{"id":42,"date":"2021-05-25T01:25:09","date_gmt":"2021-05-25T00:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/joshtest04.wordpress.com\/2021\/05\/25\/unvincible-5\/"},"modified":"2025-05-05T20:24:04","modified_gmt":"2025-05-05T19:24:04","slug":"unvincible-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/2021\/05\/25\/unvincible-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Unvincible (#5)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

This is the fourth in a series of episode reviews for the animated TV show Invincible, <\/em>starting from the end and working backwards. See the overview here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

Last time<\/a> our cup runneth over with criticisms.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Now this was a very fine episode indeed\u200a\u2014\u200aI probably enjoyed this episode most out of everything so far. As a monster-of-the-week outing it outstripped sewer-Frankenstein by some considerable distance, with a cast of engaging, complex characters each with their own relevant motivations and morality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark really is a shit to Amber, who with the benefit of foresight we know is bracing in every conversation for the one thing she wants to hear (\u201cI was busy doing superhero shit that I am going to cease lying to you about\u201d) and all his affected romantic gestures, effortful though they are, do not do her this basic decency\u200a\u2014\u200aand he is assuming that she\u2019s not smart enough to notice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eve\u2019s family drama also reaches a high point here, with the parts I\u2019ve already seen turning out to be a coda to events this episode. Like Mark, she has a fascist for a father\u200a\u2014\u200aa petty, vindictive, sexist psychopath who does nothing but belittle her in the guise of fatherly advice. The other piece of the puzzle for her is helping out at Amber\u2019s soup kitchen job, which gives her some welcome (albeit as we\u2019ll see, slightly unclear) perspective on what it means to help people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Debbie\u2019s continuing investigation into Omni-man proceeds apace\u200a\u2014\u200ait\u2019s very hard for me to see how this plot strand could possibly have been a mystery or twist. It\u2019s effectively \u201cMy husband is materially linked to a series of murders\u201d vs \u201cNo he isn\u2019t\u201d. The mystery is his motivation, which has a delightful clarity here by way of context: the charming Tiger-man hired by the mob boss stands in as a direct proxy for Omni-man\u2019s beliefs in the climactic fight, hammering all of Earth\u2019s mightiest heroes to and fro and voicing his disdain for their efforts to stop him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Omni-man loves his son, for whatever that is worth, but he wants<\/em> his belief in the primacy of force to come before everything. Omni-man watches stoically as the hilarious cast of minor villains led by Tiger, the only actually effective combatant, beat his son to a pulp. It\u2019s a pitch-perfect spoof of late-show Justice League Unlimited<\/em>. Are we to assume the \u201canonymous call to Cecil\u201d was the man himself, quietly betraying his ethics?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And to round out the episode\u2019s cast of dubious father figures, we are introduced to Titan, a high-level mob enforcer with a heart of gold who can coat his skin in stone (although several times in the episode the skin under the stone also appears to deflect bullets). In an incredibly audacious move, he scams Mark into helping him make a play against his boss, a man named \u201cMachine head\u201d who eats computer chips to get off. The transition from Titan requesting Mark\u2019s help on the roof of a city apartment block to Mark mulling over his request while spooning out mashed potato from his detached suburban home is as good as the show gets. And if in the end Titan wants to use the ring of power rather than cast it into the fires of Mount Doom? Frankly, that\u2019s his choice to make.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mark\u2019s whole challenge in this episode, from the perspective of people with common decency, is to see that there are complex situations which cannot be simply punched into submission no matter how unpleasant they are. His desire\u200a\u2014\u200aborne of his father\u2019s direct instruction, to be fair to him\u200a\u2014\u200ato seek out problems that are sufficiently grand to require his intervention means that even an issue that seems to him to be small and personal, Titan\u2019s request to help him \u201cget out\u201d of the mob business, causes the near-death of several people. Ensuring that people are fed, while it may not be as dramatic, is a certain way to help. Mark is wrong to postpone it based on the assumed priority of \u201csaving the world\u201d, and he\u2019s rightly going to get dumped for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I feel like there are hard limits on the possibility of being a superhero through individual acts of kindness, which is what Eve is quietly building towards in this episode and the next. There are big problems which cannot be solved with simple solutions, but that doesn\u2019t mean we can ignore them\u200a\u2014\u200aand if you take on personal intervention to solve all the world\u2019s problems, when does that obligation end? The first act of Man of Steel<\/em> is very relevant here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Justice League<\/em> have their own segment with their own father figure who is unwisely attempting to discipline them when they\u2019d be better off becoming comfortable in their own company, but it\u2019s extremely boring and thankfully short. We also see the cloner twins in the act of cloning themselves, which is pleasant but all-too-brief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will say that between fickle, be-mullet-ed right-hand man Izotope this episode and the lank-haired evil scientist from #6, men with long hair are getting really short shrift in this series. And let the foreshadowing alarm ring with the way Saiyan-furious Mark rips the ineffectual villain made of magma in two\u200a\u2014\u200athat\u2019s the kind of violence you can only get away with on non-human characters, right\u2026 right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Oh, and Robot is super, super <\/em>creepy this episode. Cumulatively, that robot needs to step off. It\u2019s difficult to determine, between Machine Head and Robot, which \u201cartificial lifeform\u201d is more distasteful here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In total though, a barnstorming demonstration of what the show can do with the setting and characters that\u2019s neither \u201creplay Watchmen\u201d nor \u201chang off the one big turn that\u2019s coming\u201d. It\u2019s a leap into the very best kind of semi-serialised genre TV and past this point I am genuinely excited for more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Next time: We meet an exciting new character in episode #4.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ranking, best to worst:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. #5<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. #8<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. #7<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. #6<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This is the fourth in a series of episode reviews for the animated TV show Invincible, starting from the end and working backwards. See the overview here. Last time our cup runneth over with criticisms. Now this was a very fine episode indeed\u200a\u2014\u200aI probably enjoyed this episode most out of everything so far. As a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[94,96],"tags":[11,12,13,14,15],"class_list":["post-42","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","category-media-criticism","tag-backwards","tag-comics","tag-comics-criticism","tag-invincible","tag-watchmen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131,"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions\/131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}