We finish off the three-part Invincible debut this week with “Who You Calling Ugly?” in an adventure into unabashed superheroism. Spoilers ahead.
1. How do you remix a superhero funeral?
The funeral opening here is really well framed in that its leaning into its tropes with gusto: rumbling rain, grey skies, tears flowing down garishly costumed faces, the full shebang. But beside that, it’s a purposefully disingenuous service. Omni-Man’s speech FEELS canned, because we know he is just too flippantly cocky to actually care about feigning emotion. His ‘You Can’t Bring it Home’ speech to Marc is the perfect addendum to this in how it reflects on Marc as someone compartmentalising their identity, and on himself as a man who has lived under infinitely more complex layers of compartmentalisation.
2. The CIA atmos
Every episode I fall more in love with the GDA aesthetic this show has made. The comic literally made a gimmick out of how suburban the agency seemed from the outside, and even though that was fun, I’m fully in love with the pageantry of the GDA and just how much they must destroy the american taxpayer budget. Invisible armed guards, secret hospitals and a literal spy next door for the Grayson family.
Still, the art realisation in the color shifts every time Cecil turns up just imbues each scene with a sense of urgency you really couldn’t translate in anyway else. Even more than Omni-Man, Cecil feels like the axis on which the season-long greater narrative rests. Wally Goggs is a machine.
3. Why are they always high school stories?
I feel like every episode, it’s becoming increasingly evident that the Marc/Eve/Angela love triangle is fizzling out before it’s even started. The fact that Angela and Marc are just so forcefully and transparently ready for a relationship would be sweet, aside from the fact that there’s no preapparent chemistry to them and it robs their scenes together of any suspense. There’s just no will they/won’t they, it’s just a protracted inevitability. There’s nothing fun about a ‘girlfriend, just add water’ narrative. That said, can’t help but love the scene where Mark just explains his favourite comics so we can all just wish we were his girlfriend. If he’s repping “Underwater Welder” you can’t deny a smidgen of good taste. Still, on the other polarity of the critical spectrum, I’m really struggling to broker much sympathy after Eve’s extended sad break-up scene. Again, it’s artificial to the point of off-putting.
That can be traced as a general theme through a good portion of this episode. It’s still charming, but more than any previous episodes, “Who You Calling Ugly?” leans furthest into the show’s most artificial elements. Beyond just the unconvincing love triangle and everpresent high-school B-plot, elements like the Guardian of the Globes trials and Doc Seismic fight just feel soulless, played out before they start. I can’t say I don’t enjoy them at moments, but I really didn’t need to see that many punchlines over a social conscience caricature supervillain with CTE.
4. World of Wonder
Even when the framing is squiffy though, the heroes of Invincible beam with personality. I love just how far the new Guardians of the Globe roster strays from the Justice League analogues they succeed. Plus the fights themselves shine through with choreography and scoring that supersedes the rickety framing around it.
Similarly, the Mauler twins blast past their humble opening gimmick into probably the most entertaining part of the episode, aided immensely by them fully embracing the destructive power of a Run The Jewels soundtrack. Watching them lay waste to this prison only gets better when you keep in mind how reluctantly Mauler does it. Like he obviously enjoys the routine of jail and all his novelty meals, he really only did it for the chance at fratricide.
5. Scraps of Ottley
Seeing as this episode starts with excessive sadness and ends with something close to Marc being chipper, we really got to see how expressive the character animation could be. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a fish person deep in grief but it’s weirdly stirring. I complained earlier about the art being a little more homogenised than the comic, but the facial expressions are where you really see the closest synergy. Every once in a while the show will take you by surprise for a couple frames as Marc, Debbie or Eve will suddenly settle into these perfect little Ryan Ottley faces. Then there’s these injections of character acting that lose none of their charm in the shift to animation, like Omni-Man immediately clocking Damien Darkblood with two darts of his eyes and an exhalation.
Food for thought:
-Three second kaiju and ten second iguana are my new favourite characters
-Hey! It’s Dupli-cate’s brother!
-There’s an upsetting amount of spandex wandering around in the Grayson house
Next up we reach the halfway mark in “Neil Armstrong, Eat Your Heart Out.”
