Invincible – the story of a super-powered
teenager who discovers he’s descended from an alien race of enormous assholes
with incredible power – is approaching its 100th issue, and even though it
hasn’t inspired any insanely successful TV show, it has been comfortably
telling its story at its own pace.
Kirkman’s comics can be shambling, silly
and very, very predictable, but by God, the man has a work ethic, and he sticks
to the story he wants to tell, when other writers are distracted by new and
shiny things. And this perseverance can really pay off. Three or four trades of
the Walking Dead can climax in shocking fashion in one brutal moment, and
years and years of set-up and development can lead to unexpected rewards in
Invincible.
Or you could just skip most of it and get
straight to the point. That works too.
I read the first six or so trades of
Invincible a couple of years ago, thanks to the wonderful local library, and
they were pretty enjoyable. A pleasantly old-school comic, with clear, open and
cheerful art by Cory Walker and Ryan Ottley, that also takes some extremely
gory liberties with the human form as superheroes smash through bodies, sending
blood and guts flying everywhere.
Invincible’s main appeal – outside of these
intense action scenes that would pop up out of nowhere – is its main
characters. There was the occasionally painful Kirkman cliché - often involving
characters who run off in tears for plot reasons, only to stumble into
something REALLY HORRIBLE - but Mark Grayson is a genuinely likeable character
who always tries to do the right thing, with a vast range of goofy and powerful
background characters.
It was a pleasant read, even with those
insufferable book titles (They’re all eighties sitcoms! Hilarious!), but it was
also easy to let it slip away as more and more books came out. I lost track
after those first half dozen, but didn’t miss the comic that much.
And then, at least two years after I last
cracked open an Invincible book, I saw the fourteenth volume on the shelves of
the library. It’s called The Viltrumite War, and I quickly realised it was the
culmination of the main stroyline for Invincible, as everything finally comes
to a head, in an all-or-nothing drive to finally rid the universe of the cruel
and terrible Viltrumite race.
Even though I missed eight volumes of the
story, it wasn’t hard to follow what was going on. There were new characters,
and new alliances and all that, but it was easy to keep up with the general
play. I’m sure there are all sorts of story bits I just wasn’t getting, but all
the character dynamics were clear.
And it was incredibly satisfying. There
really is a huge amount of resolution, some balls-out superhero action, lots of
lovely little character beats, and one last little twist at the end. It
delivered on the promises first raised in the earliest issues of the comics, as
the story finally faces an inevitable oncoming storm.
I’ve actually enjoyed Bill Willingham’s
Fables comic more ever since it dealt with the whole evil empire, and moved on
with life. The final battle against the Big Bad came and went, and new
adventures and adversaries came along. It’s been accused of becoming a bit
pointless, but my favourite stories are always a bit pointless and my affection
for Fables has only grown over the past couple of years.
In a similar vein, I’m also glad that Invincible has not hung
up his groovy goggles, just because he defeated the ultimate enemy, because the
future is more unpredictable and uncertain, and that always generates good
drama.
I’ll try not to let eight books worth of
stories slip by before I check in again.
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