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Invincible Season 1 Review

Invincible is an animated superhero series that premiered on Amazon Prime Video. The first season consists of eight 45-minute episodes.

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“These people are meaningless.

They’re cavemen without us“

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Seventeen-year-old Mark Grayson is just like every guy his age, except that his father is Omni-Man, the most powerful superhero on the planet. As Mark develops powers of his own, he discovers his father’s legacy may not be as heroic as it seems. I found this show strangely old-fashioned for better and for worse.

It is basically Superman but portrayed in a reverse fashion. A lot of mileage I got from the father’s turn into dark side, or dare I say reveal that he was always sinister. That resulted in that incredible finale that was so much fun and with heightened stakes that I really appreciated. The first episode that focused on family drama was also great, but the rest of the season never reached those two episodes’ greatness unfortunately.

J.K. Simmons is phenomenal as Nolan. He is so cool, yet menacing throughout. I got that aura of sinister energy right from the start from him, which was important build-up for the finale. Seeing the wife’s side was also great, but Mark is mostly just a typical main superhero adolescent with not a lot of interesting personality traits to make him more unique.

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His relationship with his love interest I found to be way too familiar to any other superhero story. But I did like his gay friend. He was a lot of fun as this very amusing, witty guy who is always there for his friend. But all of the Guardians of the Globe were utterly forgettable and the show has a big problem with an overly large roster of characters for such a short season, resulting in most of them getting the short end of the stick. The villains are also mostly uninspired.

With that being said, the action in Invincible is fantastic. The fights are cool and almost anime-like while the immense violence made the show more edgy and high in stakes. But the overwhelming humor in the teenage storylines did make for a tonally awkward show for me.

The animation is terrific, the character designs are pretty strong and the sound and score are both competent. I found the script mostly solid, though the mid stretch of episodes was less memorable. The family stuff appealed to me while the superheroics was only okay, though the SF space elements were intriguing. The sophisticated dialogue was a major strength here, but I wished for a better crafted world overall.

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