Invincible
Created by Robert Kirkman
Based on Invincible by Robert Kirkman, Ryan Ottley & Cory Walker
Directed by Jeff Allen (supervising)
Voices of Steven Yeun, Sandra Oh, J. K. Simmons
Composer John Paesano
Production Executive producers Simon Racioppa, Robert Kirkman, David Alpert, Catherine Winder, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg
Producer Maude Lewis
Running time 42–48 minutes
Production companies Skybound, Skybound North
If you’re smart, you won’t close your browser when the ending credits of episode one roll. There’s still about seven minutes run time left, and those seven minutes will leave you slack-jawed and wondering just what the fuck it was you just saw. It’s in those few minutes that Invincible transitions from a very good, surprisingly sophisticated and extremely funny animated show into something both darker and more brilliant.
I was first attracted to the show when I saw it was voiced by Yeun (Steve Palchuk from Trollhunters), Sandra Oh, the title character in Killing Eve, and JK Simmons, the great character actor who has had more fantastic roles than I can count.
After that, it was fun identifying the other stars in the show: Sonequa Martin-Green, Michael from Discovery. Most of the cast from the Walking Dead are in this, and their characters rapidly become unwalking, barely recognizable dead by the end of the first episode. Zachary Quinto (Spock) is in this, along with Seth Rogen, Mark Hamill, and Michael Dorn. Mind you, those are just the ones I recognized while watching. There are a raft of other stars.
Omniman is a superhero from a planet, Viltrum, in which everyone has Superman-like powers and which exists only to help the rest of the universe. Nolan Grayson (Simmons) has been assigned to safeguard Earth. He meets and marries an Earthwoman (Oh) and they have a son, Mark (Yeun). A junior in high school when the story begins, Mark has just developed superpowers inherited from daddy, and comes to name himself Invincible.
Now, in addition to the usual high school concerns about girls and grades, Mark is dreaming of joining his dad, along with the Guardians of the Globe (a very thinly disguised Justice League of America) in fighting evil.
But then the Guardians are attacked, all are killed, and Omniman seriously injured.
And thus our story begins. A new Guardians team are assembled from a Teen Titans cognate. The head chief of what is basically an FBI/CIA cross describes the new team as “a real shitshow.” He looks much like Clint Eastwood might if Clint made the mistake of mouthing off to the Hulk.
Oh, did I mention the Daemon Detective? He’s kind of a Etrigan/Hellboy/Rorschach mashup who is investigating the attack on the first team.
The show will remind you of The Boys—more the comic original than the TV series—with a bit of Archer mixed in. The human characters have their human characteristics on full display, and as a rule they fail to impress the non-human characters—who, in turn, have their own foibles.
Excellent art, stellar animation and solid writing make this eight parter a very intriguing series. The first four of this weekly series are now on Amazon Prime.