SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for the Season 3 finale of “Invincible,” and comic storyline it adapts.
It’s another installment of “Rank Amateur Pretends He Knows Things”, with your host, me.
I cannot and will not be reviewing Invincible, nor do I know anything about Conquest and what his deal is. He’s not the one who raped Mark. I have not read the comics and I have not seen the show for the same reason I’m not a fan of Skybound’s Transformers comics. They’re too violent, too bloody, too dark for my tastes. This does not speak to their quality, it speaks to my tastes in comic and animation. The only Robert Kirkman work I really enjoyed was Super Dinosaur, and sadly that was cut short and given a cartoon that didn’t live up to the comic. I am not protesting anything here.
I did, however, find Kirkman’s latest interview with Variety in a surprising move of treating an animated series like any other series. I don’t expect that from Hollywood and Variety is so tied to the Hollywood culture “shill” is an understatement. It’s a trade magazine primarily for people in the industry and those fascinated by it. I am not here to trash anything he said. I didn’t see anything necessarily wrong. On the other hand, that doesn’t mean I completely agree with his statements.
The interview in question is a discussion about the third season of Invincible on Amazon Prime, adapting a fight between Invincible and Conquest, the latter upset that Mark decided to remain the superhero his father pretended to be. The beat down sounds extremely gory, and Bounding Into Comics, where I found out about this because Variety‘s newsletter through WordPress has been glitchy, shows the full article, and CONSTANTLY RUINS WHO WON THE MASKED SINGER WHEN WE CAN’T GET TO WATCH IT UNTIL NEXT WEEK BECAUSE WE’RE A WEEK BEHIND AND SO IS TUBI! Seriously, guys, when you ruin which costume lost, it’s still a spoiler! Also, why did the first group A character go home two weeks ago? Dad and I both agree [SPOILER] was a better singer than Space Ranger. Sorry, where was I? Oh right, I got a description of the fight and I don’t need to read or watch it. Which is good because I don’t want to.
What I’m focusing on is Kirkman discussing how he approaches the adaptation. Yes, Kirkman not only makes the comic but he makes the TV show, a rare example of the creator getting involved with the adaptation, which something more creators should do with Hollywood. The article also notes that the voices for Invincible and Conquest fought each other as other characters in The Walking Dead, and as Kirkman’s other hit it gets mentioned but is not part of the conversation. What is shows that he makes changes on purpose. Is that a good idea, though?
In the aftermath of the Invincible War, where Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun) had to fight evil versions of himself from different realities as they caused massive destruction on Earth, here comes Conquest: a grizzled, battle-hardened Viltrumite ready to fight.
So that’s what I know about the story, but this isn’t about the story, it’s about the comments. After the full recap of events, we get to the important stuff.
With Variety, creator Robert Kirkman discusses the Conquest fight, how that Darkblood scene could be teasing an unused storyline from the comics and when Season 4 of “Invincible,” which is produced by Kirkman’s Skybound Entertainment, may arrive.
This is a brutal fight between Mark and Conquest. Were you trying to outdo the Chicago battle from Season 1?
That was definitely a goal. We call it the Monaco sequence, where Conquest rakes Mark across the beach and city. It was supposed to be an advancement of the subway sequence. When I was writing that episode, I was very keenly aware that Nolan fight had become a high-water mark of the series and I wanted to try to elevate things as much as I could. We were trying to bring a new flavor to the series as well. Conquest is a much more brutal Viltrumite than Nolan. The Monaco sequence was a way to pay homage to the Nolan fight. With the back-to-back episodes of the Invincible War and Conquest, we wanted to give the audience a sense of, “Here’s what you could get from this show moving forward. You didn’t expect this, did you?” Just trying to try to up the stakes as much as we can.
I used to not have a problem with people trying to outdo themselves. Modern writers have ruined that for me, as have fans who complain that a series isn’t making the stakes bigger and bigger. Has Invincible save the multiverse and all of time & space yet in the comics?
Moving forward, is this a new era for Mark? We see him say that he’s going to kill anyone who threatens his family members at the end.
This is a guy who deeply regretted what he thought was the murder of Angstrom Levy because he felt like it was him becoming more like his father. That was something he was wrestling with for the majority of Season 3 and then became keenly aware of the fact that if he had actually murdered Angstrom, it would have prevented a ton of misery. He definitely believes that he killed Conquest. It shows that this guy’s learning. I think one of the fun things about this series is that Mark is young. Early on, I was seeing people agree with Cecil and think Mark was wrong at the beginning of this season, and, yeah, he is. He can be, that’s fine. I like the idea of a protagonist that is making mistakes, and a lot of people try to avoid that. They don’t want the audience to be against the main character. But I think that showing the naivete that Mark can have is important as he learns and grows from season to season.
I don’t know who Angstrom Levy is and I don’t care. This shows the biggest difference between myself and Kirkman from what I see. I don’t see heroes not killing as “naivete”, I see it as the heroes I prefer. Now maybe this makes less sense in Invincible’s world, but given how many people insist Batman kill criminals or even just the Joker I have my doubts. Again, haven’t read/watched it. Kirkman would create the kind of world that would force Mark to kill, even just to protect his family. This is a franchise with a very high body count. Now we jump ahead to what this commentary is about:
Conquest is way creepier than he was in the comics, especially the part where he blows a heart-shaped bubble at Mark in space. Were you trying to expand on his character at all from the comics, and will we learn more about him in the show?
