Donovan's Reviews > Invincible: Ultimate Collection, Vol. 1

Good, sometimes great, but still waiting for the "wow."

Kirkman has cleverly satirized and commentated on mainstream superheroes. And it's pretty awesome. The story follows Omni-Man (Nolan Grayson), Debbie Grayson, and their son Invincible (Mark Grayson), characters "like" Superman, Lois Lane, and a cross between Superboy and Nightwing. There's also commentary on the Teen Titans, Justice League, and common superhero tropes. It's fairly funny, entertaining, dramatic, sociopolitical, and actually very well illustrated, the story just isn't quite yet transcendental enough to be mind-blowing.

What works so well about Invincible is that the super-heroics are grounded in the ordinary. The Graysons have a home life: Nolan is often late for dinner, and he and Mark wash dishes and play catch. Mark has girl trouble and high school drama. Debbie is kinda bored unless her family keeps her company. It's not exciting, but it's familiar and relatable, and a surprising backdrop for a superhero story.

The superhero plot starts with a small time theft of video game systems, which is kinda boring, but then there are teen kidnappings and mall bombings and it gets serious rather quickly. (By the way, did you catch that Back to the Future reference...Twin Pines Mall?) Add to that the GIANT FUCKING TWIST about two-thirds through the book and Kirkman has indeed piqued my interest.

The illustrations and colors are pretty amazing here, definitely a selling point. The characters are a bit stylized. I mean, it's an indie comic, so don't expect that homogeneous in-house style you get from DC or Marvel. But the lines are clean, inks bold, colors bright. The color palette itself is interesting, because they're purposefully atypical from what you'd expect from superheroes. Even when the story dips, the artwork holds up.

So combine the bright artwork, ordinary home life, and the play on superhero stories and you've got Invincible. Full disclosure, it's slow to start. I think if Kirkman had started with the Guardians incident that would have gotten the ball rolling a whole lot faster, but fortunately the Graysons are pleasant to watch, particularly Mark who's that "I just discovered my powers" character. Midway through the book the story gets pretty exciting, and by the end I definitely wanted to read the second collected volume. I'd say if you like superhero stories, if you don't take them too seriously, if you like social commentary and metafictional stories, you should pick this up. It's pretty great.

A Short Note on the Deluxe Edition...

While the artwork and paper are well done, I'm not super impressed with how this book is put together. It could be that it's twelve years old and Image has come a long way in quality. The dust jacket is bright and clean but easily marred. I bought a used copy and had to clean the hell out of it. The cover is sturdy but plain back cloth. The best thing is the thick semi-gloss paper. It's great! The colors are nice and bright. But the glued binding is absolutely terrible. Tight, gutter loss, and this weird thing happens where the pages kind of bend and unbend at the gutter. It makes for less than pleasant and somewhat noisy reading. So I'm wondering if they've fixed or updated these issues with later printings. Hopefully. It's not the worst edition ever. But with the binding and plain cover it's less than impressive for the price.