Invincible
I’d fallen into a comic book drought over the past few months and was starting to feel like an actual adult. Then on the recommendation of friends I read the first few trade paperbacks of Invincible the day after Christmas. Suffice it to say that I now own all the trade paperbacks of Invincible and am close to having read them all:
Invincible is based on an idea that’s quite original in its very banality — it’s a super-hero comic. And sort of a super-hero comic without a twist. It’s just a new super-hero comic with characters you’ve never read before, inhabiting a universe you’ve never visited before. The concept is really brilliant in its simplicity. People like super-hero comics and they read them all the time but the existing DC and Marvel books tend to feel stale. So why not write new ones? Well I think the answer is that it would be hard to do well — but it’s done very well here. If you like super-heroes and aren’t reading Invincible, add checking it out to your list of resolutions.
36 Responses to “Invincible”
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January 1st, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Also, for the uninitiated, japanese and korean manga have been the best thing going for a long time now. Certainly better than the majority of US-produced work. Check it out.
January 1st, 2009 at 12:42 pm
DC, that’s probably an oversimplification – the manga industry produces as much mindless fan service as Marvel and DC and the like, and there’s a lot of stellar work being done in American comics (particularly via Fantagraphics, Drawn & Quarterly, First Second, Oni, etc.). That said, I’d definitely recommend series like Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service or Planetes, or Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha, to pretty much anyone.
Matthew, have you read Kirkman’s zombie comic, The Walking Dead? My mother, who is almost 60, is now 500 pages ahead of me in that series. If he can hook her, he’s definitely doing something right.
January 1st, 2009 at 12:54 pm
I was a devoted reader of the series up until around issue 50 (yes, got them as single issues, not trades), but I think it started to feel like it was stuck in a rut story-telling wise. There’s a certain point where the continuity builds up and it’s no longer quite as friendly to new readers, and I think Invincible has about reached it. I’d like to see more of the Brian K. Vaughn thing (in both Y and the still on-going Ex Machina — are you reading this one, Matt?) where he has a set end point. One can then write a spin-off that can have the previous comic as its own sort of background continuity grace note, but be its own thing, if one wants.
I guess Busiek is still doing this in Astro City, with a shared setting but otherwise unconnected or only very loosely connected stories.
In any case, it’s true that good, new continuity-free comic book heroes aren’t all that common right now (technically, Invincible isn’t quite like this either — it’s loosely in the same universe as Savage Dragon and some other Image characters — but it’s more of a grace note than something you need to pay attention to). If I had a recommendation along these lines (besides, perhaps, Ex Machina), it’d be Peter David’s Fallen Angel. Fresh setting, almost entirely fresh characters, and an interesting concept and story.
January 1st, 2009 at 12:55 pm
The other great thing about INVINCIBLE is that things actually happen. Characters die, aliens invade, cities are wrecked, and so on. Marvel and DC comics seem stale because they are trapped by the twin needs of maintaining continuity across a zillion books and keeping the status quo the same. They’re never really going to kill Batman, or make Superman evil, or permanently fix Ben Grimm’s condition. No matter what they do with the Hulk, he’ll always revert to the big green guy who smashes stuff when he’s angry, and Magneto and Dr. Doom will always end up alive and acting like villains. They resemble Stretch Armstrong dolls – no matter how you twist and turn and pull and change things in a superhero universe, they always end up returning to their original form. Too many billions of dollars are wrapped up in keeping iconic characters the same. So you get giant mega-events like Civil War and Secret Invasion and Infinite Crisis where nothing ends up changing permanently or happening. They sprawl over a zillion (expensive!) issues, and always end with a damp squib – which is why they feel so stale.
The reason that non-DC/Marvel superhero books are so rare is that every attempt to make a new superhero universe (the early 1990s were full of them – look up Wildstorm, Image, Milestone, Comics Greatest World, Valiant, Legend, and about a zillion others. Crossgen, Tekno, and on and on.) is that the publishers invariably end up trying to make a knockoff of the Marvel/DC universe, with lines of books, back-continuity, a retrofitted “Golden Age”, and so on. Unfortunately for them, there are already two giant, sprawling superhero universes with deep roots, and nobody is really looking for a third (or fourth, or fifth), and they all fail. Most superhero publishers are trying to BE Marvel or DC, and become that sort of licensable pop culture property money factories. INVINCIBLE just wants to tell good superhero stories, unencumbered by decades of continuity and corporate brand-extensions, and that’s why it succeeds.
January 1st, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Invincible had a huge twist starting in the second trade paperback.
The other major difference it has is a huge amount of gore compared to normal comics.
January 1st, 2009 at 1:14 pm
@jeffk
I think the crash of Newtype/PiQ is pretty much an indication of the trash that anime/manga has.
I still couldn’t believe a year’s subscription of Newtype is more expensive than the Economist.
January 1st, 2009 at 1:55 pm
I wish Kirkman would find a writing partner, because I like everything about Invincible except the horrible dialogue.
January 1st, 2009 at 2:49 pm
“I like everything about Invincible except the horrible dialogue”
So true.
January 1st, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Jack said: I think the crash of Newtype/PiQ is pretty much an indication of the trash that anime/manga has.
I think that was caused by the lack of interest anime/manga fans have for printed media about their hobby; a great deal of anime fans, particularly those who are always trying to get the newest stuff, get their news through the internet, the same way they get anime episodes or manga scanlations.
