Invincible #68 just came out, and boy is it great. Robert Kirkman’s Invincible is, by far, the best comic series currently running.
For those of you unaware of Invincible, here is a quick recap: Mark Grayson is your typical, teenage boy dealing with all of the usual problems including school, girls, and growing up. That is where the normalcy ends. His father is Omni-Man, an alien who came to Earth and became its greatest hero. The series started just before Mark’s own powers began manifesting.
The series is notorious for being a pastiche of iconic comic book characters and playing with the usual conventions of the medium. Omni-Man is an obvious nod towards Superman, and his team of superheroes strikes a strong resemblance to the Justice League.
Invincible himself is an obvious nod towards the old-school Spider-Man comics of the ’60s and ’70s. On a side-note, if you ever want to read the best single-issue storyline ever, then you should pick up Marvel Team-Up Volume 3 #14. Invincible is lost shifting between parallel realities, and he gets stranded in the Marvel Universe, where he teams up with Spider-Man to fight Doctor Octopus.
If you are interested, you should go to your local comic shop to pick up the trades to catch up. If that is too much work, then just go on over to iTunes and download season one of the motion comics made for MTV 2.
Now come the spoilers, so if you are not caught up, you should probably stop reading now.
The series is no stranger to major plot twists, but readers got a plethora of them this month. After a several-issue interlude following the adventures of Allen the Alien and Omni-Man, we are back in the life of Invincible.
Between Kid Omni-Man changing his name to Young Omni-Man (as well as getting an awesome new costume), Invincible having dinner with Atom Eve’s family, Conquest escaping, the sequid invasion beginning, and the ultimate reveal that Invincible is about to become a father, this issue was almost too much to handle. Each of these are strong enough to carry their own arc, but to weave them all together into one major arc has the potential for greatness. Granted, these sort of things can be disastrous when done poorly; however, I have not been let down yet by Invincible and do not expect to be anytime soon.
The thing that excites me the most is Kirkman’s bold decision for Atom Eve to get pregnant. Although it is nothing new for comic book superheroes to have children, this is the first time to my knowledge that it has involved teenage superheroes. That right there is the inherent brilliance of the series: it reworks comic book conventions, so that they are fresh again.
