Comic-Caps: Invincible #20-24 + #0 and Origins

3 Aug

Robert Kirkman – Writer, Letterer
Cory Walker – Penciler, Inker
Ryan Ottley – Penciler, Inker
Bill Crabtree – Colourist

Previously on Invincible
Marks mother Debbie continues to struggle to come to terms with what her husband did, meanwhile Mark gets tricked into helping with a coup and there’s a new villain in town called Angstrom Levy who’s collecting himself from different dimensions.

Vol. 5: The Facts of Life (#20-24 + #0 (Origins))

Issue 20
Eve tells Mark she’s quitting the superhero business to go to Africa to use her powers for good. She explains to Mark that her powers allow her to alter the atomic structure of anything meaning she can for example, turn rocks into apples, build houses and make clothes.

At Mark’s first day at college he’s walking with Amber in the courtyard when a zombie robot, like the one from issue 6 bursts out the floor, Mark suits up, grabs robozombie and gets it away from the populous, while in the air it claws it Marks eye’s causing him to drop it and once again the robozombie kills itself.

Under the campus in the sewers is the base of a mad scientist/student with an attitude, he’s been the one building the Reanimen. He surmises that the reason the Reanimen are killing themselves is because they want to remain dead, so now he wants to use a live subject to see what will happen.

Issue 21
Since Darkwing’s demise at the hands of Omni-Man Midnight City has been, quite essentially abandoned by the government but that’s now changing since the media picked up on it. They send Invincible in to find out what’s behind the reported sightings of Darkwing, when I arrives he finds Darkwing standing over the bodies of two men.

Darkwing is in fact Night Boy, Darkwings old assistant (not sidekick as he finds that term demeaning) and he’s the one who killed those people any many others. After a short lived battle which concluded with Darkwing dragging Invincible to the shadowverse and trying to leave him there but instead Invincible grabbed hold of Darkwing and told him to take them both out of there before whatever creatures are in there attack and that he has a much better chance of surviving them than Darkwing.

Back at the Pentagon they finally spot the Mauler Twins from their satellite but Cecil orders them to keep an eye on them for now. Little do they know the Twins are working with Angstrom Levy and his diabolical plan will be put into motion tomorrow.

Robot goes to a high-rise building and enters a laboratory, where a disfigured creature in a large stasis pod says ‘Okay “Robot”, let’s get started.

Issue 22
Mark, William and Rick go out for the evening but when Rick gets back to his dorm he’s clubbed over the back of the head.

Amber, who is also out with her friends gets back to her dorm to find Mark inside waiting for her, half way through him telling her why he’s there he gets a call from Cecil about an emergency that requires Mark to get to immediately, Mark tells Amber he will explain everything later and jumps out her 3rd story window and flies away.

Amber in shock calls her friend Bridget, after talking for a while Amber starts to put the pieces together and realises that Mark is in fact Invincible. Later that night Mark comes to Ambers dorm and she asks him outright, is he Invincible.

Meanwhile in Africa Eve is turning baron lands into lush green mini paradises. The Mauler Twins continue their experiment for Angstrom Levy and Monster Girl notices something is different with Robot, he’s acting nervous.

In the clock tower at the college, D. A. Sinclair has set himself up a new lab to continue his work on the Reanimen, he turns to his first live human subject and tells him that it must be such an honour for Rick to be his first subject.

Issue 0
If you’re just coming into Invincible this is a great issue to do a big catchup on as Mark spends this issue telling Amber everything bout his dad, his mom, the Guardians, Cecil, villains whose names were never released to the public and Eve.

Issue 23
Following on from Issue 0, Amber wants to make super love to her super boyfriend and as it’s a family title (just with a crap tonne of gore) we zip across the galaxy and follow our favourite alien, Allen as he heads back to the Coalition of Planets and his mind starts to wonder back to his beginnings.

Allen’s homeworld was destroyed by the Viltrumites but a few escaped and created breeding outposts to restore their population. Impressed with the Unopians resilience, they were invited to join the Coalition of Planets. In a desperate bid to defeat the Viltrumite scourge the Unopian government experimented experimented on unborn foetuses to create a super soldier, only one child ever survived the process without disfigurement and mental handicaps. Allen.

Unfortunately when Allen faced a Viltrumite it didn’t go well and he was defeated and the program was shut down, however, Allen was made a Champion Evaluation Officer, whose mission was to find beings strong enough to defeat him as they may be able to defeat the Vilrumites too.

