History ComicBook / Invincible

In 2017, a LiveActionAdaptation was announced, and is still in development as of 2022.
In 2018, it was announced that an ''WesternAnimation/{{Invincible|2021}}'' animated series would be headed to Creator/PrimeVideo. It began airing on March 26, 2021, running for 8 episodes, and a second and third season have been ordered.

In 2017, a LiveActionAdaptation was announced, and is still in development as of the beginning of 2022.

* KilledOffForReal:
** [[spoiler: Conquest]], although it took two tries.
** [[spoiler:Rus Livingston]].
** [[spoiler: Thaedus]].
** [[spoiler: Magmaniac]].
** Most of the original [[spoiler:Guardians of the Globe are killed by Nolan early in the series. A few (such as Immortal) return. Most do not.]]

* AlienLunch: Shortly after their arrival on the Coalition capital planet, Mark and Eve are visited by Oliver and his InsectoidAlien girlfriend Haluma, who cooks for them. The result is a spread of ''extremely'' alien animals (many of them looking disturbingly humanoid) and seafood. Unlike many examples of this trope, the food turns out to be quite tasty indeed, although Eve is sufficiently unnerved by its appearance to limit herself to vegetables.

* OutsideTheBoxTactic: In one issue, Invincible faces “Powerplex” who has the power to absorb force and kinetic energy; he wins by [[spoiler:effectively not fighting at all. The guy simply channels so much energy in his single-minded goal of killing Invincible that his family, who were there acting as hostages for Invincible to “save” end up vaporizedand.]] In a rematch, Mark switched tactics; after being taken by surprise, he refuses to fight the Powerplex and just lets him vent his rage, while calmly explaining that it wasn’t Invincible’s fault his family was put in danger. Powerplex uses up his reserves and realizes that it was his own fault at the same time.

* OutsideTheBoxTactic: In one issue, Invincible faces a villain with the power to absorb force and kinetic energy; he wins by [[spoiler:punching the bad guy until he's been overloaded with so much energy it travels through the floor, vaporizing his family and emotionally crippling him]]. This was NOT his intention. In a rematch, Mark uses a reverse tactic; he refuses to fight the villain, who then uses up his reserves of energy until he is depowered.

* AtlantisIsBoring: At first the most notable thing about the place is the fact that Omni-Man killed the king. The trope gets decidedly less straight the second time the place is visited, with Lethan trying to keep the city running despite the attack of Octoboss and other standard superhero/supervillain intrigue.

* CreatorProvincialism: Present since the beginning, with the agency for the defense of the whole planet being a ''USA'' agency (the base is under the pentagon, even), but it goes UpToEleven after [[spoiler: Robot takes over the world.]] Without getting into too much political discussion, it is pretty debatable whether a stronger american interventionism would be the solution for North Korea, and mentioning the sanctions being lifted when the USA put them there in the first place is equally debatable in taste. The idea of education and healthcare being made free as a result of a genious financial plan is also baffling for people who live in country where those are already free and pretty much functioning, particularly when they ''definitely'' don't have financial geniouses at the helm, making it seem that the issue is more viability and not principle.

* MasculineGirlFeminineBoy: Monster Girl is a tough fighter and smokes cigarettes, Robot is more quiet and introspective. [[spoiler:Taken UpToEleven with the reveal that Monster Girl is a SuperGenderBender, whose monster form is a ''fully functional'' male creature. As in, she ''sires a son'' on another woman.]]

** The [[spoiler: Viltrumite Grand Regent]] bears a startling resemblence to Music/FreddieMercury.

* DependingOnTheWriter: ''Invincible'' and ''ComicBook/TheAstoundingWolfMan'' have an odd case of this happening between two series by the same writer with the character of Cecil Steadman, who appears in both series. In ''Wolf-Man'', Cecil is shown to be much nicer than in ''Invincible''; for example, he's willing to believe the best about Wolf-Man (that [[spoiler:he didn't kill his wife]]), whereas he always believes the worst about Invincible (that [[spoiler:he's a bad guy working with his father]]). On the other hand it's fairly well-known that Cecil tends to hold grudges (by his own admission) and Gary has never given Cecil a reason to doubt him, unlike Omni-Man or Invincible.

** AntiVillain. Mark doesn't like or agree with Cecil Steadman, but he admits that with world-ending threats all over the place, Steadman is often the lesser evil.

** Mark’s college friend Rick Sheridan is named after the human host of the Marvel Comics character Sleepwalker. Rick even has a reputation for sleeping in for long periods of time, similar to the Marvel Rick who must fall asleep to allow Sleepwalker to enter the waking world. In addition, his roommate Chris Powell is named after the civilian identity of Darkhawk, another Marvel superhero who Kirkman would frequently sneak into his stories when writing for Marvel.

