Amazon's Invincible - thoughts?

When you put it that way, I'm starting to wonder what exactly even is the appeal to this series.
I will give that it embraces superheroes more than straight examples these days. Costumes are colorful, abilities are high-scale, plots are fearlessly outlandish. The MCU can never have casual side stories of extra-dimensional octopus aliens invading without making it as dull, muted, lame and self-aware as possible.
Can we talk about how weird Bulletproof is?

So this nigger straight up just has all the powers of viltrumites and yet is never relevant in any meaningful way. He gets a shocking amount of time dedicated to him in the comics and is explicitly stated to be as strong as Mark and as fast as Red Rush. So you'd think he'd be able to solo a Mark variant so weak that Rex could kill him but nah he loses every major fight because he's not Invincible.

Except he fucking is Invincible. He's got a creepy fetish for wanting to skinwalk Mark. When Mark fucks off for a while he starts wearing the Invincible suit and calling himself Invincible and it's never really addressed beyond Mark showing up later like "yeah man I don't really care anymore you can be invincible if you want" and that's that.

AND THEN THERE'S A WHOLE SIDEPLOT WHERE HE MURDERS HIS PARENTS?!? NEVER ELABORATED ON, NEVER BROUGHT UP OR MENTIONED AGAIN, NEVER EVER RELEVANT TO THE STORY HE JUST DOES THAT

Turns out he's got a thing for identity theft because the twin brother his parents loved more died years ago and he started pretending to be him so that they would love him too and when they find out they start yelling at him and THIS happens

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I don't even remember what his powers are.
 
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I don't even remember what his powers are.
Same as most of the actually relevant/strong powers in Invincible barring Eve (sometimes) and Space Racist.
Flying Brick with no additional powers.
It's a Superhero setting and the only powers that ever mean anything are flying brick or in some rare cases, flightless brick. Everyone else is almost always completely superfluous and can be ignored as they have no chance at defeating a Flying Brick.
Don't believe me?
All Viltrumites: Flying Brick
The Immortal: Flying Brick
Battle Beast: Flightless Brick
Bulletproof: Flying Brick
Allen the Alien: Flying Brick
Mr. Liu: Can transform into a Flying Brick Dragon
Angstrom Levy: Ability to summon Flying Bricks
 
I will give that it embraces superheroes more than straight examples these days. Costumes are colorful, abilities are high-scale, plots are fearlessly outlandish. The MCU can never have casual side stories of extra-dimensional octopus aliens invading without making it as dull, muted, lame and self-aware as possible.

I don't even remember what his powers are.
His powers are explicitly that he's as strong as Mark and as fast as Red Rush. According to the wiki he even has viltrumite esque regeneration and extended lifespan. For all intents and purposes he is a viltrumite.
 
Almost as if the original comic was a hastily cobbled together mess of half-formed ideas and a ton of stupid sideplots that never congealed into anything meaningful.
 
Is it me or is the combat choreography really meh? Like sure, Mark can pull out some pretty slick moves here and there, but for the most part, a lot of the fights in this series either go "guys with super strength just slug each other or fly into each other a bunch of times until one looks more gored than the other" or "Somebody gets stomped into mincemeat until their enemy gives up and they walk it off an episode later."
 
Is it me or is the combat choreography really meh? Like sure, Mark can pull out some pretty slick moves here and there, but for the most part, a lot of the fights in this series either go "guys with super strength just slug each other or fly into each other a bunch of times until one looks more gored than the other" or "Somebody gets stomped into mincemeat until their enemy gives up and they walk it off an episode later."
look, theres only so much they can do with the 2 million dollar budget they get on this (this seems like a lot, but the boys gets 11 million an episode, so i mean they can do better) and only so much those poor north korean animators can do with such little time
 
tbh Why didn't they take more liberties with the alternate invincible designs?

all they did was make nomaskible a faggot(no problem on my part and kinda makes sense)
they look worse then the comics
 
Is it me or is the combat choreography really meh? Like sure, Mark can pull out some pretty slick moves here and there, but for the most part, a lot of the fights in this series either go "guys with super strength just slug each other or fly into each other a bunch of times until one looks more gored than the other" or "Somebody gets stomped into mincemeat until their enemy gives up and they walk it off an episode later."
Because in Invincible the strongest foes are literally dudes who can fly and hit hard. More esoteric abilities prevalent in Marvel or DC are rarely if ever shown. For example Silver Surfer can do things like alter matter, revive the biosphere of entire planets, drain energy, read minds. You wont see something like that in any fight in Invincible. In an old 1980s comic Thor once flew into the Solar Systems sun while fighting the Surfer, wasnt phased by it at all. In Invincible characters cant even stand the surface of the sun. Its Dragon Ball lite but it doesnt even look or sound cool to compensate and theres no ki either.
 
Is it me or is the combat choreography really meh? Like sure, Mark can pull out some pretty slick moves here and there, but for the most part, a lot of the fights in this series either go "guys with super strength just slug each other or fly into each other a bunch of times until one looks more gored than the other" or "Somebody gets stomped into mincemeat until their enemy gives up and they walk it off an episode later."
I don't know why they refused to give Viltrumites more than flying brick powers. The Kryptonians they are based on have eye lasers, freeze breath, enhanced senses, energy discharges, intangibility, etc. Even if giving them cool weapons or martial arts is too hard, One-Punch Man showed bricks can still be creative. Saitama does acrobatic moves and creates afterimages and flips the battlefield upside-down. But as it stands, if the 'mites invaded Marvel, they have no resistance to the numerous non-physical options X-Men alone could take them out with.