Upon returning to Talescria, his home world and base of the Council of the Coalition of Planets, he fills them in on everything that has happened between Mark and his Father. After his debrief he goes to see his girlfriend and they go out for a meal to a space diner when suddenly a Vultumite rips through the diner and grabs Allen. He’s dragged into space where 2 other Viltumites are waiting for him; they want to know about the Viltrumite of Earth and his heir but Allen tells them nothing and is savagely attacked with his eye knocked out, right arm ripped off and his internal organs pulled out.

Luckily the people of Talescria have the technology and Allen is saved but must remain on life support until he fully heals. Thaedus, the Council leader visits Allen and tells him that from now on Allen must only report to him as he fears there’s a mole in the Council.

Issue 24
While Mark’s getting his costume updated by Art, Art reminds him that he hasn’t been to see his Mom in 4 weeks. When Mark stops by he tells her that Amber knows his secret identity, which didn’t go down too well.

The Mauler Twins and Angstrom Levy finally execute their dastardly plan to fill Angstroms head with the knowledge of thousands of his dopplegangers from alternate dimensions. Just as they throw the switch Invincible crashes the party and quickly dispatches the Twins but before he can get to the machine to turn it off a bunch of Mauler Twins from alternate dimensions attack and start beating the snot out of him.

Angstrom orders them not to kill him as he doesn’t want the death of a child to black-mark his finest achievement but the Maulers ignore him, Angstrom removes the device fro his head before the transfer is complete which causes an overload making the machine explode in a blast do powerful it disintegrates several Maulers and kills all but one but whose body is half burned.

Angstrom survived the blast but has been horribly disfigured by the process and now blames Invincible who he believes turned the machine off on him, causing the accident and vows to get his revenge.

Origins: Monster-Girl
Amanda was a normal spoiled rich girl, who while on holiday to Europe with her school (remember, rich) she met and fell in love with a local boy but his grandmother did not approve. They continued their romance in secret but when the grandmother found out she put a curse on Amanda causing her to turn into a horrible green monster.

Amanda soon learned that the more she used her power to transform into Monster-Girl the younger she got and the bigger and stronger her alter-ego got.

Origins: Rex-Splode
Rex was a poor boy from poor family (breaks into Bohemian Rhapsody…back in 10 minutes) who was taken when he was very young by a man offering his mom and dad all the money in the world.

Rex was taught how to fight, his tissue chemically altered to make him stronger and was implanted with cybernetics which give him the ability to change molecules to an unstable level. For a while Rex worked for the man in black doing bad things to very bad people, or at least that’s what they told him.

After a while he escaped and tracked down his family only to find they were living the American dream with a nice house and new family.

Origins: The Immortal
The Immortal has been around for a very long time. he fought as a knight, discovered new lands, defended them and even ruled them. Yes folks, The Immortal once was know to the world as Abe Lincoln.

Origins: Dupli-Kate
In ancient China a ruthless Warlord called Funga Cha tore through the Emperors Elite Guard and just before his death the Emperor he cursed Fung Cha. The seventh generation after Cha’s seventh grandchild would be burdened with a family too large for him to care for and would drive him mad.

Hundreds of years later a distant relative of Cha was in hospital with his wife, who was in labour, she gave birth to twins called Kate and Paul. Sadly the mother died in child birth. The curse took a while to kick in and when it did Kate and Paul duplicated themselves hundreds of times. Their father was eventually taken to an asylum and all the little Kate’s and Paul’s became wards of the state.

When they hit puberty they gained control of their powers which allowed them to not only duplicate themselves but to also absorb the duplicates too. Kate eventually joined the Teen Team and then the Guardians but the whereabouts of Paul are unknown.

Origins: Atom Eve
The Government paid Eve’s parents to allow them to experiment on their unborn daughter while she was still in the womb. However during the birth Doctor Brandyworth, who administered all the experiments, had a change of heart and told the Government agents that Eve died in childbirth.

It took a while for Eve’s powers to change the molecular structure of things but from a very early age she could give the molecular structure of an object verbally.

Final Thoughts
Angstrom has gone from maybe/not quite a villain to being a big threat to Invincible after the procedure didn’t go to plan. As Angstrom has the knowledge of thousands of alternate dimensions this means that he must know Mark is Invincible and who his friends and family are.

The Reanimen are having a slow but strong build, we now know who’s been creating them and why they’ve been killing themselves. With D.A Sinclair with a living test subject and if it works, what’s his endgame?

The Viltrumites are back and slaughtered poor Allen in the process, now did they learn anything from him? Is Mark safe? Will they be heading to Earth? Will Allen make a full recovery?

And what the heck was that thing we saw with Robot?

Next week I’ll be recapping Robert Kirkmans The Walking Dead comic, Chapter Five: A Best Defence covering issues 25-30. I’ll be back with more Invincible the following week where I’ll be recapping the A Different World story arc covered in issues 25-30.