The Prestige TV Podcast - What Makes 'Invincible' Stand Out

Episode Date: March 29, 2021

Charles Holmes and Jomi Adeniran discuss the newest creation from Robert Kirkman, 'Invincible,' that is now streaming on Amazon Prime. They break down what makes this superhero show notable and worth watching. Hosts: Charles Holmes and Jomi Adeniran Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Watch remarkably bright creatures with your remarkable moms this Mother's Day weekend, only on Netflix May 8th. Hello and welcome to TB Concierge, a podcast on The Ringer Podcast Network. I am Charles Holmes, a staff writer and host of The Ringer Music Show, and I am so honored to be joined here today with my friend Jomey, aka the cheap meme officer of the ringer. Yo, Jomey, how you doing today, bro? I'm doing great, man.

We having a blast. Listen, I cannot wait to get into us. We're here to talk about the first three episodes of Invincible, which dropped on Amazon Prime this weekend. Oh, man, bro, I can't even speak right now. That's how excited I am to get into this, bro. You seem hype. You seem ready.

Yeah, like, let's, should we just get into it for the TV, Cassier's audience? Let's just break it down right now. So, so, so, so before we get, get too deep into it, for those that don't know, Invincible premiered this weekend on Amazon. It's a comic book series that was made in the early 2000s by Robert Kirkman, and everybody knows Mr. Kirkman as the guy who created the hit sensation Walking Dead. So honestly, Invincible is actually, his, was a comic that he made before Walking Dead for Image Comics. Should I, should I give him a nice summation of who Invincible is?

Give him a little, give him a little breakdown of it. Like, give him a little taste, a little sapler. All right, yeah. So basically the way I would describe Invincible is it's almost like a take on Spider-Man and Superman. You have this young kid called Mark Grayson without powers in the beginning of the show and the comics. But he's the son of Omni-Man, who is this one. world's Superman. He is the top dog superhero. And we follow Mark Grayson, and he's basically like, when am I going to get powers? When am I going to get powers? When am I going to get powers? When am I going

to get powers? And then bam, all of a sudden, one day, it happens. He gets super strength. He gets flight. And he's thrust into this world of superheroes. He's fighting bad guys, fighting aliens, having joining this world's teen titans. And learning from his dad some things that he does know and down the lines of things that you will end up finding out. Is that a good kind of lead-in for who Invincible is, Jomey? Did I do it be John? I think that's a great, great summary. He killed us.

So, show me, what is your history with Invincible? Were you reading the comics? Did you come fresh into the Amazon series? Let me know. I will tell you straight up, I had no idea what this show was when I got into it. Did we read the comics? You know, I didn't even see like the ads. You know, I just woke up one day.

I was like, all right, let me check what everybody's watching this week. And people were talking about defensive. And I was like, all right, cool. Like, you know, animated superl stuff. I love that stuff. You know, I grew up watching Teen Titans, you know, Batman. Okay, okay. I'm into it.

Let me see what's happening. And I watched episode one. And I was like, oh, this is, this is it right here. I need more of this. This show. And I marathon the rest of the series, you know, throughout the weekend. This show, I think, I think honestly, like even just watching the first year episodes, it has a chance to be really special.

This is what I love to see because I started reading Invincible during its original run in the early 2000s. So this is my favorite, one of my favorites, top five comic book series of all time. And I think what you see in the first three episodes is Invincible is a show about subverting comic books and superheroes because they take the things that we love and know about superheroes, and they twisted just a little bit

to make it a little more violent, a little bit more demented. And the thing about Robert Kirkman that I think people love about him is you can tell that he has a little bit of a dark side, whether it's Walking Dead, whether it's Invincible. He likes the guts.

He likes the gore. So me talking to Jomey right now, somebody who can come into Invincible Fresh is so, so funny. So when you're plopped into this technicolor world, Jomey, were you kind of expected the left turns that the show would take. Because I would say for like the first 30 minutes,

it's just kind of a run-of-the-mill superhero show. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, honestly, you know, coming in, I honestly thought we're getting like a little, you know, a more PG, you know, type thing from Amazon and superheroes. You know, they got the boys, which is his own different monster. So I thought, oh, you know, we're going to come in here, see some light, you know, father-son bonding, you know, like it's going to be real cool,

see how he navigates this thing. And then it just wasn't like that. All of a sudden, it just wasn't that. And I was like, okay. Oh, yeah. We're not going to spoil it. But that last minute twist, I think that the series hinges on it because it takes it from like your cartoon network team titans

into almost like Harley Quinnland, where you're like, oh, oh, they're doing something completely different with this show. It changes the entire game, honestly. Like it takes, like you said, like it takes it from being like, oh, this is pretty cool. Someone I watch with my, you know, my brother, you know, my little, my little cousins to be like, oh, snap. It's a whole different level of things that are about to happen here. You know, we don't want to spoil it for y'all, you know, but it's, it takes a show to a different level that I cannot wait to see explored in future episodes and future seasons.

