INVINCIBLE versus TITAN
(Image)
Where: Invincible #1 When: January 2003
Why: Robert Kirkman How: Cory Walker
The Story So Far...
Mark Grayson may seem like any ordinary boy, but as a young child his father revealed himself to have an incredible secret -- he's the superhero Omni-Man!
Nolan had come to Earth from the planet Viltrum, and in puberty Mark would be destined to develop super-powers of his own: super-strength, speed, and flight!
In his teens: Mark enthusiastically embraces his powers and the legacy of heroism that comes with them. Devising a makeshift costume to hide his identity while he practised flying -- he eagerly embraces his first test when he happens upon an early morning diamond heist!
Tale of the Tape...
Strength: Invincible 6 (Invincible)
Intelligence: Invincible 4 (Tactician)
Speed: Invincible 6 (Mach Speed)
Stamina: Invincible 7 (Unstoppable)
Agility: Invincible 3 (Acrobat)
Where: Invincible #1 When: January 2003
Why: Robert Kirkman How: Cory Walker
The Story So Far...
Mark Grayson may seem like any ordinary boy, but as a young child his father revealed himself to have an incredible secret -- he's the superhero Omni-Man!
Nolan had come to Earth from the planet Viltrum, and in puberty Mark would be destined to develop super-powers of his own: super-strength, speed, and flight!
In his teens: Mark enthusiastically embraces his powers and the legacy of heroism that comes with them. Devising a makeshift costume to hide his identity while he practised flying -- he eagerly embraces his first test when he happens upon an early morning diamond heist!
Tale of the Tape...
Strength: Invincible 6 (Invincible)Intelligence: Invincible 4 (Tactician)
Speed: Invincible 6 (Mach Speed)
Stamina: Invincible 7 (Unstoppable)
Agility: Invincible 3 (Acrobat)
Fighting: Invincible 3 (Street Wise)
Energy: Draw 1 (None)
Total: Invincible 30 (Super)
We're going right back to the very beginning! Invincible doesn't even have a superhero costume or name yet! He's still just Mark Grayson: two weeks into developing super-human strength, speed, invulnerability, and the power of flight -- perks that come from having an alien father from the planet Viltrum!
Mark hopes to follow in the footsteps of his father: visitor from another world who integrated into human society as one of its greatest champions - Omni-Man!
In the 1980s Nolan found a life with a woman he once rescued. He and Deborah Grayson were married, and thanks to the relative similarity between human and viltrumite DNA, they sired a healthy boy destined for great power.
The first test of Mark Grayson's responsibility is Titan: a low level criminal enforcer with the ability to generate a durable layer of rock over his entire body.
The casing grants Titan super-human strength and a hide capable of surviving heavy impacts -- even if he still feels the sting of bullets and other blows.
Mark only has a couple of weeks experience with his newfound powers, which could roughly be compared with Superman. Will that give Titan the edge to send the future Invincible home with a loss in his opening bout? Let's find out!
The Tape: Invincible Ranking: Draw (Not Ranked)
What Went Down...
Energy: Draw 1 (None)
Total: Invincible 30 (Super)
We're going right back to the very beginning! Invincible doesn't even have a superhero costume or name yet! He's still just Mark Grayson: two weeks into developing super-human strength, speed, invulnerability, and the power of flight -- perks that come from having an alien father from the planet Viltrum!
Mark hopes to follow in the footsteps of his father: visitor from another world who integrated into human society as one of its greatest champions - Omni-Man!
In the 1980s Nolan found a life with a woman he once rescued. He and Deborah Grayson were married, and thanks to the relative similarity between human and viltrumite DNA, they sired a healthy boy destined for great power.
The first test of Mark Grayson's responsibility is Titan: a low level criminal enforcer with the ability to generate a durable layer of rock over his entire body.
The casing grants Titan super-human strength and a hide capable of surviving heavy impacts -- even if he still feels the sting of bullets and other blows.
Mark only has a couple of weeks experience with his newfound powers, which could roughly be compared with Superman. Will that give Titan the edge to send the future Invincible home with a loss in his opening bout? Let's find out!
The Tape: Invincible Ranking: Draw (Not Ranked)
What Went Down...
