number one master-debater

I wrote my own take on the GDA Mark Invincible AU. I've always found it really interesting and i wanted to try writing it!

"Have you heard of that KirkSpock business? Kirk and Spock would never fall in love like that. Plus every woman Kirk falls in love with dies, they'd have to kill off Spock to make it realistic!"

What was his relationship with Omni-man like? I mean we know that a big reason for the Viltrumites cruelty is the fact that they A: are stronger than everyone else and B: live for thousands of years, this gives them their god complexes.

However, by the time Omni-man meets the immortal, he's also lived for Thousands of years and is much more powerful than the others on Earth, probably the most powerful after Omni man, and he's also a legitimately good guy. How would Omni man deal with that, mentally. It's not like the immortal pretends he isn't old, it's in his name, he's THE IMMORTAL, so Omni man would obviously know. Both the comics and the show imply that Omni man forms a kind of friendly rivalry with the immortal.

Did the immortal know about Omni man's advanced age? I know that obviously it was Debbie and Mark who taught Nolan humanity, but I think the idea that Immortal could have also shown him a different side of immortality is interesting, like maybe that was another factor in his change of heart.

In the comics he also mentions how he had been planning how to kill the guardians as quickly as possible because he didn't want to have time to actually think about what he was doing, implying that he cared about them, including the immortal.

The other thing I wish I could have seen is how Mark grapples with the fact that he will out live everyone on Earth, we never really see this as an internal conflict in season two, it's more so about not becoming his father. I mean if he was expecting to have a normal lifespan before, certainly this would hurt him. He's with Amber at this point and news like this would mean that even if things worked out between them, he'd still outlive her by thousands of years.

Let me explain. One thing I've been noticing a lot is how people react to season 3/early season 4 Mark Grayson aka when he's in the black and blue suit.

In season 3 of invincible and like the first 4 eps of season 4, Mark is kind of a terrible person. He refuses to reason with villains who want to be redeemed, He strangles Cecil (twice) he refuses to help titan, he refuses to help Dropkick and Fightmaster (he only ends up helping because he's forced to), he kills immortal, he refuses to help with Powerplex until he's put his family in danger (resulting in them getting fried), he breaks into the pentagon, he refuses to help during the Invincible war (even though his little brother is) And he only originally fights conquest because he 'needs something to punch.'

Then in season 4 he almost kills Dinosaurus (even though he's technically innocent, he does end up killing Rus, he almost kills Titan, and he kills that Lava chick immediately, everyone always calls him a bum and a fake hero, but I always thought the point of the "blue suit era" was to show him being selfish and ruthless and immature. I thought it did a good job of showing how the trauma of everything and everyone pointing towards the idea of him being a monster like his father, kind of turned him into one.

The comics go even harder into this, such as showing him threatening to kill Amber's new boyfriend when he learns he's abusive or replying "sometimes" when Oliver asks if he ever thought their dad might be right.

People completely seem to misunderstand this though. Especially his decision to sit out the Invincible war. When this happened I saw so many people calling Mark a bum and comparing him to heroes liek Peter Parker, who "would never do something like that" and yeah, they're right, but INVINCIBLE isn't anything like the spider man comics.

Spider-man has been interpreted and re run so many times that they're are certain character traits present within every incarnation, ie young, smartass, no-kill rule, broke, and beholden to his iconic motto (with great power comes great responsibility) there are absolutely exceptions to this, but for the most part when you read a spiderman comic, you know what you're going to get with the character.

Part of the point of INVINCIBLE is that the story is about change. It's a fixed run of comics, giving it the benefit of allowing it's main character to grow and develop and actually have a linear plotline with a beginning middle and satisfying end. That means that the character goes through changes, season 1 or 2 Mark wouldn't have sat out the Invincible war, but season 3 does because that's where Mark is in his character arc.