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I don't know why they refused to give Viltrumites more than flying brick powers. The Kryptonians they are based on have eye lasers, freeze breath, enhanced senses, energy discharges, intangibility, etc. Even if giving them cool weapons or martial arts is too hard, One-Punch Man showed bricks can still be creative. Saitama does acrobatic moves and creates afterimages and flips the battlefield upside-down. But as it stands, if the 'mites invaded Marvel, they have no resistance to the numerous non-physical options X-Men alone could take them out with.

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If the Viltrumites invaded Marvel, they'd be dealt with as a one issue threat and never get spoken of ever again.
Some fucker would 100% try to flex and get decapitated by fucking Wolverine of all people too.
Meanwhile, somebody like Iron Man, Reed Richards or Doctor Doom probably performs a rapid analysis of the Viltrumites bodies and will have a weapon that just uses the frequency weakness developed in a couple hours.

This is to say that Viltrumites are very boring and very underpowered even at their one specialty.
 
But as it stands, if the 'mites invaded Marvel, they have no resistance to the numerous non-physical options X-Men alone could take them out with.
The entire empire jobs to any setting where there's flying bricks coexisting with characters that AREN'T flying bricks but are still relevant in combat. Viltrumites, despite being most compared to Kryptonians and Saiyans who have a shitton of powers, have exactly two schticks going for them, which is being real strong and flying fast, (except for when they suddenly turn out to not be strong or fast, like Rex managing to kill a Mark variant with his skeleton when an entire floor didn't do shit, or Powerplex SOMEHOW taking one out when the secret to beating him is literally just dangling him up in the sky and crushing his skull or throat really quickly if he doesn't stop acting up) which goes out the window the second they fight anybody capable of countering somebody being strong and/or flying fast, especially when they're prone to doing stupid shit that ends up costing them the whole fight against unimaginably weaker opponents.
Its Dragon Ball lite but it doesnt even look or sound cool to compensate and theres no ki either.
This series is just Dragon Ball, but without any of the things people love about Dragon Ball, but it still keeps some of its most annoying flaws.
 
If the Viltrumites invaded Marvel, they'd be dealt with as a one issue threat and never get spoken of ever again.
Some fucker would 100% try to flex and get decapitated by fucking Wolverine of all people too.
Meanwhile, somebody like Iron Man, Reed Richards or Doctor Doom probably performs a rapid analysis of the Viltrumites bodies and will have a weapon that just uses the frequency weakness developed in a couple hours.

This is to say that Viltrumites are very boring and very underpowered even at their one specialty.
Hulk or Thor alone could take on a million Viltrumites and treat the invasion like a casual sparring match. It would be worse in DC since you have a team consisting of Superman, Martian Manhunter whos has more powers, Shazam whos magic Superman, Wonder Woman, 5-7 Green Lanterns and a bunch of other powerful dudes.
 
Honestly the one dimensional nature of Viltrumites never bothered me, the premise is "what if Gandalf complained about lembas giving him the runs while camping in Moria?", it was about the absurdity of exceptional people doing mundane boring everyday stuff, not what gizmo Reed Richards can pull out of his ass this week.

I love how wholesome the series is, there's little to none of that mean-spiritedness or edginess that plagues the self-incestuous comic industry today. It's certainly something I'd recommend for a kid to read; for Marvel I'm not sure.
 
What people complain about is not Viltrumites being weak or one-dimensional in itself. It's that fights boil down to "punch harder" and gratuitous gore. Dragonball post Dragonball itself, which is often mocked for "my powerlevel is higher than your powerlevel, therefore I win" nature of its fights, still is relatively complex by comparison.
 
Didn't Mark beat Conquest by suffocating him in outer space, as he couldn't just outpunch him?
 
look, theres only so much they can do with the 2 million dollar budget they get on this (this seems like a lot, but the boys gets 11 million an episode, so i mean they can do better) and only so much those poor north korean animators can do with such little time
Superman & Lois on CW had better fights than The Boys, unironically

The implications of Viltrumites being able to physically rip each other apart kind of bugs me. Could a Viltrumite tear off his own arm, for example?

But as it stands, if the 'mites invaded Marvel, they have no resistance to the numerous non-physical options X-Men alone could take them out with.
I believe there is some subtle foreshadowing related to this in the very first episode (spoilers for comic stuff that's still a couple seasons in the future of the show probably):

The Guardians put up a much better fight in the show than the comics... except for Green Ghost, who completely freezes up. In the comics, the Guardians eventually get a rematch with Nolan, which they win. In that fight, we see that Green Ghost's phasing powers are able to hurt Nolan. So I think the show was setting it up that GG's inaction was really the deciding factor in the fight. In the show's version of the rematch, she will actually do something, and that will be what takes him down.
 
That is not at all how it went down.
Honestly I don't remember the details and I'm not re-reading 100+ issues just for that, but IIRC Mark knocked the wind out of him on their final fight and dragged his ass into the orbit, where he couldn't catch a breath and it made him lose strength, thus allowing Mark to overpower him.

That, or I'm hallucinating again. Damn shrooms.
 
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