This is the fifth 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 it was fathers, fathers, fathers in my favourite episode so far.
We have a Rorschach!
I was almost worried that after all my initial bluster about Watchman being the totemic work for this kind of project, that all we’d get is the vague allusions with Cecil observing Omni-man from his room full of monitors — the smartest man on the cinder-in-waiting. Now thankfully we can add to them the Demon, who I think I caught a glimpse of in the “previously on” in episode 5 — he’s Rorschach by way of Hellboy in design, and his character is somewhere triangulated between Rorschach, the Rorschach-inspired Question from Justice League Unlimited, and DC’s Etrogan the Demon. In terms of how he fits into the structure though, he’s pure Rorschach —tenaciously following the breadcrumbs on the unsolved murder of superheroes sponsored by the state.
And what’s fascinating is that both in this story and for this story, Rorschach must be exorcised — there is simply no room for libertarian heroics here. There is the liberal technocratic state, and there’s authoritarian fascism, and even when they’re at war they’ll happily team up and dispatch you to an unimaginable hell just to have you out of their hair. Rorschach had to pursue the Comedian’s killer because no-one else cared about the death of a washed-up old solider; the Guardians of the Globe however are actively managed assets, much like Omni-man himself. Cecil and his organisation will get to the bottom of who killed them simply as a matter of bureaucratic good practise and because everything that happens with the super-humans is managed by his team. Rorschach is superfluous and worse still, won’t play the game. So Cecil very efficient murders him.
Like Rorschach, the Demon leaves a journal behind for someone to continue his work — but when it gets opened in the next episode there’s very little actual insight contained within. At the end of Watchmen Rorschach’s testimony is capable of tearing down one man’s great lie. There’s no scope for the Demon to reveal Omni-man’s role in the killings to “the public” because there’s no reason for the public to care outside of the gossipy blogs we see Debbie skimming. There’s no trick being played on the people, just an internal struggle between two factions of state power — albeit one faction is concentrated in a single man. There’s no need to fool the entire system because the entire system is complicit.
Which brings me to my headline for this episode: the most outdated character in Watchmen in a post-Cold War world is the Comedian, because we now live in a world where it’s impossible to imagine that any super-powered being would be able to avoid becoming an agent of state violence. Many of our most popular fictional heroes volunteer — “we’d like to talk to you about the Avengers Initiative”. The heroes of Watchmen, flawed though they were, met up in a run-down apartment room to discuss teaming up over a pinboard. In Invincible they attend a clean, modern facility with a purpose-built combat chamber, at the leisure of a shadowy government alphabet agency. The Comedian was unique among the Watchmen in that he was the only hero — presented with the reality of what they were doing, policing rioters with violent force — who didn’t care that he was merely an arm of state violence. This was also Frank Millar’s brutal sketch of a Reagan-appeasing Superman in The Dark Knight Returns. Rorschach was a violent fascist but he was under no illusions as to the contempt he was held in by the police. Nite Owl may have been a cowardly fantasist who let his best friend get murdered by a God, but at least he was doing it all under his own power, with the state held at arm’s length. The Guardians of the Globe may as well have been a whole team of Comedians.
Beyond that, there’s the start of Mark’s relationship with Amber. I’d assumed their relationship would predate the start of the series, but no, it’s here — and in its inception he’s making all the same mistakes, fundamentally not treating Amber like another person but as a series of boxes to tick in any way necessary. Looks like this one was doomed from the off!
Elsewhere in teen relationships, I had somehow missed until now that “Rex”, Eve’s dickhead ex who her father was so enamoured with, is the man with the high red collar and indistinct powers on the Justice League satellite. I almost wish they were separate people, to give more of an openness to this “superhero community” they namedrop in the episode. He could fill in the stereotype of the kind of hero her father would approve of just by existing.
Olga, who we meet here for the first time, has an abominable Russian accent.
I’m in two minds about what the date sequence with Omni-man and Debbie is meant to portray. Is it meant to show us the true root of their relationship, that she taught him what it means to be a hero and he integrated it into his fascism? Or is he like Mark, fundamentally misunderstanding the point of the relationship, especially given his warped perspective of how long and intense it is?
The Mars sequence which dominates the main chunk of the episode is both yet more Dragonball indulgence, meeting the dusty Grand Guru of the Martians, and also another explicit reference to Justice League and DC generally, with the shapeshifting Martian race who just want to be left alone.
The notion of an unstoppable space empire, whose soldiers are so violent and destructive that tolerating a single one to remain on your planet spells global destruction, is some slightly wonky foreshadowing for where the next four episodes are going to go back on Earth — although Omni-man is slightly more well-dressed than the brain monsters. The whole thing resting on the Martian King not talking to Mark for more than five minutes about what exactly he knows about Mark’s race is a little contrived, however.
Robot status: more sinister, more creepy, we got the sneak peak of his true form that’s apparently hiding out in the back of a garbage truck. It’s a little unclear to me whether the subsequent events of the show with regards to Robot are meant to reveal that he had a weird-but-understandable motivation for all this creepy nonsense, or if it’s meant to be new levels of overall creepiness. I’m enjoying the show’s naked love of the big burly cloner guys though. Amoral pseudo-arms trader scientist strongman is an excellent combo, and from the way they’ve appeared so far even in episodes that don’t strictly concern them, I’m assuming they have a big role to play. “Cecil’s an idiot” is one of my favourite lines.
