Review: Invincible “All I Can Say Is I’m Sorry”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

A survivor of the battle between Mark and Nolan swears revenge against Mark by any means necessary.

OUR TAKE

A couple weeks ago, I mentioned that Invincible took on a more nuanced version of a moral dilemma shown in “Man of Steel”. This week, it puts on a clinic for its sequel, “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice”, specifically the matter of having a character whose life was negatively impacted by a battle the main character took place in going after said main character for vengeance. I’m not going to spend too much time comparing this to bad movies, but it felt worth bringing up in this instance. That aside, this is probably the best episode of the season so far. If I had to sum up the theme in a concise way, it would probably be about characters being confronted with views outside of their usual spheres. Oliver still loves and admires Nolan, mainly because he’s never seen what Nolan did to Mark or the people of Earth, and so is still trying to comprehend why people would hate Nolan so much. Similarly, Mark, his family, and most people on Earth like Invincible for what he is able to do, not knowing there are people like Scott Duvall, AKA Powerplex, who can only see the suffering that happened to them, even becoming consumed by it.

There’s so much going into that idea that would take like a half hour video essay to properly expand on, and I have three other reviews to do after this, so just take my word for it that whatever I was going to say is pretty smart. What I’ll instead focus on with this second paragraph is how Invincible, the show, can rather impressively make people with names like Powerplex, Rex Splode, Allen the Alien, so many others into full human beings whose happiness and well-being I end up so invested in. Yes, this is a send up of comic book and superhero tropes and cliches, which certainly adds recognizable and distinct flavor to things, but without making characters and stories that connect to us on a human level, all of these names might as well be Mud. And that’s something to keep in mind as we enter into our last two episodes of the season and, if the mid-credits scene is anything to go by, will be kicking off the much lauded “Invincible War” storyline that many readers of the comic have been patiently waiting for. But no matter who wins, do we lose?