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?