Like, it's, it's incredible. I talked to Robert Kirkman for the show. And the funny thing that people may not know is that when he was writing the comics, what it takes the episode, episode one, that big twist, I think it took him six or seven issues of the comic coming out monthly to get to. So what ended up happening is like, Robert Kirkman thought that the comic would be canceled within like the first 13 issues because you have to think like six weeks.

waiting six, seven months to find out that this isn't just your normal superhero show is a lot. And what Invincible does in that first 40 minutes is condensed that storyline. And I wanted to ask you, we're used to 30-minute superhero cartoons. How did you feel as of you were coming in knowing that this is going to be 45, 15 minutes? They're treating this almost like an hour-long drama in the same way that they treat the boys. Yeah, I thought it was interesting. I was like, okay, you know, this is going to be something that like, you know, I'll peep it out, you know, like let's see, you know, what this is going to be. I honestly thought it was going to be like the boy's light, you know what I'm saying, like in terms of like the adultness of it, you know, but that first 30 minutes is real like it's real, again, like it's real PG.

I'm thinking like this is something, this is something, you know, T Titans Go type stuff. You know what I'm saying? like but it just it just shifts like on a on a dime it doesn't give you a second to process it's just like full and like I'll say full stop I saw I saw it coming I saw something coming you know what I'm saying so you knew it by by I knew it by like by minute 30 you know I knew something was off you know but then like but again like the spectacle of it is just it's just special and and we're talking we haven't even talked about about the voice talent on this show?

Oh, the voice talent is stacked. Let me run through it. Let me run through it really quick. I have it. We have Mark Grayson is played by Stephen Youen from Walking Dead fame. Nolan Grayson, his father, who plays Omni Man is J.K. Simmons.

Debbie Grayson is Sandra O. So, like, already there, stacked, Rex Blow, Jason Manzukas, the robot played by Zachary Quinto. So already they are lined up and have just such a stacked roster. What did you think of the voice talent? I mean, Bezos bucks, man.

You know, when you got that type of money, you can get anybody you want, eh? Like, just listening to, you know, all the actors and actresses, like, they were killing it. And I'm like, like, it takes you into their world, you know, because it's easy to get, you know, you can get anybody to come voice jacks in a booth, you know, talk for a couple hours and get that check. You know what I'm saying? It's easy, you know, but these, everybody's putting, like, hard into it. Like, I've never heard Sandra O do, you know, voiceover. She's out there.

She's doing it. You know what I'm saying? Like, J.K. Simmons, he was, he was Tenson and Cora. You know, so I've got experience with him. He was Tenson. Then we got a commissioner Gordon in the Snyderverse. He was J. Jonah Jameson in the Spider-Man films. So my man, like, off top already a legend.

We got four classic performances, and he kills it in this. Yeah, he's like, he's just really. really, really talented. And I mean, it goes for the whole cast. Like, everybody's like putting their all into it. And so when you feel that energy, watching it, you know, especially after episode one, you're like, wow, like, I want to see more.

If we break down kind of the business of Invincible, it's clear why it's hitting Amazon. They had a runaway hit with the boys. And I think what's funny is that for a lot of people, they're going to think is like, oh, are they just doing an animated version of the boys? This is just boys' life. But kind of what's funny is that Invincible came before the boys. The Boys, as a comic released in 2006, Robert Kirkman released Invincible in 2003.

And what's funny is this was all part of a trend that was happening in Image Comics. And just all independent comics in general, you had Robert Kirkman who was doing Invincible Walking Dead. You had Mark Millar. He was sitting it out of the park with like things like. wanted. You had Brian K. Vaughn with X. Machina, why the last man? And all of these things were deconstructing comic books. They were deconstructing superheroes. And I think what people will see when you watch Invincible is that this is a show about deconstructing like what would happen if we had heroes

in this real world setting. How violent would it be? How, how gory would it be? What are the, what are the big choices, you know? Yeah. I think the thing I love a lot about the show is, that it doesn't shy away from like these things, the, you know, the accidents that happen and the effect they have on people, you know, like, again, not to spoil it, but there's a scene where one of the characters has to deal with the aftermath of an event. And you can just, you can feel the pain in their voice. And you're like, wow, like, you know, in most of, you know, Marvel movies,

people die all the time and they just, you know, go back to Avengers Mansion and go hang out and play, play cards, whatever. but in this show really has you grappling with the effects of being a hero is hard, being heroes tough. You know, and I love that. I love, you know, seeing the ethos of being a superhero. It's really important. And it just brings a heft to the show that, like, a lot of superhero shows, you know, don't have, you know, these days. Yeah, couldn't agree more.

I could not agree more. All right, guys, I'm Charles Holmes, the host of the Ringer Music Show. And you can catch me on the Ringerverse every Friday with my man Van Lathan. breaking down, Falcon in the Winter Soldier. Yo, my meme soldier over there, Jomi, where can the people find you? Well, you can find me at Jomey Denneron on Twitter and Instagram, but also make sure to follow Ringaverse on Twitter and IG, getting to the Facebook group, The Ringerverse. You know, we're getting these channels started up and we'd love to have you guys to either

interacting and following us. So get on in there, man, like follow and follow, share, let's get it. If you guys want to hear our spoiler-filled discussion of Invincible, make sure to check out the Ringiverse episode with me and Jomey. We're getting into everything Invincible. Thank you for tuning in to TV concierge. We will be back later this week for more.