I finished reading Invincible now and it is pretty good. I'll need to come back to outline everything but I just want to write down my initial thoughts. Invincible really reminds me of Dragon Ball Z and what the Saiyins are and I'm curious if the writer based it off that.
A race of warmongering superhumans that travel around conquering planets. Eventually they get to Earth and get changed for the better. It's basically what happened to Vegeta.
Like Dragon Ball Z, the space parts are great but everything else is lacking. With Invincible, I have the same issue. The comic book parts aren't that great but everything with space and the Viltrumites is great. It's also very simplistic, nothing super interpersonal actually happens. There is a very light smattering of abuse and rape and extreme violence but nothing really sticks or makes you think too deeply. I'm not sure if it's the medium but everything gets glazed over. I do think this probably because I binge read entire volumes and on a weekly basis this might hang in the air for longer.
However even if it was weekly, within a couple of issues things have already moved on so much that prior events don't matter too much. I did like that aspect, the fact that there was no big interpersonal stuff was good but they should have stayed away completely instead.
I am super curious why Earth was so special, why was human connection so changing for the Viltrumites, they spent thousands of years across the universe with every race imaginable but it was the humans that changed everything and that change started happening almost immediately. That is weird. I get it from a plot perspective that it had to happen on Earth becuase the story is about Earth but no one really bothers to find out why.
Robot going evil was the big endgame with Thragg and I loved that. Having both villains definitely helped things and I enjoyed seeing that. I do think Mark going evil and power crazy at the end could have been fun. He always wants to do the right thing and help but things go wrong. This time however nothing really did. He solved all of the universe's problems. The coalition of planets actually gets demolished because the viltrumites are so peaceful that there is no reason for the coalition. I can't see that ever actually happening.
The only way Mark could bring true peace is through force but they don't show that, they show it as him bringing mercy everywhere and that doesn't make sense to me. Robot's plans made sense, he took over and basically controlled everything. Now Mark is somehow able to keep peace across the entire universe?
I really did enjoy Invincible and I think a fun compare and contrast is going to be looking at this comic book that finished in 2018 and compare it to Broken April written in 1978. They both have some very light parallels like culture being the most important thing and perserving a way of life. They both have the idea of violence and death being an intimate part of life. Where Mark rebelled against his heritage Gjorge did not. I don't think it's a real relation but I could probably read into it and that will be fun.