Invincible (2003-2018) Comic Book Discussion

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Wednesday. So today I'm here to talk about comics. I'm not reviewing a single issue or a collected edition, I'm just here to talk about a series that I've been collecting for a few years now and am nearly completed that collection. Let's dive in and talk about Invincible by Robert Kirkman. Let's get into it.

For those of you who don't know, Invincible is a comic book series that Image Comics published from 2003 until 2018. Written by Robert Kirkman with art by Cory Walker and Ryan Ottley, Invincible tells the story of Mark Grayson, who becomes a superhero named Invincible after he gained his powers as a teenager. Unlike other heroes, he wasn't born on another planet, he didn't interact with gamma rays, Green Lantern rings or radioactive spiders. He's the son of the strongest superhero on Earth, Omni-Man, who originally came from the planet, Viltrum, and so Mark was born with his powers, but they took time to manifest, similar to how Superman's powers appear in most modern incarnations of the origin story. 

I probably heard about Invincible about nine or ten years ago, when a former YouTuber that I was subscribed to, but no longer uploads to the channel anymore, reviewed it for his channel. Of course, by then the series had been running for eleven or twelve years, so I figured that not only would the individual earliest issues be difficult to find, but the earliest trades would be out of print like what had happened with The Amazing Spider-Girl and Big Hero 6 around that time, so I kinda just forgot about the series until 2018 when Kirkman announced that he was ending the series after fifteen years. I decided that if the trade paperback collected editions were still in print, since there was no way I could afford the larger Companion editions, or the hardcover Ultimate Collection editions, I'd try to at least get a few of them just so I could sample the series. Especially since it was ending with issue #144.

Then, lo and behold, I managed to find the 2nd edition of the first trade paperback volume either at The Comic Book Shoppe or the monthly comic book sale that Brad and I were going to every month. I read it and I enjoyed it. Then not that much longer after that I found volume 2. Don't forget this was long before the Amazon Prime animated series had been announced, so Invincible was still pretty unknown to the majority of people at that point. Which means that the trades weren't being sought after and most comic book stores weren't carrying that many of them. Especially because the thicker Compendium editions and hardcover Ultimate Collection editions were also out.

But then, once the pandemic hit and the animated series was announced as being in development, the series started to become more popular among comic book fans, so we were starting to find the thinner trade paperback volumes more easily. As a result, thanks to both Brad and Jonathan, I have volumes 1-20 and volumes 24 and 25, with volume 21 on its way and then once that comes in, I'll only need volumes 22 and 23 to complete the series.

What I like most about the shorter trade paperback editions, is that the majority of them are named after sitcoms. So for example volume 1 is titled, Family Matters, and volume 23 is called Full House. Most of them are classic sitcoms from the '60s through to the 2000s, but volume 21 is called Modern Family which is the most recent sitcom that these trades are named after. Which is really cool.

So far I've only read the first eight issues, which were collected in volumes 1 and 2, but when I get the last three trades that I'm missing, like I said, volume 21 is on its way, I'm gonna do a complete series read through and a review. Because it's taken so long for my friends and I to find the volumes that I actually need, I didn't want to start a full read through of the series and then have to stop halfway through or after only a few volumes because I finished reading the ones I own. Especially at this point when actually owning all 25 volumes is actually becoming reality for me. 

With comic books it's extremely hard to be a total completionist given that collected editions go out of print and individual issues either are hard to find or they cost a pretty penny to get them, I'm happy if I'm able to get a few volumes of the collected editions or a few individual issues of a series just so I can sample the series. But if it's obtainable to get the complete series of something, like I did with Mark Waid's Archie series, All-Star Superman, the original Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle series, or Geoff Johns's Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E., a.k.a. Stargirl, then I'm happy to do it. And with Invincible I'm glad I've been able to slowly get all of the original trade paperback editions, given that the series is 144 issues long, and the original trades consist of 25 volumes.

Alright my friends, I think that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back on Friday to review the Disney 100 years cartoon short, Once Upon a Studio. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.