I'm perilously close to dropping Invincible

[Rich Lane]

I had a bad feeling about this month's issue when I saw that it featured the hero with a graphic compound fracture right on the cover. This last issue was so over the top in violence that it simply wasn't enjoyable at all. The reason I was initially drawn to this book was that it seemed like old school heroics with a modern sensibility. It lost a good chunk of its charm when Omniman went bad, but I stuck with it. It was still enjoyable because despite the situation with Mark's family, it was still a fairly upbeat book.

Now, after this issue, there's really no way it can ever be upbeat again.

[Lumbering Jack (M'odd-R8-Tr)]

Hah, I dropped it two issues after Omniman went bad. The apparent shift in tone wasn't what I was interested in. I know it's got a huge following, but I haven't looked at it since ... except to buy the two-issue Invincible Universe handbook. I can't get enough of books like that!

[Rich Lane]

I'm in serious jeopardy of becoming one of those guys who continuously complains about a book that I for some bizarre reason continue to buy, but I have to kvetch once again.

This book took about about seven minutes to read, tops. It's one long fight scene where all the dialogue is utterly superfluous to what's going on, and Kirkman, to me, seems to try to hide the fact he phoned it in by again amping up the gore, but it still reads like a small excerpt in an anthology book or something.

And it's not like the gore even makes sense (SPOILER)-












Invincible is so angry that he beats Conquest's head in...with his own head.

Yep, that's right. He head butts him over and over until Conquest's head is caved in.

Considering they are from the same superhuman species, how is it possible that Mark was able to do this without caving his own head in? Have you ever head butted somebody? I have. It frakkin' hurts, and I saw stars for about a minute. There's no way that Mark did this without severely damaging himself more than even the blood spattered images of the book depicted.

[HammerHeart]

I don't know, the way I see it the "gore" in Invincible has a point - unlike the gore in "Blackest Night" for example - in how it illustrates the actual effects of over-the-top violence. When I see the extreme physical damage caused by superhuman blows in Invincible, after the initial shock it seems somehow more honest than the sugar-coated effects of superhuman violence that we see in other superhero comics. When a superstrong bruiser hits someone with full strenght, as we see them do so often in metahuman slugfests, the person that was hit rarely has anything more than a chipped tooth to show for it. And that may be more 'palatable' and less shocking, but it's also dishonest and even a little irresponsible to minimize the effects of violence like that.

Yes, it's shocking to see superheroes with broken jaws and bones, but it's also refreshing to see the results of extreme violence portrayed so frankly.

[Mark Russell Pennington]

Well, Mark IS half human. Don't ya know that Terrans have harder heads?

Yeah, I pretty much dropped the title myself.

Rich Lane said:

I'm in serious jeopardy of becoming one of those guys who continuously complains about a book that I for some bizarre reason continue to buy, but I have to kvetch once again.

This book took about about seven minutes to read, tops. It's one long fight scene where all the dialogue is utterly superfluous to what's going on, and Kirkman, to me, seems to try to hide the fact he phoned it in by again amping up the gore, but it still reads like a small excerpt in an anthology book or something.

And it's not like the gore even makes sense (SPOILER)-












Invincible is so angry that he beats Conquest's head in...with his own head.

Yep, that's right. He head butts him over and over until Conquest's head is caved in.

Considering they are from the same superhuman species, how is it possible that Mark was able to do this without caving his own head in? Have you ever head butted somebody? I have. It frakkin' hurts, and I saw stars for about a minute. There's no way that Mark did this without severely damaging himself more than even the blood spattered images of the book depicted.