Invincible Viewing Thread (Spoilers)

[TristramEvans]

The first episode of season 2 dropped on Friday, a few months after the Atom Eve special. Which was pretty good.

New season is starting off strong. I liked how they played with the title credits convention from the first season. Seeing the worst case scenario from the PoV of alternate dimension Angstroms was a great way of showcasing the fear and mistrust that people feel towards Mark in the wake of his father's rampage. Things look to be getting worse this season, and I'm not sure how far into the series run this will take us (the plot was heavily condensed and streamlined in the first season - not in a bad way), but fellow readers will know what event might be the season finale here to try to top the shock value of the season 1 finale.

Anyways figured others here might want a thread to talk about it. I know Séadna was a fan, but think he's back on hiatus at the moment.

 

[Andrew J. Luther]

I’ve never read Invincible, but my son and I really enjoyed the first season and jumped on this as soon as it was available.

Unfortunately he won’t be coming home from uni for the next few weeks, so we won’t be able to watch the rest of the episodes until early December.

 

[TristramEvans]

Episode 2 was pretty fun. The mad scientist guy with strong anti-establishment beliefs is great FF by way of Venture Brothers classic Silver Age superhero fare, the Atlantis stuff was an entertaining Harryhausen-esque adventure, and the Cobra Commander/Serpentor pastiche with the Lizard League was hilarious.

The highlight of the episode for me was Shapesmith's attempt to pass himself off as a human. Reminded me of The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra.

Still kinda bored by Marc's personal life stuff; a "best friend" who he never interacts with, a GF that they made it very easy for comic book readers to not empathize with, and they can't let Marc and Eve get too close yet. Atom Eve's homelife drama is more interesting by comparison, and there seems like a more legitimate reason for her to be interacting with Marc's friends than Marc himself. Gillian Jacob's voice also gives me warm fuzzy feelings.

 

[Voros]

Enjoyed the first season, read the Wiki summaries of the series and yeah I hope that prune some of that back as the series progresses.

Haven't seen the second episode of S2 yet but liked the first one and the new super villain origin story is fun, really classic comicbook stuff.

 

[TristramEvans]

3rd episode was a rollercoaster, jumping from hilarious to heartbreaking, and a few gutpunches. It's nice that Amber has gone from toxic af in the first season to supportive, but it also kinda makes her bland. Peter Cullens voice is amazing as always, literal chills down my spine.

 

[TristramEvans]

The B story of Marc's mom coming to grips with the betrayal of her husband is getting a bit more screen time that I thought it needed, especially when contrasted with Marc facing Viltrumites for the first time. And not sure what we were supposed to take from the Atom Eve storyline.

But overall, still really good. They handled the complex emotional relationship between Marc and his dad well, their dialogue feels exceptionally natural. The Viltrumites were appropriately terrifying, as facing an army of fascist Supermen should be. The poor inhabitants of the world that Omni-Man tried to "help" were heart-tuggingly tragic despite looking like giant bugs.

I have a suspician that the series is dropping all these hints of ways to avoid one of the most controversial aspects of the comic as red herrings. The series already has a history of playing with the audience. The "Invincible" drops in this season's premiere episode was a blatant example. They know they need to do something to compete with the first season's first episode and finale.