Amazon’s Prime Studios tackles adult animation with Robert Kirkman’s Invincible series. Adapting the source material from Image Comics the series follows Mark Grayson who dreams of becoming a hero like his dad. Unfortunately Mark has yet to develop his superpowers at age 17 worrying his superhero father. But when his father becomes a threat just as Mark’s powers slowly manifest he must step up to stop him.

Invincible is a 2021 adult animated superhero series based on the Robert Kirkman’s comic of the same name. It is produced by Skybound, and distributed by Amazon Studios. Season one currently airs on Prime Video.

Editor’s Note: Near complete to complete spoilers for the first four episodes of Invincible may be present within this review.

With the MCU dominating the TV and film landscape of superhero content producers are trying their luck with darker takes on the genre. Successes like the Snyder Cut & The Boys have made way for creatives to explore the not so pretty realities of being a superhero. Such as betrayal and not being able to save everyone. Robert Kirkman’s Invincible is one series that covers these themes for the genre and it doesn’t really hold back. 

THE GOOD: The show starts off with The Guardians of the Globe (a knock on Justice League) dealing with a duo of supervillains attacking the White House. As the team struggle to secure the safety of citizens Omni-Man appears and helps out giving them the edge to defeat the villains. Omni-Man whose real name is Nolan returns home to his wife and son Mark who has yet to develop his superpowers at age seventeen which is a rarity for superpowered individuals. During school his crush Amber is being harassed by a bully. Mark intervenes only to be attacked with Amber retaliating sending the bully away. The Guardians of the Globe have a meeting later that night and are surprised with a sudden visit from Omni-Man at their HQ. Omni-Man suddenly attacks and kill the Guardians one by one before falling into a coma. The Global Defense Agency respond to the disturbance at the Guardians HQ shocked at the scene as they recover their bodies and the comatose Omni-Man. 

As Omni-Man lays bedridden Mark’s powers begin to finally develop and he becomes a makeshift vigilante. An alien race invades Earth Mark is overwhelmed defeating the aliens by sheer luck. As Omni-Man recovers he becomes a suspect of the Guardians’ murder by Damien Darkblood. A demonic detective who extends his stay on Earth by performing cases that qualify as “good deeds”. Nolan awakes and begins his recovery. The aliens continue to invade Earth with time on their world accelerating at a faster rate than Earth’s granting them more advanced tech. Mark is nearly killed, but is saved by a lower ranked team of heroes known as Teen Team who help drive the aliens back.

Atom Eve, one of the members of Teen Team turns out to be one of Mark’s classmates named Samantha. In the latest confrontation with the aliens Teen Team & Mark are defeated and Samantha is nearly killed. Nolan now fully recovered saves them, later eradicating the alien race. Following the funeral for the Guardians, Nolan begins to display strange behavior. Samantha catches her team mate and boyfriend Rex cheating on her with another team mate Kate. Omni-Man trains Mark after catching him stop a villain as a vigilante. Cecil Stedman, director of GDA starts a new Guardians enlisting Robot as the leader with members of Teen Team following him outside of Eve. New additions to the team include Shrink Ray who can make herself small, Monster Girl a woman who transforms into a super enhanced ogre at the risk of her deaging each transformation, and Black Samson a former member of the Guardians who left after becoming depowered now using combat armor.

As Mark continues to struggle with keeping his normal and superhero life in check he’s asked by the GDA to watch over the Mars mission team.  He encounters Martians who want to keep humans off world due to them being easily infected by a mind & body possessing parasite. After a brief battle with the Martians Mark gets the team back to Earth. Debbie who had been suspicious of Nolan following a conversation with Darkblood goes on vacation with him in Italy. They make amends through Nolan’s lies, and Cecil now trusts Darkblood’s suspicions. When Darkblood refuses to drop the case Cecil sends him back to hell using magic. This is due to not wanting to act on Nolan without the latter’s motive. Unbeknownst to Cecil, however Darkblood used magic himself to remain on Earth through Debbie’s notepad. Robot man breaks Mauler (the alien who attacked the White House) out of holding who begins to clone himself again.

 Invincible is a very gory and no holds barred kind of superhero show which is rare to see. Even with stuff like the DCEU out there they still tend to hold back a bit on how far they go with the dark tone. This show doesn’t really do that. It could be argued that it’s the benefit of being an animated series. But then Robert Kirkman has never really been known for holding back on mature content. It’s kind of nice seeing superheroes fail just as much if not more than they succeed and that’s a running theme in Invincible. The heroes here are young and they make a lot of mistakes that actually get people killed. With his own experience in the Guardians Samson tries to guide the team, but it’s often mistaken as nagging mainly by Rex. 

THE BAD: In my current experience with the show it hasn’t lost my attention yet which is great. However, there are some animation issues that show up on occasion. So be aware of that going in. These are minor in count at best, but when they occur they’re fairly noticeable. This series is also quite gory if you don’t like that then tough cause there’s a lot. And there’s also a large use of music in this series throughout each episode. Sometimes it works, sometimes it feels unnecessary. Also if you’re coming in as a fan of the source do be aware of some changes such as character genders, etc.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: The first four (five as of this writing) episodes of Invincible successfully showcases a gory coming of age superhero adventure. It’s fast paced, but not to the point of being forgettable with a top notch voice cast & very solid animation. It’s kind of unfortunate that what may be Invincible’s biggest weakness is the fact that season one ends with eight episodes. However, considering the acclaim the series has received it’s undoubtedly going to receive at least a second round on Prime. Otaku Dome gives Invincible an 85 out of 100.