When I write an episode, I always go through the comic and think about how I can make things more interesting. Because I’m writing myself, I feel like an extra responsibility. If I’m going to write the same thing a second time, I need to make it interesting for me and hopefully make it better for the audience. I was just trying to make Conquest as bizarre and compelling as possible. He’s a character that I really adore. He’s a ton of fun to write, and he wasn’t in the comic very much. If a character becomes popular at Marvel or DC, they bring them back over and over and over again until they are less popular. By trying to make “Invincible” something that celebrates traditional superhero storytelling but also tries to play against type, no matter how popular Conquest got, we’ve told his story. That’s all you get. There’s a lot left on the table that I would love to get to at some point. Because of that, you’ll see a lot more stuff with Conquest in the show.
Trailer to break the text wall. I don’t have any images of the characters.
Okay, so I’m going by the interview’s comments that Conquest is different from the comics, and I’m not sure how far. What I read is that he’s more creepy and that’s all I’ve got. The line that got my attention is “When I write an episode, I always go through the comic and think about how I can make things more interesting. Because I’m writing myself, I feel like an extra responsibility. If I’m going to write the same thing a second time, I need to make it interesting for me and hopefully make it better for the audience. I was just trying to make Conquest as bizarre and compelling as possible…”
That’s all well and good, and I don’t know what the fanbase had to say about the changes. I know they hated the changes made to Amber. Her race swap also came with a bad attitude (sassy black teen girl is all they can right even when they’re adults) and she was mad at Mark for putting saving the world over her charity event, then got mad the superhero kept his secret identity from her…even though she knew already who Invincible was because we can’t let the sassy black teen girl ever look stupid. Like the ever ongoing swipe at Lois for not getting Superman’s. So she came off as self-interested, chasting Mark when she knew why he wasn’t around and wasn’t going to support him because “you lied to me”. To protect you, his family, and be able to help others without you being a target by accidentally spilling the beans, even just about Omniman being his dad. You prove you can keep it, because you kept from him the knowledge you knew it, and still acted like you didn’t and Mark was the worst boyfriend ever.
That was a change from the comics. Supposedly that Amber had to be told, and was more supportive, but I’m going by second hand knowledge. The point is fans were happy with comic Amber and hated cartoon Amber. It’s like the changes made to Neil Gaiman’s Sandman before his hidden life came to light. The character Death, a peppy, albino, and rather thin goth chick, was replaced by a black girl who for all I know is still the sassy black teen because that’s usually what I see. If she isn’t, there was still a backlash. The recent statement that Snape in the Harry Potter TV series will be played by a man who looks less like the book’s description than Alan Rickman may well be supported by J.K. Rolling given that she’s all in on the representation swaps no matter how the people being swapped for feel. She also announced Dumbledore was gay not in the books but in an interview or Twitter comment. Changing your own character too much has repercussions because fans really liked what they saw in the comics and want to see that represented in live-action or even animated form.
Now a more interesting change (if I were a fan) comes next.
What is that Damien Darkblood post-credits scene teasing? We haven’t seen him since Season 1 and he wasn’t in the comics very much, so where did the idea to bring him back come from?
In the comics, he was never sent to hell. He was a great character that we loved from the first season. Clancy Brown’s portrayal of him was spot-on and so terrific. We always wanted to figure out a way to get Damian Darkblood back into the show, and then — gosh, do I want to spoil this? There’s a storyline from the comic that I never got around to doing. Every superhero story has some chapter where they go to hell and they fight the devil. It happens in DC and Marvel comics. It’s a big deal. I never got around to doing anything like that in “Invincible.” I kept getting sidetracked and there was never a good time. So it’s entirely possible that we may be doing something like that in the show, and that scene at the end of that episode is setting that up. Oh my God, and we got to work with Bruce Campbell. It’s the best.
He also said earlier that Conquest might have more story to him, despite his story being told in the comics. Fans aren’t usually happy to see changes to what they already read. There are necessary changes between comic and show, and maybe they needed to pad out the episode. Do fans want Conquest back, or is it a Black Adam situation where he was resurrected in the comics because DC wanted an opposite number for Captain Marvel (what Shazam originally went by before the New 52)? Maybe the fans want him. Fine. However, at some point the cartoon stops being an adaptation of the comic, which ended in 2018 so at least it wouldn’t screw up new comic stories and their adaptation, but it does mean future stories won’t be adapted properly or the cartoon universe will simply deviate too much from the comic.
On the other hand, using the opportunity to do a story you weren’t able to do in the comics might work as a filler. Or not. Ask manga fans about anime filler of their favorite adaptations (Naruto is often referenced as an example) getting a show-only filler arc when they’re trying to wait for the manga to get to that point in the magazines they run in so they can be adapted. Ask Game Of Thrones fans about how the TV show went downhill once the books no longer had material for them. There may also be a reason he couldn’t find the place to put that story in the comics. He had other ideas and while it might make an interesting tale (I’m not convinced EVERY hero needs to fight in hell as some rite of passage) make sure you can do it without looking the fans to “filler”.
Again, I don’t know what the response is to the current alterations. I’m going by history. Change too much, which is something Amazon Prime has quite the history of doing recently, and you risk losing your audience. Perhaps Invincible is doing it right, changing just enough to make it new for fans but keeping enough to make it familiar. You have the blueprint right there for how to make the show. Are the decisions bad? I don’t know because I don’t know either product. It’s more of a warning. You can only change so much before it becomes a different product, and modern Hollywood never seems to know when to stop changing, even when the creator is involved, except for One-Piece‘s creator being involved in the live-action adaptation of his work. Yeah, at least they didn’t insist this had to be live-action or you couldn’t depict the world properly. I just see comments that have ruined other works and even though this is not my kind of franchise…at all…I don’t want to see them make the same mistakes.
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