By Draven Copeland, Editor-in-Chief
It’s been a great couple of years to be a comic book/superhero fan. Even while the giants of the industry, such as Marvel and DC, have been struggling to maintain their foothold on the massive audience this genre of content has gained over the past decade, TV shows based on lesser-known adult comic series like The Walking Dead and The Boys have garnered recognition and fanbases of their own.
My personal favorite of these new(er) projects is, of course, Invincible. Major spoiler warning for the first season of the show – seriously do yourself a favor and go watch at least that much for yourself – and I’ll also be discussing some character development that occurs in later seasons. I’ll try to be as vague as I can for those that haven’t seen them yet.
Based upon the adult comic book series of the same name written by Robert Kirkman (the same guy that created and wrote the entirety of The Walking Dead comics), Invincible is the story of Mark Grayson, a high school senior and son of the most powerful man on the planet. Because of his alien heritage on his father’s side, he rapidly grows in strength after hitting a sort of superhuman puberty and begins training to join the many superheroes of his universe to take down cartoonish super-powered criminals throughout the world.
But, at the end of the first season, there is a major twist: his father, known as the hero Omniman to the public, had actually been sent from the fascist Darwinian empire of his homeworld Viltrum to prepare Earth for its future subjugation under Viltrumite reign. Being the strongest beings in the known universe, the Viltrumite Empire offers protection from other alien forces to the planets they conquer… the only problem is they aren’t asking for the planets they choose. They’re taking them one way or another.
Here is where things get really interesting: because of Mark’s connection to Earth, and in large part because of the influence of his human mother, Mark fights back against his father when he realizes the truth, losing horribly and being beaten within an inch of his life before Nolan/Omniman flies away into the far reaches of the galaxy, choosing not to kill his son because of empathy uncharacteristic of Viltrumite warriors.
Now that I’ve completely spoiled the main arc of the first season, let’s start actually talking about it. Every member of Mark Grayson’s family begins as a product of their upbringing, and the influence that they all have on one another is the main crux of the show, especially its first two seasons.
Nolan, a.k.a. Omniman, is an alien warrior that will live for thousands of years, raised on violence and apathy for anyone less powerful than himself or the ideology of the Empire. Despite this, Debbie, Nolan’s human wife and loving mother to Mark, is one of the strongest characters in the show; obviously not in physical strength, but in emotional strength. She is raised on hope, love, care, and, most importantly, the belief that domination of others justified solely by difference in power is not self-loving but self-destructive, as it destroys emotional relationships and leaves the conqueror lonely in the end (which is demonstrated later in the show as Omniman grows emotionally).
And then, there’s their son, Mark, a.k.a. Invincible. His superhero name is one of the biggest ironies of the show, as he is physically and emotionally beaten to a pulp damn near every episode… seriously, it’s a running joke among fans of the series at this point. His choice to defy his father at the end of the first season is one of the biggest moments in the entire show, and was what inspired me to write about it; he’s not defending the people of Earth only because he thinks it’s the right thing to do, he is willing to lay down his life consistently throughout the show because he is often the only person that could even put up a little bit of a fight against his father and his people, and he’d rather do his part in stopping the death of the human race than join the Empire.
As multiverse variants of Mark appear later in the show, we discover that the Mark in our universe is the only one to make this choice. All other Marks in all other timelines become extensions of the Viltrumite Empire either before or after fighting their father, giving in to apathy and mercilessly killing any humans that stand in their way. What makes our Mark any different? His connection to his mother and the love that she shows to him. Because of her influence, he rejects the inherently masculine power fantasy that all other versions of him give in to, to the point that he nearly dies in his battle against his father in his attempt to save humanity.
Nolan is also largely influenced by his feelings for Mark and Debbie; having settled down and lived a human life for 18 or so years out of the thousands he’d lived prior and thousands he has left to live, he finds peace and pleasure in a world where people care for one another, despite himself and his lifelong indoctrination into the Empire. His decision not to kill Mark and abandon Earth seems like a small gesture after he uncaringly slaughters hundreds of civilians just to prove his point of superiority to his son, but it is actually a complete rejection of the values of the Empire and is seen as treasonous, with the punishment of death by execution. The love that he was shown by Mark, even when he was about to be kill him, affects Nolan in a way he isn’t prepared for; the empathy he learned from the family he had even for such a relatively short period of time changes him so strongly that he is, like his son, also willing to die in the process of rejecting the ideology of his father.
All of this because of Debbie. This is why I’ve always seen her as one of the strongest characters in the show, because her influence of true love for the people in her life changes the literal course of the timeline; once again, every other known universe ends either with Mark’s death or his assimilation to the Viltrum Empire. Although she goes through major trauma throughout the series as she sees her husband commit some of the most horrendous terrorism put to screen and her son constantly in a state of near-death trying to save the world,while also attempting to find happiness for herself, she is the true hero of the story.
The influence that family members can have on one another to challenge concepts that have been passed down through generations is something that I’ve never seen explored so deeply, and in an animated comic-book superhero show no less. Even though all of this conceptual shit I’m talking about here is relatively under-the-radar when watching because of all of the other characters and plotlines going on, this understanding of the power we all have through our love for one another is something so traditional in the super-hero genre, yet so under-explored in this way. Even though he isn’t actually invincible, Mark is able to survive and become his own person because of the love he has and is shown, which is one of the most powerful things a person could have.
