This is the eighth and final in a series of episode reviews for the animated TV show Invincible, starting from the end and working backwards. See the overview here.
Last time the show was tidying things up in anticipation of the big… beginning?
And so the clock ticks back round to the midnight position. Here we are in the first episode, and handily (for the purpose of writing a series of reviews backwards) it is itself a mix of beginnings and endings. I was more surprised than anything by how little the scene of ultra-violence at the end of the episode can be called a ‘twist’. The comparisons to Watchmen have ultimately been thematic rather than direct as I’ve gone through the series, but I think there’s something here in how the episode plays out deterministically — from the moment we’re introduced to the Guardians of the Globe there’s a palpable sense of sand moving through the hour-glass. These are not our characters, they receive precisely enough characterisation so that we know their skill set and we vaguely empathise with them, and not a moment more. The fight scene itself is almost perfunctory, the result a foregone conclusion, happening as it does post-credits. This was all done 35 minutes ago.
There are the parts I didn’t anticipate, like the vague unease with which the Guardians treat Omni-man as their unofficial extra member. There’s some very effective cinematography making sure that Omni-man’s appearance on the White House lawn is a little bit off, a little bit tense. The Immortal, last seen dug out of a grave and howling Omni-man’s name, seems like a complete asshole in the minor interactions with him we see. At least in terms of Omni-man, however, he is correct — his naked distrust as he pauses to check that Omni-man is bothering to catch the airborne people he’s hurling is impossible to read any other way, even if we didn’t know the twist.
What is interesting is the sense, through the whole episode, that it’s Mark gaining his powers that has set this whole affair in motion. That Omni-man had plans long laid that have been brought into action as a result of needing to teach his son the Saiyan ways. It’s almost a shame this isn’t vocalised in the finale, unsubtle as the show is in most other ways. Puberty is a traumatic experience that can feel like it is completely destabilising the world around you — imagine if it really was. Omni-man, for his part, is not being very smart at all. His long-term plan for the child was clearly thought up around the time we see him give the puberty talk and little revised since; when he does speak the whole truth in episode 8, it’s an earlier Omni-man speaking. He can’t hold true to those principles himself any more, and ultimately doesn’t, flying off.
I wish there were more scenes with Debbie and Mark in the show, although to some extent what we get here sets the entire tone — there’s more of her in him than his father, and that’s going to make him completely unreceptive to the fascist rhetoric his father will pitch him with.
The Immortal’s distasteful persona is perhaps foreshadowing Rex’s participation in the New Guardians — and the general disfunction that that team will have in both their professional and personal lives. I don’t think it’s ever mentioned after this episode that Guardians HQ is in the side of a mountain; I’d been imagining a Justice League-esque Watchtower satellite this entire time. There’s some thematic purpose here — Cecil is notably fond of being able to place awkward people in subterranean pits to get rid of them, between the Guardian HQ, the prison where the cloners were being kept, and his sending the Rorschach demon back to ‘Hell’.
In the other direction, Mark pauses briefly to look over the city, enamoured with his newfound flight, and sits on the end of a crane in what is probably not a refence to Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, but that’s certainly what it brought forward for me. Tom Cruise’s character, a crane operator, is spatially mirrored with the invading Martian tripods in his position up high above the city, and through the film learns to care for his family rather than his oblique idea of ‘protecting’ them. Mark’s arc through Invincible is not dissimilar, though obviously the perspective is shifted. His father, Omni-man, actively tries to see the world from the perspective of the crane. Every time Mark tries to intervene from on high however, he comprehensively fucks it up.
Some final notes on the episode itself, I did have a little laugh realising the extremely hammy visuals of the Saiyan planet from episode 8 were a direct parody of the harmonious visions in this first one. Getting the blood out of those pure white bodysuits must be hell. And as metaphors go, Mark leaving a crator every time he lands is extremely on-the-nose — he will continue to do that, metaphorically or literally, all the way to the final episode of the season.
A small thing, but the connected cold opens in this episode and the next were extremely charming, another dead-on throwback to the style of serialised superhero cartoons like Batman: The Animated Series, the episode-local supporting cast who get painted in the broadest strokes — “I can’t connect with my son!”/”Thank God I’ve finally connected with my son!”. For a series which ultimately hinges on an argument about whether the lives of the ‘little people’ matter, those non-superhero types are phased out as the series goes on. As well, a welcome early appearance for Titan, the man with stone for skin from episode 5, who I liked so much that just seeing him here improved my impression of this one.
The act of watching the episodes backwards, arbitrary as it was, ended up highlighting the Watchmen comparisons more than anything. We started in episode 8 with Dr Manhattan leaving the earth, then wound back to episode 7 to see that the world’s most intelligent man poses no more threat than the world’s most intelligent ant. Then back to episode 4 where we see Rorschach leave his journal, and all the way back here in the first episode we have what is effectively the Comedian being murdered. As I mentioned in the write-up of episode 4, I think one of the modern developments in comic superheros is that all of the heroes, in their complicity with the state, are akin to the Comedian. And so here we are with them all dying like the Comedian. The only act of heroism we see the Guardians do is defending the White House lawn, casting them as stronger, more mobile versions of the mounted guns that here line the White House roof. We want Omni-man to be brought to justice for their murder, of course, but my prevailing thought as the credits rolled was ‘good riddence’.
I wasn’t expecting to like Invincible, but obviously in the end I did. This is maybe not that surprising — it’s pulling from DC’s animated series, which I was always fond of, and from Buffy which was also a strong influence on Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. Watchmen, as well, obviously. The gravity of Watchmen in this area is best captured by the decision to include a Rorschach character in the show, a role so unsuited to the modern-day setting that he had to be gratuitously shoved through a door halfway through the season. Overall, what struck me most was the way in which the show seamlessly integrates the kind of totalising military presence which has been made default by the Marvel movies, with shadowy state actors directing and influencing a crowd of superheros who are somewhere between private military contractors and celebrity influencers. In a world of near-universal surveillance, everyone is always watching the Watchmen.
I’m a little wary, rewatching the episode 8 ending montage, of where all this galactic nonsense is going to go. Seth Rogan’s character seems to me like a harbinger of some kind of eternal space liberalism, where we fly away from Earth to find out while we might be under threat from the space facists, there’s a well-meaning group of participants in space republic who, while they may be inefficient, mean well and want to help out. I’m worried that it will turn out that for all its mooted cynicism, this will be another world where there’s always a bigger parent to cry to.
But accordingly, and in final conclusion, I award the show the highest honour I am capable of bestowing: I’d probably watch a second season.
Final ranking, from best to worst:
Evidently I preferred the second half of the season, though that might just be a necessary outcome of having a bunch of tedious world-building to get out of the way. That said, I certainly managed without it. Ultimately #6 was the only episode I’d consider bad outright, with #5 and #8 the obvious standouts.