The arrival of local law enforcement sends two well dressed diamond thieves fleeing from the scene of their successful heist. Between them is the rock-skinned Titan -- chided for failing to fulfill his intended role holding the cops at bay.
"It was a diamond heist! We knew there would be cops there! Why do you think we brought you along?!"
The super-powered enforcer makes up for his reluctance to stare down a half-dozen armed cops by tucking the suited men under each arm and leaping them over an obstructing fence. A clean getaway? Not quite...
On the other side of the fence the thieves land right in the path of a waiting masked man who delivers a powerful uppercut to Titan!
The suited thieves spill unconscious to the ground as the mystery man follows his attack on Titan with a leaping stomp that drives both feet into his chest!
The rocky villain fires back with a hard right hand that knocks his attacker off of his chest!
Titan dives through the air to take the offensive, unsure of the masked fighter's intentions. He asks: "Who the hell are you? Are you trying to stop us or rob us?"
The hero responds with his fists -- unleashing a powerful haymaker that smashes the stone from Titan's body! A knock-out that declares his intent to stop them.
The Hammer...The budding hero apologizes for mixed messages his handkerchief mask and goggles might be sending, but the thieves are already out cold, awaiting collection by the proper authorities.
Omni-Man happens to catch his son in his first heroic outing, and the confusing bandit chic of Mark's makeshift costume prompts the father to take his super-powered son on a rite of passage to the tailors. The next step on the path to becoming the Invincible you know and love!
The way I remember it Invincible was a relatively quick cult sensation, but in his foreword for collected editions of the series: Kurt Busiek, writing circa May 2003, describes his conceited dismissal of the new title, and its apparent slow start.
"Like the vast majority of smart-thinking Americans, I passed up INVINCIBLE #1 at least twice. Heard about the new Image "superhero line," saw the books in the catalog, and breezed right by INVINCIBLE. Just another superhero book, I thought. I've got a complete run of Nova. Of Firestorm. Of Speedball, for Pete's sake. This isn't anything I need."
I can relate to Busiek's experience.
He'd probably quibble semantics, but my thinking was somewhat similar. At first glance the Invincible #1 cover is not very remarkable. Plain even. The costume always made me wonder if it was all just somebody's joking attempt to turn the Image Comics logo into a mascot. The internal influences seemed uncomfortably obvious as well: Superman meets Spider-Man, with Savage Dragon action. A hint of Dragon Ball Z flavour may or may not be deliberate.
Busiek goes on to tell us that Firebreather and Dominion were his choices from Image's new wave of the time. Not being a smart-thinking American, I connected with the deepcuts of UK import Jack Staff.
Jack Staff wasn't particularly veiled with its references either, but it pulled from the far less common source of 1960s British comics. Curiosities that I'd enjoyed as a young boy and was eager to do so again, even though I'm not nearly that old. I just happened to discover one of the vital joys of comics at an early age -- back issues!
I like a certain amount of complication. It's the cornerstone of shared universes and one of the great and unique strengths of serial comic books. If things were too simple they'd be boring. Yet by 2003 online comic book fandom had begun to organize around some burgeoning ugly ideas.
Viral myths deeming Superman uniquely "unrelatable" and impossible to feature in "good" stories began to spread. The deeply regrettable phrase "new reader friendly" was coined to give common short-hand to a confused and anxious group convinced history had made American comics uniquely unapproachable. A hideous contradiction that would make human existence impossible. I did not approve.
Invincible seemed to be participating in both of these unfortunate preoccupations, but that wasn't the whole story. Sure, it reduced the Superman archetype to a fallible teenager, and very famously indulges in the increasingly common trope of the evil Superman. It does attempt to be "new reader friendly" and succeeds at that feat very effectively, but it doesn't do it at the expense of comic book excess.
Some of the impression that Invincible was overly-simplified comes from the relatively straight-laced earnestness of it all. It's only post-modern in the most basic of facets, a byproduct of passing time. Otherwise, it avoids commentary or subversion to its betterment. It is unabashedly a superhero comic. Apparent with its references, but still determinedly individual enough to join the pantheon.
Invincible's costume is one of the few meta gags worked into the first issue, using Robert Kirkman's search for an iconic design as part of Mark Grayson's origin story, and the invention of Arthur Rosenbaum: superhero tailor.