There's this great essay that I reference A LOT when talking about Invincible called "super position" by David Graeber. In it he critiques superheroes for essentially being defenders of the status quo, they fight against change. While this of course can be used to say something about them politically, it also demonstrates why narratively so many of them, despite undergoing significant change, rarely ever undergo permanent change to their characters.

INVINCIBLE, a comic praised for it's subversion of superhero tropes, takes this EXTREMELY common superhero trope of a stagnant status quo and flips it on it's head, it subverts it if you will, by having it's character be constantly changing and in some cases making unheroic choices that he wouldn't have made earlier on. He doesn't just develop good traits, but bad ones too. Because the honest truth is that the trauma superheroes go through wouldn't realistically just teach them important life lessons, trauma doesn't always make you a better person, in fact it often makes you worse and Invincible nails this. So many superhero stories claim to show how trauma effects their characters, but then are too scared to actually portray the ugly parts.

Comic spoilers:

There are a few things I wish they had done differently, this isn’t a comprehensive list by any means (after all it is 4 items long) but they are just some ideas that have been turning around in my head upon my last rewatch of the show (Spoilers!) 

The number one thing I didn’t like was the finale. Don’t get me wrong it was good for the most part but I guess I wish that we had gotten like an extra season to build up to FOWL. I know that the original plan was for each kid (Huey, Dewey, Louie, and Webby) to get their own season arcs. You can tell that this finale basically took Huey and Webby’s arcs and mashed them together. Obviously I can’t blame the show too much for this because it’s not like they asked to get cut down to 3 seasons, but one thing I can blame the show for is May and June. I know some people quite like these two and I don’t want to yuck their yum but in my opinion they are a little annoying, very underdeveloped, and feel unnecessary. But my biggest ick with the finale was the fact that Webby is revealed to be Scrooge’s… Daughter? (clone? idk, it was kinda unclear.) The show up to this point had made a big deal about how family can be found and not just blood and Webby was the biggest proof of this, so making her actually blood related felt like it kind of cheapened the message. 

The show feels way too harsh on Donald. His overprotectiveness is often criticized but in my opinion in most situations it is 100% justified. His sister was lost to space because of the adventures. His bad luck is also super played up and feels like he can never get a real win. Also I hate that the show implies he basically has to give up all custody of the boys he raised to his irresponsible and unprepared sister the moment she returns. Like don't get me wrong I LOVE Della and I feel like people who call her selfish or bad completely misunderstand her, I actually liked the idea that she stole the spear of saline in an attempt to have one last adventure before becoming a mother (and having to bear the responsibility that comes with it) but she is still very clearly reckless and stealing the spear she wasn't ready to be a mother yet, and she's no more ready after returning from the moon. I wish we had had an episode where the boys acknowledge that Donald was more of a parent to them than Della and is more capable of fulfilling that role than she is.

I also really wish that they had made Launchpad a little less dumb. I feel like he was smarter in his original incarnation (from 1987) and I just wish they had kept some of his quippy remarks and had more moments when his strengths could shine. We kind of got this in the episode “The Golden Armory” when it showed how he knows how to reassemble his plane and knows all the components, but I wish they had shown his knowledge of planes and stuff more. Yeah he crashes a lot but he is also able to fly in situations a lot of good pilots would immediately crash in. I mean he fixes the sunchaser over and over again, and is always able to crash safely (as in no one dies). I kinda headcanon that he acts dumber sometimes around the kids so he seems more like the fun guy. 

 I wish they would have made Magica and Lena’s relationship an actually loving one but still have Lena betray Magica because she would obviously still be evil. I don’t know how they would write the dynamic around this. Like have Magica be this well meaning parent who despite loving her niece is too consumed by the idea of avenging her brother and the past bad things that have happened to her family that she can’t focus on building a better future with the family still there. I feel like this would be a good thing to insert in season 1 to kind of mirror what Dewey goes through when he is searching for Della (in the process pushing away the rest of his family.)