** In Volume 7 Invincible faces off with a villain with the power to open portals to other dimensions. At one point when flying through a portal he crashes into [[ComicBook/DoctorOctopus a man in a trench coat with four mechanical arms coming out of his back]], and the portal obscures [[ComicBook/SpiderMan a person wearing a red glove with a web design on it.]] This actually ends up tying into Marvel Team-Up Volume 3 #11 (also written by Kirkman) which features Invincible as a GuestCharacter teaming up with Spider-Man to fight Doctor Octopus.

** He also briefly crossed over with ComicBook/SpiderMan when Kirkman was writing Marvel Team-Up.

** In Volume 7 Invincible faces off with a villain with the power to open portals to other dimensions. At one point when flying through a portal he crashes into [[ComicBook/DoctorOctopus a man in a trench coat with four mechanical arms coming out of his back]], and the portal obscures [[ComicBook/SpiderMan a person wearing a red glove with a web design on it.]]

The series has become well known for combining [[ArtStyleDissonance brightly coloured superheroes]] with often very dark themes and {{gorn}}-laden fight scenes. Very rarely are superhero tropes played perfectly straight, often getting twisted into new directions that give a heave to the status quo. The series began on January 22 2003, and ended on February 14, 2018.

In 2017, a LiveActionAdaptation was announced, and is still in development as of the beginning of 2021.

* BadassMustache: Every male Viltrumite (Conquest has a particularly nice one). This is completely cultural, as Mark never grows one (apart from times when he is unable to shave). There is actually a specific name for the removal of a beard grown by a Viltrumite in disguise. [[spoiler:The ancient Viltrumite traitor Thadeus, now the leader of the Coalition of Planets, performed the Toolock Pull (literally ripping the beard off his face) to show his Viltrumite mustache in a pretty hilarious [[TheReveal reveal]].]]
** Really, if Mark ever starts growing a mustache, watch out.
*** One of the alternate-reality Invincibles that Angstrom Levy recruited had the Viltrumite mustache.
*** In the final issue, Mark, now the [[spoiler:Emperor of the Viltrumite Empire, explains that he has foregone this tradition as a symbol of the new path the Viltrumites are on]].

* LawyerFriendlyCameo: In the issue where Mark is bounced from dimension to dimension by Angstrom Levy, he meets Batman and ends up on worlds similar to ''ComicBook/YTheLastMan'' and ''ComicBook/TheWalkingDead'', the latter of which Kirkman writes.

** Issue 80 contains funny scenes about William's [[spoiler: coming out,]] a hilarious lampshading of CutLexLuthorACheck, a jab at the DC reboot (and at Kirkman's own difficulties keeping a proper release schedule) and [[spoiler: Las Vegas and everyone in it getting utterly vaporized.]] Ow, my neck...

*** Well, the "battle" starts with Omni-Man sucker punching Mark, straight down into a city. He then uses this, the deaths of ''thousands'', as a reason as to why Humans are beneath them. I'd say that those deaths, at least, are something it's implied he fully intended.

** In the first issue, Omni-Man's tailor said that he initially thought that Omni-Man's powers were solar-based, in an allusion to the character's similarities to {{Superman}}.

* DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnMale: Averted, ''hard''. The scene is depicted as utterly horrific, and when the victim ([[spoiler:Mark]]), reveals what happened, his girlfriend ([[spoiler:Eve]]) is shocked, but entirely sympathetic and supportive, firmly telling him not to torture himself with the idea that he might not have fought back hard enough because he secretly wanted it.

* RidiculouslyHumanRobot: Averted, Robot can't really relate to his teammates' problems, and he doesn't particularly want to either. No TinMan here, no sir.
** Somewhat subverted in that [[spoiler:the visible Robot is actually being remote-controlled by the (horribly deformed and unable to survive outside of his nutrient tank) human who just doesn't relate to humanity, probably in part due to his superhuman intelligence and isolation. After being cloned into a new human body, he starts relating more]].

** An odd example; ''Invincible'' frequently guest-stars characters owned by other Image creators, like the Savage Dragon, and the series has a number of [[HeroOfAnotherStory Heroes of Other Stories]] that clearly aren't main characters of the ''Invincible'' title but are created and owned by Kirkman himself. The series evokes a SharedUniverse like Marvel or DC, but this one title does almost all the heavy lifting for it.
*** Due to the whole "creator-owned" thing, Image as a whole does an odd variant of the shared universe: there's a slightly different "Image universe" for each creator, where the other creators' characters ''exist'', but aren't as big a deal as they would be in their own universe.

* ReactionShot: [[spoiler: Mark's gruesome "death" at the hands of Dinosaurs is broadcasted live. Next two pages we see a multitude of characters' reactions to the event, ranging from suprise, confusion, fear, disconcert, and indifference.]]

The series has become well known for [[ArtStyleDissonance combining brightly coloured superheroes with often very dark themes and gore laden fight scenes]]. Very rarely are superhero tropes played perfectly straight, often getting twisted into new directions that give a heave to the status quo. The series began in January 22 2003, and ended in February 14, 2018.

* BodyHorror: The Sequids escape annihilation by [[spoiler:hiding in their host's throat]].

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