100+ Definitions 17

Invincible #17

Low-Frequency Listener (L-FL): Danny Fingeroth, an editor on Spider-Man comics and author of Superman on the Couch: What Superheroes Really Tell Us About Ourselves and Our Society, along with other books in the short essay “Power and Responsibility….and Other Reflections on Superheroes,” defines superheroes as “Someone has or obtains enhanced power—physical, mental, magical, mechanical—and then, either through good character or a difficult, transformative rite of passage, realizes that power confers on them an obligation to some section of humanity, if not all of it.  Superheroes and their powers are central metaphors for growing up, from child to adolescent and adolescent to adult.”

Invincible #17 (I#17): That is a fine definition.  My pages contribute a complimentary understanding of the term in that our stories of superbeings are concerned with and linked to the planet Earth and human beings.  Even if the heroes or villains venture into space, they return or have their stories fall into limbo. Superheroes tales are human tales.

L-FL: That sounds like a claim begging to be refuted.  But until a contrary voice arises, please recap the events in the pages of this 17^th issue of Invincible.

I#17: This issue, me, beings by following Mark Grayson (Invincible) and Amber on a date and hints at the increasing alcoholism of Mark’s mother.  The story then shifts to Levy Angstrom who helps the blue villain clones escape prison by taking them through alternate dimensions.  Invincible helps defeat a supervillain in New York by exposing him to the brutal void of outer space and then returns home to graduate high school.

L-FL: Don’t’ forget to mention Megaforce, the New-York based superhero team that works nine to five and treats superheroing as a job.

I#17: Oh crap.