The idea of a specialist tailor, or armorer, was an emerging trend of the new millennium fixation with pseudo-practicality. Kirkman gets more out of the idea by using scrapped design concepts to tell his story. The orange & yellow costume Mark Grayson tries on first, and Rosenbaum's assumption that solar batteries would be a useful accessory to a Superman-esque character, directly references Kirkman's earlier conception for his character, then called Bulletproof.
He later spins the serviceable, if slightly generic, earlier design into another character -- Zandale Rudolph -- benefitting from the work done in this first issue. New reader friendly? Pff! You just got backdoored into big boy comics, buddy!
There's "continuity" all over this first issue that will eventually pay off later. It's implicit in the very first pages, where Cory Walker lays out an effective cold open action scene that features a fully realised Invincible grappling with what might, at first glance, appear to be a suicide bomber. A topical assumption in 2003 that gets flipped on its head in future issues.
For the record: I like Cory Walker's artwork. It's got the hallmarks of a modern American superhero comic artist, but a character all its own. Its simple linework lends well to the series' future in animation, and his sense of action is energetic and bombastic. The thin sharpness of his lines, and quirky details feel a little bit European, but there's an anime flavour bubbling beneath the surface, too. I say anime, rather than manga, because a sense of movement is a common feature.
Like the less-than-remarkable cover -- occasionally the staging of scenes is a little too underdone -- but I also greatly appreciate the anime-style stillness he's able to achieve in quieter moments. Scenes of domesticity are as natural as the Kirby by way of Larsen bursts of bombastic wall breaking. You don't always get both.
It'll take an unfortunately long time, but today's featured fight antagonist, Titan, will also take on far greater significance. He gets a little lost in the shuffle, sitting out dozens of issues as the series juggles human drama, other high concept fun, and a commitment to the alien aspect of the title-character that becomes the series' signature. I know you know about Omni-Man, but we'll get to that another time.
Omni-Man happens to catch his son in his first heroic outing, and the confusing bandit chic of Mark's makeshift costume prompts the father to take his super-powered son on a rite of passage to the tailors. The next step on the path to becoming the Invincible you know and love!
The way I remember it Invincible was a relatively quick cult sensation, but in his foreword for collected editions of the series: Kurt Busiek, writing circa May 2003, describes his conceited dismissal of the new title, and its apparent slow start.
"Like the vast majority of smart-thinking Americans, I passed up INVINCIBLE #1 at least twice. Heard about the new Image "superhero line," saw the books in the catalog, and breezed right by INVINCIBLE. Just another superhero book, I thought. I've got a complete run of Nova. Of Firestorm. Of Speedball, for Pete's sake. This isn't anything I need."
I can relate to Busiek's experience.
He'd probably quibble semantics, but my thinking was somewhat similar. At first glance the Invincible #1 cover is not very remarkable. Plain even. The costume always made me wonder if it was all just somebody's joking attempt to turn the Image Comics logo into a mascot. The internal influences seemed uncomfortably obvious as well: Superman meets Spider-Man, with Savage Dragon action. A hint of Dragon Ball Z flavour may or may not be deliberate.
Busiek goes on to tell us that Firebreather and Dominion were his choices from Image's new wave of the time. Not being a smart-thinking American, I connected with the deepcuts of UK import Jack Staff.
Jack Staff wasn't particularly veiled with its references either, but it pulled from the far less common source of 1960s British comics. Curiosities that I'd enjoyed as a young boy and was eager to do so again, even though I'm not nearly that old. I just happened to discover one of the vital joys of comics at an early age -- back issues!
I like a certain amount of complication. It's the cornerstone of shared universes and one of the great and unique strengths of serial comic books. If things were too simple they'd be boring. Yet by 2003 online comic book fandom had begun to organize around some burgeoning ugly ideas.
Viral myths deeming Superman uniquely "unrelatable" and impossible to feature in "good" stories began to spread. The deeply regrettable phrase "new reader friendly" was coined to give common short-hand to a confused and anxious group convinced history had made American comics uniquely unapproachable. A hideous contradiction that would make human existence impossible. I did not approve.
