100+ Definitions 14

Invincible #14

Low-Frequency Listener (L-FL): Issue fourteen of Invincible by Robert Kirkman, Ryan Ottley, Russ Wooton, and Bill Crabtree includes the following events.

Invincible #14 (I#14): The story begins with the new Guardians of the Globe barely defeating an invasion of aliens that appeared in issue three.   The Immortal confronts Invincible and states his distrust of the hero.  Cecil informs Invincible that the fight and dialogue between him and Omni-Man was leaked to the public, and Mark’s mom takes the news hard when she hears her husband state to her son that he’s pummeling across the planet, “Your mother means nothing to me.” When returning to high school, Mark learns his best friend is dating Atom Eve, and he receives a sincere well-intentioned (if misdirected) talk about academic focus from his principal. The issue ends with Mark and trying to comfort his grieving heartbroken drunk mother who blames her son for driving away her husband, Omni-Man. 

L-FL: That’s an emotionally treacherous ending.  What do you perceive the definition of superhero to be from these events?

I#14: Despite keeping the populace from harm, the superhero receives distrust and misunderstanding from other heroes and the general populace.  The excessive power and actions of the superhero makes the superhero an outsider.

L-FL: The way the Immortal doubts Invincible’s loyalty to earth and the way his principal mistakes Mark’s decreased academic performance for irresponsibility, these things demonstrate that outsider status?

I#14: Yeah, that sounds good.  You Know, Joe Quesada, an Editor-in-Chief at Marvel Comics, defined “superhero” as “an extraordinary person placed under circumstances who manages to do extraordinary things to ultimately triumph over evil,” in his vignette “Extraordinary.”

Quesada, to emphasize the importance of the superhero’s alter ego, later mentions a Stan Lee anecdote:

“I had a conversation with Stan Lee during one of my first weeks as Marvel Editor-in-Chief.  We were talking about stories and Marvel heroes, and I decided to ask Stan (not really believing he’d have an answer in his back pocket), “If you could distill the formula for creating a perfect Marvel hero, what would that formula be?” Stan said, “Imagine it’s a dark stormy night, and there on a precipice of a building is Spider-Man.  He’s about to leap into the urban canyon below.  Really at the end of the day, it’s just a red and blue suit standing at the precipice of that building.  But if you tell us about that guy in the suit, if you tell us who Peter Parker is—who he loves, who loves him, what his problems are, is he going to school, is he trying to hold down a job, who are his friends—if you tell us all these things about him, then when he leaps off that building, our hearts race because we’re in that costume with him; we’re there with him and can relate to him.  He’s not just an empty suit.”  That’s really something we do to this day.  We have to make the alter ego someone we care about.

L-FL: Oh, so are you saying these scenes of Mark in high school and Burger Mart and home with his mother are ways of getting us to care about the character?

I#14: “….”