READ AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION: Spoilers for seasons 1, 2 and 3 + Comic Book

SAN JOSE, CALIF.—Invincible, the 2021 animated series streaming on Amazon Prime, created by Robert Kirkman, is a powerful and original superhero story worth the anticipation and hype.

With season three concluding on March 13, I definitely recommend this show for young adults who want to experience a new, hero protagonist who is not connected to Marvel or the Detective Comics (DC) universes. Personally scoring a 10/10 for storyline and for its nuanced characters, plus an 8/10 for animation and art style.

In this series, we follow Mark Grayson’s hero journey, who lived 17 years as a normal human teenager, until he miraculously developed his superhuman strength, ability to fly and speed from his father’s Viltrumite side, Nolan Grayson—also known as the greatest superhero on the planet, “Omni-Man.”

However, the story took a dark turn after Omni-Man had murdered the Guardians of the Globe (a parody team of the Justice League) to ensure there would be no resistance when the Viltrumites were ready to take over Earth.

Although Mark finally gained the powers he had wished for his entire life and became a hero (calling himself Invincible), he has undergone hardship upon his first few days as an active hero. Mark’s powers sudden materialization started his typical hero origin story: betrayal, tragedy and many moments of mental struggle. When Nolan’s murder was discovered and exposed by his wife Debbie Grayson, this ignited Mark’s first betrayal—his own father. 

And from there on, we watch Mark further mold into his hero name, Invincible.

From watching the series, I noticed a remarkable difference between many of the female characters in Invincible—highlighting Debbie Grayson and Amber Bennett.

According to Comics Beat, Kirkman and Cory Walker, the artists behind Invincible, changed many of these characters to respond to the main concern from fans—representation and diversity.

“Diversity was not something that was at the forefront of our minds back then. And I think that Invincible is a very diverse comic that has a wide range of different kinds of people represented, but I think that it’s something that we recognize we can do better when it came time to do the animated series now,” Kirkman said.

I absolutely love how they changed Debbie’s character to a more realistic person, someone who can take agency for her life. A great example of this is where originally, when Nolan left Earth in tears after Mark responded to his question on why Mark wants to help people who he’ll outlive anyway, saying “I’d still have you Dad,” Debbie took this as Mark driving Nolan away and illustrated her misguided priorities. 

But with the animated series, they altered it to where Debbie doesn’t place fault at Mark, but at Nolan, and tries her hardest to come back to her real-estate work and even takes a chance at dating again with her coworker, Paul. Even when she was dumped with Nolan’s Thraxan Viltrumite love child, Oliver, she took charge (even when she didn’t need to) to take care of him to the best of her ability; honestly I think this is such a great display of Debbie’s strong, in-depth character.

Similar to Debbie’s change, I found Amber’s alteration satisfying and again, much better than the original comic version. Instead of being a Caucasian American teenager (the blonde version of Samantha Eve Wilkins), she was changed to a Black American teen that had a strong moral compass toward making a difference—adding a fresher representation of not only a young woman, but also as a person of African American descent.

Going into my 8/10 rating for animation and art style, I would like to first clarify that I most definitely understand that the simplistic art style in the show is to make the animation process easier for artists, but despite this I still want to say, like everything else, there could be improvements.

Amazon is a multi-trillion dollar company, so as a viewer, it’s hard to fathom why they cannot invest more of a budget to such a successful series. I would love for there to be more focus on better quality animation that isn’t so choppy and where staff don’t need to save on frames by panning the scenes with very little to no motion, the 50 minute episodes’ pace could be less rushed and, to of course, pay their artist team graciously for their hard work.

Despite this hurdle, mostly on Amazon’s part, I still absolutely love Invincible and recommend it for anyone interested in joining a unique hero’s journey!