100+ Definitions 23

Invincible #23

Low-Frequency Listener (L-FL): Issue twenty-three of Invincible was written by Robert Kirkman, drawn by Ryan Ottley, colored by Bill Crabtree, lettered by Rus Wooton, and inspired by Cory Walker.  Here’s what happens.

Invincible #23 (I#23): The issue begins with Mark and Amber having sex, and since they turned out the lights instead of having 24 pages of dark panels, readers instead follow Allen the Alien.  Allen’s origin story (the only successful genetically created superhero of the Unopan society) is told.  Allen returns to headquarters of the Coalition of Planets to inform them that a Viltrumite (Omni-Man) abandoned his post and another Viltrumite (Invincible) possesses no loyalties to Viltrum.  Allen sleeps with and then has breakfast with his alien girlfriend and is beaten up by two Viltrum warriors.  Surprisingly, Allen lives only to learn there is a traitor in the Council of Planets.   The issue closes with Mark leaving Amber’s dorm in the morning.

L-FL: There’s a lot of un-depicted love in this issue. Richard Reynolds wrote “Heroes and the Superculture” where he put down the idea that “The superhero narrative was the first (and arguably, so far, the only) new myth to express the expansion of human action and identity in the post-industrial age.”  Reynolds goes on to state, “…[T]he superhero’s extended powers and complex identity now mirror more than even the era in which we live.  Ordinary people now have superpowers.  The gifts of digital technology have enabled millions to experience their own ‘confrontation with the fantastic.’  Average human beings may now engage with consequences of creating multiple identities and encircle the planet—if they wish to—with their virtual presence.  Celebrities and members o the global superculture enact these same processes at an even higher level of power and visibility.  Within this celebrity-and communications-obsessed culture, the superhero can now be seen as the key protagonist in a vast cycle of mythology that has evolved to express and mediate this unprecedented expansion of human action and identity.”

I#23: From the pages of my story, I’d cast a superhero as a powerful being who works to support and continue the social norms while simultaneously operating outside of those norms and bending and breaking the norms as desired.  So with that definition, readers, may your comic (or your lover) welcome every morning with the admission that “last night was perfect.”