‘Invincible – Volume 1’ – Kirkman, Walker, Crabtree (Image)

 


Page Count: 208 Pages

Every so often, I’ll be watching Prime Video and it’ll throw me an advert for ‘Invincible’; the one where this huge creature tells a bunch of superheroes to surrender and Omni-Man just says ‘No!’ I don’t know why but that always makes me laugh. Anyway…

I’ve seen that advert enough times now that the other day, I finally shrugged my shoulders and figured I’d give it a go. As someone whose ‘soap opera of choice’ was the X-Men cartoon, it was always going to happen. Me being me though, I thought I’d pick up Volume 1 of the book and give that a go first. And I’ve got to ask… Does it get better?

Mark Grayson is just like everyone else his age; except his father is the most powerful superhero on the planet – Omni-Man. When Mark develops powers of his own, it’s a dream come true. But living up to his father’s legacy is only the beginning of his problems…

‘Invincible Vol.1’ isn’t a bad read, lets get that straight from the start. It knows the assignment and duly delivers a tale of a teenager discovering his burgeoning super powers and trying to find his place in the world. The problem is… When your Dad is literally the most powerful superhero in the world, your place at the table has been reserved for a long time. Where can a story realistically go from there?

Well, there are a lot of subsequent volumes so there clearly is a story to be told; there’s just not many places it can go at the moment. Mark solves crimes, bonds with his Dad and discovers that superheroes are all over the place. That’s pretty much it.

To be fair, there is a pretty intriguing seed sown, resulting in a ‘last page cliffhanger’, but the whole point of these is that they are clearly ‘set ups’ for whatever is coming in Volume 2. What we get in the meantime is Mark finding his ‘place’ when he never really had to look for it. And that’s ok, just not an opening salvo that grabbed me.

There is a nice little vein of humour running through the book and Kirkman displays a really keen sense of comic timing that caught me by surprise, And the artwork and colour is just the right kind of ‘Vibrant’ for a superhero comic. I’ll be back for Vol.2, I’m just hoping that it really kicks on into something a little more compelling. We’ll see :o)

Comments

  1. Bookstooge5 April 2026 at 11:10

    yeah, the adverts on Prime always struck me as rather anti-Superman and when a show or comic goes that route (like Brightburn, the 2019 movie), I ignore it as hard as I can. so you're on your own finding out about Invincible :-D

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Graeme6 April 2026 at 21:50

      I'm really half and half about whether I continue, maybe one more book...

      Delete

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