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Sunday 31 January 2016

Invincible, Volume 2: Eight Is Enough Review (Robert Kirkman, Cory Walker)


Teen superhero Mark Grayson/Invincible is called upon to protect the Earth from an aggressive alien - but what does it really want? Elsewhere something terrible happens to the Guardians of the Globe. But that’s not all - Mark’s gotta look at prospective colleges to go to while helping his friend Eve through a personal upset. Gee whizz it sure ain’t easy being a superhero! ... zzz… 

Two volumes into Robert Kirkman and Cory Walker’s Invincible series and I’m not seeing how it’s had nearly the same longevity as Kirkman's other, far more popular series, The Walking Dead. This book has a lot of popular superhero character copies but Kirkman doesn’t do or say anything about the characters they mimic - it’s like they’re just there for readers to spot for no reason. 

Mark is obviously a Superboy copy and his dad is “Superman”. The Guardians of the Globe ARE the Justice League while “Rorschach” makes an appearance along with copies of Spider-Man villains the Vulture and the Rhino. Savage Dragon also cameos as himself. But so what? They just act like themselves, or their counterparts, to be more accurate. It’s like reading bad fanfic. 

The opening chapter has Invincible fight an alien and ends up solving their dispute by talking to him instead of just throwing punches. It’s an obvious commentary to most superhero comics readers - if only superheroes talked first, acted second, nearly every fight could be avoided - that’s been made before by others so I wouldn’t say Kirkman’s doing anything special in that regard. 

Other than that, there’s some bad sitcom crap about cheating boyfriends and parents misinterpreting what their kids are up to. One interesting thing happens in this volume that I won't spoil here and the rest is just boring fluff. So far, Invincible is (soiled superhero) pants!

Invincible, Volume 2: Eight Is Enough

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