Invincible Universe compendium
I was at Barnes and Noble and succumbed to temptation. I had read Invincible Universe proper some time back, and I thought to buy the collection once again, little-knowing I was actually buying all the extended universe materials (sans Battle Beast, which I'm not interested in reading). It's a thick, glossy book, with high-quality pages and bindings that are too tight to see the materials in the crease. Still, I enjoyed re-reading what I knew, and the new stories I didn't. Let's get into them, shall we? Light, inspecific spoilers to follow.
Atom Eve
Samantha Eve Wilkins: Atom Eve! See now her secret origin, and discover the truth: her parents are not actually her parents!
It's a short two-issue series, but it's very cinematic, the tragedies building into one another until we reach the depressing conclusion. Many characters here have strong personalities, and I'm once again reminded that Atom Eve's dad is a POS who does his best; the scene with his wife where they lost the baby is one of the most human moments I've ever seen from him, trying to convince his wife not to blame herself, and blame him if she needed to. That kind of human connection and tragedy pervades these series.
Very good. I can see why it was adapted to animation and, more importantly, why it changed very little when it did so.
Atom Eve & Rex Splode
Rex is a kid who's had it rough. But he gets a chance to be a superhero and get a dad who's there for him. What will he did when he finds out his new old man is shady as hell?
This is likewise good, showing how Rex got to be the way he is, but more importantly how someone like Eve would be interested in him when she's clearly out of his league. They have a common connection to one another through being created in a lab, and she's especially drawn to Rex because her father wouldn't approve. When I got to the end of the series, I almost could have believed they would remain a couple, but I know better.
I do think the artist could pull back, just a hair. Eve is an attractive young woman, but she's still a teenager during this series, and the way she's drawn is repeatedly sexualized. Yes, she's wearing a miniskirt, but some of these poses look like they'd hurt your back.
That's about it, really. There was a bonus story after this about Nolan and his family, which was cute.
Guarding the Globe (2010) volume 1
Cecil is looking to recruit to the Guardians of the Globe, but not just recruit: expand! Meet the brand-new Guardians of the Globe, now from across the entire world!
The vibe of this series feels like a workplace dramedy. The absurdity of the situations these heroes have to face off against are treated utterly seriously, but we get a tongue-in-cheek tone for the interpersonal drama. It's a lot of fun, but it really gets better during the second volume; it's a little rough here, not quite fleshed out.
(Before we move on, I would also like to mention I thought the designs for the Order are great; it's fun that only two of them are specifically-cultural, War Woman and Master Liu, and the rest have unique gimmicks that don't have anything to do with their countries).
A few characters pop off in this series, notably Best Tiger and Yeti, but the rest are hit-or-miss. I really think El Chupacabra had something strong going for him that didn't get going until the last couple of issues, and I think Outrun being a nymphomaniac is a shitty trait to add to one of the few female members of the team.
The ending is also anti-climactic. We learn one thing about the bad guy, Set, and it prevents the situation from worsening, but it's not set up at all and he's not defeated. It's all so little, so nothing.
Guarding the Globe (2012) volume 2
The Guardians are back! But some of the threats they put down in the first series are rising to the surface, and new threats come to make more trouble for them. Can they fight back?
I knew this series was going to be better than the first when Brit's first character moment is him learning with his wife that their son will have some form of autism. Brit's stoic so he takes it on the chin, but it clearly affects him and he thinks a lot about it throughout the series. It also has a heartwarming conclusion that I was touched by, where nobody felt villainized even with some really intense emotions.
Characters feel more like people in this series. Not all of them; Japandroid doesn't get a lot of characterization in this series, and the conclusion to her story didn't hit as hard as I wanted it to. But there were others that leaped out of the page; Outrun got some justice when it was revealed she was possessed in the first series and nobody noticed, which she got to be angry about. Kaboomerang revealed some hidden depths that turned him fully-rounded from the cocky asshole he was before. The characters are allowed more inner lives; though most of the focus goes to Brit as the team leader, we get to see these characters interact with one another off the job, or in the downtime, which makes them all the more human.
There's also a character who appears in one issue, Samar, as a civilian Brit is trying to save. She's a face to remind us that the people the Guardians are trying to save are all whole individuals; in the last series, Paris got wiped almost off the map off-panel, and I felt nothing; here, Samar dies and it's one of the most crushing things I've ever seen, and I own the Invincible compendiums! It's not a clean victory, but our heroes come out on top in the end.
I think Phil Hester did a better job as the writer on this book than Robert Kirkman on the first one, and I'm so pleased both to have read his work, and then he continued onto the final series.
Invincible Universe
The series shifts at this point to telling stories in between Invincible events proper. We pick up right after the final confrontation with Dinosaurus, and our heroes are scrambling to pick up the pieces and set things right, all the while enemies work in the shadows against them.
The larger format for this series allows for a broader, episodic format that allows us to drill down into the characters. We get an entire issue dedicated to El Chupacabra dealing with his guilt by making it right with people he's wronged, and while it doesn't tie into the series as a whole, it makes future interactions stronger. Almost every character who was introduced before (including those from Capes and Astounding Wolf-Man) gets stronger focus, and to be the hero of their own story at least once. Best Tiger went from someone I loved to watch just because he's cool, to a stoic badass with hidden emotional depths and an honesty about it that was refreshing.
The finale does, of course, involve fighting a bad guy, but it's a unique twist on the "and the adventure continues" ending that I appreciated after everything else. Even without the context of previous stories, I understand how I could just jump into this series and enjoy it; it's quality superhero storytelling, in a way more pure than Invincible proper. If you were interested in costumed do-gooders with a little violence and some stakes, this is the series for you. Just... know there be spoilers ahead, yeah?
