Back Issues: "Invincible" #36-47

- by ReuBen DeBord, 18 November 2016

Hey there guys! You like it when I talk about comics from yesteryear, don’t you? Good! So in the past, I’ve talked about chunks of issues from the creator owned Image Comics series Invincible! And I’m going to do that again today. I’ll be talking about issues 36 through 47 of the series, collected in the Invincible Ultimate Collection volume 4. These issues are written and drawn by Robert Kirkman and Ryan Ottley, respectively!

So when I was talking about issues 14-24, I complained that Kirkman introduced way too many subplots all at once, and it took for-freaking-ever for any of them to actually amount to anything. Well, this group of issues is when most of them actually start to come back around and be important. Remember those weird zombie-robots Invincible fought before he even graduated high school? That finally gets wrapped up, and also leads to another subplot which will become relevant in much less time than it took for this to become important again.

​Then you have Mark’s muggle girlfriend Amber, who I haven’t mentioned in any of these articles before now because she didn’t feel important at all. Mark and Amber have been a couple since this series was in the single-digits, but I never got anything from her. 

Even though it’s almost 40 issues that she’s been hanging around, I couldn’t tell you anything she’s done except piece together that her boyfriend is Invincible, and then get upset every time he goes off superheroing. I know I’ve complained before that the book would sometimes put too much focus on Mark’s personal life and not enough on his superhero life. And when you get right down to it, Mark’s got a lot going on in his personal life. His buddy William, his mom going through her problems of losing a husband, a new kid-brother to be a mentor to, and a girlfriend to be a boyfriend to.

​If I’m being honest, even when I don’t like what this series does, it has done a really good job balancing most of those aspects of Mark’s personal life. It’s really just the girlfriend that I felt got the shaft. If you compare Invincible to one of his spiritual successors like Spider-Man or Buffy Summers, in the span of 40 issues (or 20 45 minute episodes, which would be roughly equivalent to 40 22 page issues), you would really get to know the hero’s love interest, and it wouldn’t get in the way of the actual story happening. But in Invincible, I never felt very attached to Amber. She was always in the background, and when they finally broke up, I didn’t much care. She almost felt like she was just filler because Kirkman knew he wanted Invincible to end up with Eve, but didn’t want them to be together right from the start.

​Then we have a big war with some aliens who overthrew their Martian warlords. Remember that subplot where the Astronaut got left behind on Mars? Yeah, all of that is coming back to the forefront for a few issues! But it’s a bittersweet moment because once again, Kirkman teases us with another development on this subplot that remains undeveloped for at least 10 issues. And when these weird alien things that overthrew the Martians are on Earth, there’s no reason for this subplot to remain inactive for so long. In 10 issues, these things should’ve overthrown a continent. Since Kirkman was able to finally get around to tidying up so many of these subplots he introduced some 20 issues previously, I’d have expected him to not get back in the practice of introducing a new development on a subplot and then leaving it dormant for a really long time.

We get a little bit of progression with Invincible’s half-brother, Oliver. Because he is half super aging bug person, he already appears to have the body of an 8 or 9 year old, even though he’s only been on Earth for less than a year. And while Mark’s powers bloomed when he was 17, this kid’s already able to fly. This doesn’t really amount to much in this volume, but it does become much more important in the next Ultimate Collection, so it’s important that you remember it!

Other than that, we get some development on a tip that Mark’s dad gave him the last time they spoke, which Mark believes is a way to defeat the Viltrumites. You see, Mark’s dad was briefly a science fiction author, and Mark discovers, via his Dad’s hint, that his Sci-fi books are embedded with hints on how to destroy the Viltrumites. Much like the development of Oliver getting super powers, it’s not really important now but it will be. When? Who knows. Maybe 29582958202 issues down the road.

You’ve also got Mark’s friend and fellow superhero Eve who wants to be Mark’s girlfriend, but Mark kinda bungles it becomes yet another subplot that takes longer to blossom than it really should.

Other than the Robot Zombies and the Martian invasion thing both finally getting wrapped up, the only other thing of note that actually happens here is that Invincible meets a female Viltrumite who tries to convince him to join the other Viltrumites, to no avail. So when he was initially given 100 years to prep the planet, now he has much less time. The Viltrumites could come at any moment to take the planet and kill Invincible. This feels huge, but it also feels like it’s setting up something that might be addressed in another 40 issues.

Overall, this group of issues is a mixed bag, for me. On the one hand, it is finally wrapping up some of the subplots it introduced forever ago, but at the same time, it’s introducing more subplots, and who really knows when those will get addressed again? Things are definitely happening, but it’s at such a slow pace that I’m not sure if I can congratulate this series for moving forward. It’s not as bad as 14 through 24, but it’s not moving as fast as 25 through 35, either.

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So those were my thoughts on this group of issues from Invincible! Look out for me talking about another group of issues sometime in the future! And in the meantime, keep it trashy, muties!

Tagged: comics, Back Issues.

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