Invincible - Preview, Kirkman's superheroes arrive on Prime Video

Invincible - Preview, Kirkman's superheroes arrive on Prime Video

The next Friday March 26 will debut on Amazon Prime Video Invincible, the new animated series about superheroes based on the famous comic of the Skybound/Image Comics created by R, the brilliant mind behind it The Walking Dead e Outcast, Together with Cory Walker e Ryan Ottley. The series, which will consist of a total of 8 episodes, will tell the exploits of Mark Grayson, an American teenager who will change forever when his lifelong dream comes true: possess superpowers. However, the series aims to overturn the classic image of the hero that in recent years we have come to know in cinecomics or in the latest series The Marvel movies: the superheroes of Invincible, in fact, are first of all human beings like all of us, and we will learn, episode after episode, their deepest feelings, their inner struggle for a life that is divided between the problems of everyday life and the superhero ones, told with a strong dose of realism.



Invincible tells us a mature, violent and brutal story, a realistic representation of the superhero. Not a perfect and problem-free being, but a man who has to fight every day against the worst of society and who must also relate and live with it in everyday life. The first three episodes of the season, lasting about an hour each, will debut on Friday 26 March, while a new episode per week will follow, up to an adrenaline rush final on April 30th. Here's what we think of the first three episodes, which we had the opportunity to preview.



Invincible: the man under the mask

The slogan of the print version of Invincible is a bold admission of intent, "The best superhero comic". Net of agreeing or not with this statement, there is no doubt that this story attempts to bring a breath of fresh air into the superhero scene, as we see from the hero placed at the center of the narrative. Mark Grayson, our aspiring hero, apparently looks like a high schooler like so many others. In fact, he is the son of Omni-man, the one who is called the most powerful superhero on the planet. Exactly for this reason, he spends his days apprehending the arrival of his powers, which could manifest at any moment. And Grayson's inner concern emerges from the very first lines of this story. The father is the best hero Earth knows, a figure than him will never reach, however hard he may be, and that it is not helping him in any way to better live his still unexpressed and halfway condition.

Invincible - Preview, Kirkman's superheroes arrive on Prime Video

The first narrative arc of Invincible will focus precisely on the awareness of Mark, on his attempt to understand what it means to be a superhero. These first episodes tell us about it through an adult narrative, which repaints the portrait of the superheroes we think we know, and which it is skillfully aimed at a wide target of users, from the youngest to the adults. In these first episodes we have observed an excellent balance between dialogue interspersed with scenes related to the growth of the main characters and fights as violent as they are brutal. The Amazon Prime series, in fact, currently manages to keep the double soul of Invincible unchanged, able to go from violent clashes to scenes of everyday life in an instant. Just like the original comic, this animated transposition captures the best and the worst of the superhero story, intelligently adapting it to all those problems that plague contemporary society.



A style that does not fully convince

If Invincible's narrative manages to convince, the same cannot be said of its visual adaptation, which features a technical definition that shows some weakness. The graphic and visual impact appears, unfortunately, as the real weak point of these first three episodes. The drawings and animations of this transposition are taken directly from the Image Comics comic, but nevertheless cannot impress themselves on the screen with the same effectiveness, especially in the most excited scenes, where the details and the characters lose depth. The fight scenes are entertaining and pleasant to follow, even if in some situations they can make the viewer turn up their noses.


One of the main problems of the product is the poor presence on the screen. The environments, in fact, are often empty, and with the exception of some sequences set at school and at Grayson's house, the streets of the city sometimes seem uninhabited and not very lively. If on the one hand narrative the series also wants to tell us about the coexistence between superheroes and ordinary citizens, on the other the visual aspect seems to detach itself from this story, and more than once we wondered where are these inhabitants who live life with heroes everyday, almost as if the series were set in a dreamlike and muffled context, in which the human presence fails.

What do we expect

These first three episodes of Invincible they live of ups and downs. From a storytelling point of view, this new Amazon Prime Video product hits the spot, telling us a story by reversing what we think we know. A new way of seeing the hero, a new way to discover the man under the mask, portraying him in his everyday life and also playing with the dogmas of the superhero genre, an essential trait of the DNA of the paper Invincible. It will then be necessary to evaluate the adaptation, since we followed the first three episodes in English.


Invincible - Preview, Kirkman's superheroes arrive on Prime Video

On the visual side, however, things get a lot less satisfying. The scenic impact of Invincible did not convince us but, nevertheless, the simplicity with which it shows itself helps in a certain way to focus on the narrative, which takes its time before reaching the climax. We don't expect things to improve in the remaining 5 episodes, but in any case the final result is however pleasant. Invincible has all the credentials to turn out to be a great product, with ample room for improvement for the seasons to come. The appointment, for these first episodes, is set for this Friday on Amazon prime Video. Our advice is not to miss it!

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