Invincible seemed to be participating in both of these unfortunate preoccupations, but that wasn't the whole story. Sure, it reduced the Superman archetype to a fallible teenager, and very famously indulges in the increasingly common trope of the evil Superman. It does attempt to be "new reader friendly" and succeeds at that feat very effectively, but it doesn't do it at the expense of comic book excess.
Some of the impression that Invincible was overly-simplified comes from the relatively straight-laced earnestness of it all. It's only post-modern in the most basic of facets, a byproduct of passing time. Otherwise, it avoids commentary or subversion to its betterment. It is unabashedly a superhero comic. Apparent with its references, but still determinedly individual enough to join the pantheon.
Invincible's costume is one of the few meta gags worked into the first issue, using Robert Kirkman's search for an iconic design as part of Mark Grayson's origin story, and the invention of Arthur Rosenbaum: superhero tailor.
The idea of a specialist tailor, or armorer, was an emerging trend of the new millennium fixation with pseudo-practicality. Kirkman gets more out of the idea by using scrapped design concepts to tell his story. The orange & yellow costume Mark Grayson tries on first, and Rosenbaum's assumption that solar batteries would be a useful accessory to a Superman-esque character, directly references Kirkman's earlier conception for his character, then called Bulletproof.
He later spins the serviceable, if slightly generic, earlier design into another character -- Zandale Rudolph -- benefitting from the work done in this first issue. New reader friendly? Pff! You just got backdoored into big boy comics, buddy!
There's "continuity" all over this first issue that will eventually pay off later. It's implicit in the very first pages, where Cory Walker lays out an effective cold open action scene that features a fully realised Invincible grappling with what might, at first glance, appear to be a suicide bomber. A topical assumption in 2003 that gets flipped on its head in future issues.
For the record: I like Cory Walker's artwork. It's got the hallmarks of a modern American superhero comic artist, but a character all its own. Its simple linework lends well to the series' future in animation, and his sense of action is energetic and bombastic. The thin sharpness of his lines, and quirky details feel a little bit European, but there's an anime flavour bubbling beneath the surface, too. I say anime, rather than manga, because a sense of movement is a common feature.
Like the less-than-remarkable cover -- occasionally the staging of scenes is a little too underdone -- but I also greatly appreciate the anime-style stillness he's able to achieve in quieter moments. Scenes of domesticity are as natural as the Kirby by way of Larsen bursts of bombastic wall breaking. You don't always get both.
It'll take an unfortunately long time, but today's featured fight antagonist, Titan, will also take on far greater significance. He gets a little lost in the shuffle, sitting out dozens of issues as the series juggles human drama, other high concept fun, and a commitment to the alien aspect of the title-character that becomes the series' signature. I know you know about Omni-Man, but we'll get to that another time.
If you don't know about Invincible but want to start learning you can start your journey with a tiny bite of Invincible Vol.1: Family Matters or devour the first year of issues with Invincible: The Ultimate Collection Vol. 1. By using the Amazon purchase links provided you'll not only get an easy and convenient deal, but also help support the site at no extra cost to you!
Secret
Wars on Infinite Earths has featured well over 600 battles and
ranked more than 1000 characters! If you'd like to see more Invincible, or just help support this project in general, you can get involved on Patreon. As a thank you you'll gain access to additional updates, polls, and options to choose future feature content.
Discover more by exploring the Secret Archive for a complete index of featured fight articles in order of publisher, series, and issue number. If you've entered into the world of comics through invincible it's a nice way to go deeper into the comic book multiverse! Follow links throughout posts to search for specific subjects.
You can also subscribe on Twitter and Facebook to get daily links to fights inspired by the topics of the day! Be sure to wave the flag by hitting that like and share!
Winner: Invincible
#345 (new) Invincible
#955 (new) Titan
Discover more by exploring the Secret Archive for a complete index of featured fight articles in order of publisher, series, and issue number. If you've entered into the world of comics through invincible it's a nice way to go deeper into the comic book multiverse! Follow links throughout posts to search for specific subjects.
You can also subscribe on Twitter and Facebook to get daily links to fights inspired by the topics of the day! Be sure to wave the flag by hitting that like and share!
Winner: Invincible
#345 (new) Invincible
#955 (new) Titan
