![]() ![]() More in depth reviews can be located by following the links. The first nine Invincible paperbacks are compiled within this compendium, in order Family Matters, Eight is Enough, Perfect Strangers, Head of the Class, The Facts of Life, A Different World, Three’s Company, My Favorite Martian and Out of This World. It supplies a consistency unavailable to the likes of Spider-Man and Superman. In well over a hundred issues since Ottley began pencilling, the only other artist to have contributed to Invincible is Walker, and then infrequently. This is coupled with an incredible work rate. Ottley loves a challenge, and is instinctively thrilled by seemingly impossible tasks thrown in his direction. The series actually works better when Ryan Ottley becomes the regular artist, although in his earliest pages there are a few wrinkles that were rapidly ironed out. ![]() He’s a talented designer, but with an odd quality to his faces, which are angular and blotchy, and while his layouts work, he’s not one for an excess of background detail to embed Invincible in his world. ![]() The first artist to work on the series was Cory Walker, who illustrates just under a quarter of the book. Probably more fun than any superhero series you’ve read since you were twelve. ![]() Be it the cloned Mauler Twins (genius hulks with a world-ruling agenda), Allen the Alien (cyclopean planetary protector) or Angstom Levy (constantly mutating mad scientist) he serves up the new or the inventively reconfigured time and again. Again, even long-seasoned superhero readers are going to encounter something different here. You can be pretty sure Mark’s going to survive whatever’s thrown at him, although there are occasions in volume two where that’s not a certainty either, but throughout the series and well beyond what’s collected here, anyone else is fair game for a premature demise or startling change.Īlso excellent is Kirkman’s creation of a super-powered supporting cast and villains. There’s no compulsion to ensure however much things may change, they essentially remain the same, and real progress occurs at a clip. One obvious enabling feature is Invincible not being tied to any franchise. We now know Robert Kirkman as a consistently inventive writer over several ongoing series, but knowing that and little more about Invincible still means anyone picking this up is due for some massive surprises even if they’ve read superhero comics since childhood. This isn’t unexpected as his father is Earth’s most powerful superhero, an equivalent to Superman, and it was predicted Mark would follow in his footsteps. When a big two comic says "nothing will ever be the same again" (naming no names Spidey editorial) you laugh, but when Invincible says it you believe it, and actually start worrying about the future of the characters involved.This weighty graphic novel begins with likeable teenager Mark Grayson, discovering he’s developing super powers. Everything I just mentioned about #51 speaks to another point I made in my review of the first compendium, how Kirkman can take those tricks and gimmicks the big two use, and actually incorporate them into the story in a meaningful and interesting way, that hopefully at the time did get new readers into the series, but also doesn't feel cheap or empty. It's a fun change that also ends up having a notable thematic meaning, with how the series takes a darker and more brutal tone (a shift that, unlike the blue and black suit, stays with the series for the rest of it's run). what's that? Mark has a new blue and black suit, huh? In comparison to the classic suit it's a step down, it just doesn't compare, but on it's own merits I do actually like the blue suit. There's a new tagline above the Invincible logo (that I used to start this review with), a flashy Jim Lee cover to celebrate the occasion, it's telegraphed as a new jumping point, Invincible now has a sidekick in his half-brother Oliver, currently going by Kid Omni-Man (it's a whole thing), there's a new colorist in FCO Plascencia and oh. So like I mentioned, that turning point for the series could not be clearer. ![]()
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