It’s no fun to buy a magazine just to read “news” about series that finished airing three years ago.
January 1st, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Also, for the uninitiated, japanese and korean manga have been the best thing going for a long time now.
Barf.
January 1st, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Just in case anybody was wondering what was meant by Juicebox Mafia . . .
January 1st, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Okay so Matt needs a little bit of help…
Well, Invincible gets bad around issue 50, previous comment is right about that.
As far as things Matt would want to read…
Get:
Black Lagoon. Manga is close to Cowboy Bebop in style and quality. Subtly philosophical–not matrix monologue style, but in conversational asides. Lots of bullets.
The Boys. Police of the Superheros. Very fun, Anti-PC in a non racist/sexuality way. Can be sexist. Alternate fun, malice, sweetness, and shock. Lots of sex.
Freak Angels. Post Apocalyptic. Themes of rebuilding. Pretty if spare art, lots of mystery in character and plot. If it ever *really* got going, probably would be a very big world. Lots of purple eyes.
Maintenance. Cheap fun of janitors to the supervillians.
Gunnerkrieg Court. Harry Potter sortalike of Freak Angels. Similar theme of very big world under the covers.
that’s good enough for now. There hasn’t been a great number of genuinely worthwhile comics started in 2008.
January 1st, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Re: #10, the sad glut of “stale” US comics. Clearly, the US market helps to create the problem…
I could make the same remark about sad, stale, US elected officials, but that doesn’t dissuade me from remaining interested, either.
January 1st, 2009 at 4:09 pm
MattY, for the uninitiated, perhaps you could tell us something about the comic and explain what is good about it other than mentioning that it’s a superhero comic set in an independent universe.
January 1st, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Transmetropolitan, rather.
January 1st, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Transmetropolital and Preacher if you haven’t read them, are great American graphic novels. Warren Ellis wrote them both.
January 1st, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Dr. McNinja
January 1st, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Garth Ennis wrote Preacher.
Also, I’ve been quite enjoying the archive collections of Paul Chadwick’s Concrete.
January 1st, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Isn’t Image comics still around, with Spawn and whatnot?!
January 1st, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Yes Image is around…they publish Invincible.
I’ve don’t understand the appeal of Invincible. I read the first 25 issues last month. At no point was I ever excited about reading the next one and finding out “oooh, what happens next?” Actually it was unoriginal and dull…Mark usually punches stuff then flies away, never trying to find out what happened in the first place. And I really hate books that trickle out a sub-plot one or two pages at a time over a span of a dozen issues.
You want good comics? Planetary and Hellboy.
January 1st, 2009 at 6:45 pm
Really hope you’ve given Kirkman’s other masterpiece “Walking Dead.”
If you enjoyed the “new superhero universe” of Invincible, please be sure to check out Bendis’ Powers, particularly “Who Killed Retro Girl” and the “Sellouts”.
Manga certainly serves a purpose, but is far too often formulaic, and/or totally inaccessible.
January 1st, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Yeah, Invincible is pretty good. I agree with whoever said it’s starting to get too bogged down with its own continuity though.
The new Buffy comics are pretty worthwhile. Very true to the tone of the show, if you were into it.
January 1st, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Oh how I loved Kirkman’s Irredeemable Ant-Man.
January 1st, 2009 at 11:18 pm
I followed the Image line pretty close for a while when they first came out (before I ended up in prison which stalled that). I really liked the Liefeld artwork and the massive numbers of new superheroes and villains and the unabashed action orientation. Eventually they ran out of steam pretty much, however.
As for killing off characters, the various X-Men comics have done that periodically, although the characters tend to be more minor than major.
The problem with killing off characters is obvious – a certain percentage of readers LIKE almost any character. Why alienate some of your readers just to be “cool” or because “the story demanded it” (stories don’t “demand” anything – the writer does)?
The Terminator series avoided that problem slightly by “killing” Cromartie, only to morph him into “John Henry”. Garrett Dillahunt gets his acting contracted episodes and probably by end of season two, he’ll be eliminated from the story line completely. But despite Josh Friedman’s contention that killing a “major” character from the show this season was required by the story line, he ended up not really doing it – unless someone else gets knocked off by season’s end, which is still possible.
Lately I’ve been ignoring both Marvel and DC (was never that big a fan of DC anyway) and comics in general – need to spend my money on computer hardware.
Right now, I’m waiting for the “Watchmen” movie and the “Wolverine” movie. In fact, I’m waiting for “Wolverine 2″ because Hugh Jackman says he wants to do the whole story arc of Wolverine in Japan – that should be killer if done right.
January 1st, 2009 at 11:57 pm
A good superhero comic is never about the powers. It’s about the people. Each revolution in comics has come about because a fresh perspective on the relationships between the characters, their loved ones, and the rest of the world has been brought to us. Every time it grows stale, it gets launched again, from Siegel and Shuster to Stan Lee to Warren Ellis.
Marvel was brilliant to launch the Ultimate Universe, rebooting everything with new perspectives and modernizing origins. DC should do the same instead of putting a new word before or after “Crisis.”
January 2nd, 2009 at 3:37 am
Everyone knows French comics are the best…
January 2nd, 2009 at 10:44 am
My favorite new comic is The Klesmerizer. It’s not very popular though, being written entirely in Yiddish.
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