Robot (Zachary Quinto), the multiplier Dupli-Kate (Malese Jow), Black Samson (Khary Payton) and Monster Girl (Grey Griffin, Kevin Michael Richardson when she transforms).
But the Grayson family’s home life isn’t exactly as rosy as it seems on the outside though, because there’s increasing tension in the house following the deaths of the Guardian team- which probably has something to do with the fact Nolan is the one who gruesomely killed them. Nolan’s wife Debbie (Sandra Oh) and government operative Cecil Steadman (Walton Goggins) start falling down a rabbit hole as they investigate Omni-Man’s possible involvement in the murders, and their findings connect to Nolan’s past on the planet Viltrum, which also ties into Mark’s development.
Now I’ve noticed much of the discourse around Invincible’s story is how it utilizes a “dark Superman” trope with Omni-Man, and it seems to be pretty well received in spite of a recent wave of video essays where people talk about being tired of and bored with the Evil Superman trope. Just for context, I’m fine with it when it doesn’t feel like the dominant Superman portrayal, and unfortunately, I do feel as if it may be a bit overdone in some ways between the recent Injustice games and how he’s been depicted in the recent DC features.
Even though DC’s played with various versions of Superman gone wrong through their history (like being a government killer in Dark Knight Returns, getting twisted by Stalinism in Red Son, or if not that they’d had Superman battle evil dopple-gangers like Bizzaro, the Cyborg Hank Henshaw and Superboy-Prime), DC and WB recently have gone into overdrive in trying to “subvert” Supes so hard that the hopeful original version is starting to stick out more.
And that’s not to say anyone’s wrong for liking the darker Snyder version or appreciating well-written villains like Homelander on the Boys, to each their own. But I personally do lean towards the kind of Clark Kent you’d see in Superman and Lois, where John Henry Irons is surprised by this new Superman being nicer and so different from the mean one in his universe.
I think the frustration comes from how Warner Bros. kinda has taken their eye off of the more traditional Superman for a while, because they’re afraid he could be too hard to relate to. So Invincible’s first season benefits from Mark himself serving as the show’s true Superman representative through his humanity, as he’s incredibly heartbroken whenever he fails to rescue someone, unlike his stoic super-father who’s basically seen everything.
What makes Invincible’s spin on its own “evil Superman” unique is the gradual buildup and more subtle approach it takes with its material. There’s almost a “Columbo Formula”- like element to how the mystery unfolds. To tell the truth, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d watched old episodes of the show as an influence.
What is that formula, exactly? For one, many villains on Columbo committed their misdeeds because they felt morally justified in some way. They’re bad but still admirable people, like a popular wine critic who broke bad because he wants to save the family business. Now Invincible’s main crime is on a far bigger, way gorier scale than just wine, but the writing structure here is similar in how Omni-Man is convinced he’s working towards a greater good- and also in that most Columbo stories, the mystery moves backward. The audience already knows who committed the crime, i.e. that Omni is the one who attacked the original Guardians of the Globe. This first season details our main heroes piecing together what actually happened, and the surprising truth as to why.
Heck, the way in which Mrs. Grayson will go over evidence she stumbles on, how the demonic sleuth Damien Darkblood (played by Clancy Brown) tries to get the truth out of Nolan, whenever Cecil reaches these regretful conclusions, it reminds me of something you’d see in a Columbo plot. (It also doesn’t help that Darkblood’s wearing the same kind of trenchcoat.)
Throughout this series, multiple characters pick apart Nolan’s arguments the same way how Columbo would comb over the villain’s defense and show the audience how it didn’t make any sense. There are parts in old episodes where the bad guy will react in a certain manner to give themselves away, and J.K. Simmons gives a pretty chilling but still charismatic performance as Omni-Man has little “tells” where it seems like he’s going to lose control but doesn’t (credit also goes to the animation crew). This makes it all the scarier when everything finally does come to light.
So all of that’s going on while Mark struggles to adjust to life as Invincible, balancing out his new duties and abilities alongside spending time with his best friend William (Andrew Rannells) and his girlfriend Amber (Zazie Beetz). I’ll admit there were some parts where I felt Amber was being a bit hard on Mark given all of the obligations he had to meet, though I do understand how much the character values honesty in her relationships.
Nevertheless, he’s still got to rescue them from killer cyborgs and other superhuman threats, in action scenes that turn up the gore factor in surprising ways even with red-soaked comic IPs like Deadpool, Suicide Squad, and The Boys being so popular. Even with the clean animation style, there were parts where I was still cringing, probably because of the well-drawn expressions adding to the shock factor. So yeah, you might want to take the kids out the room before streaming this.
A lingering issue I had is how the show tries to cram in as many characters as possible, and even with roughly eight hours of runtime to work with it still feels excessive at points. Some of the side stories, like Robot’s quest to develop himself a new body with the Kevin Michael Richardson-voiced Mauler twins’ help, the henchman Titan (Mahershala Ali) trying to break from the grip of Jeffrey Donavan’s auto-tuned voiced crime lord Machine Head (because he’s got a machine for a head, you see), and Eve’s focus on natural disasters over beating people up are fine. They don’t derail how good the core plot with the Grayson family is, but I did get a bit let down by how thin some characters’ development came off since everyone’s scrambling to get on camera.
That’s a mild problem with what’s generally a smart and provoking superhero show that adds some fascinating approaches and ideas to an often crowded genre. Partially because of Yuen’s, Oh’s and Simmons’s performances (Goggins as Cecil I felt was also very good), Invincible manages to be compelling even while giving away its main mystery in the pilot episode, as the tension comes from the audience knowing more than some characters and that once they find out, everything is going to hit the fan and hell’s going to break loose.
Rather than just being guts-splattered and intense for the sake of it though, it’s a show that has a moral intelligence and sense of empathy to balance those factors out, so I can gladly recommend it to people looking for a strong family drama or who want to see a good comic adaption (as long as they’re over 18).
Oh, just one more thing- if you’d streamed it yourself and if you loved it, hated it, or were just in-between, tell us what you thought of it at FAN’s social media outlets on Twitter and Facebook!