Invincible vol. 19: The War at Home

In this volume we get a lot of answers.  Were you wondering what happened to the evil Invincibles that Angstrom Levy brought over back in vol. 12?  That’s explained here and it isn’t pretty.  Do you have any curiosity regarding what Robot has been up to ever since he and Monster Girl returned from the Flaxan dimension?  We find that out and it leads into the title’s next big storyline.  What about Angstrom Levy, who is featured so prominently on this volume’s back cover as returning “to take revenge on Invincible and all he holds dear?”  His storyline is probably the least satisfying of the answers in this volume.  In fact, after the epic Dinosaurus conflict in the previous volume most of the issues here show creator/writer Robert Kirkman trying to make the dialing back of the tension as interesting and meaningful as possible before he ramps things up again at the end.

So let’s talk about Angstrom Levy.  As he’s one of the title’s few recurring villains, the man’s return should signify a major event in and of itself.  It was his collecting of evil Invincibles from alternate universes that prompted that great Image universe crossover-in-a-single-issue from back in vol. 12 after all.  Yet how do you top something like that?  The answer is that you don’t and Levy’s main contribution to the story here involves him teleporting Invincible to the parallel universe where his evil counterparts are while he stays behind to talk things over with Atom Eve.

I’ll certainly admit that the fate of the evil Invincibles wasn’t one that I was expecting, and I did like the conversation between Levy and Eve which involved the villain finally getting his nemesis’ side of the story regarding his creation.  This all happens in the space of a single issue and while it’s impressive that Kirkman winds up cramming so many twists and revelations in it, the end result does feel a little rushed.  However, it’s the follow-up to this encounter that drives the title character through the rest of the story here.

For spoilerish reasons which I won’t explain here, Invincible asks Robot to track down the dimension his last surviving evil self fled to in order to take care of some unfinished business.  This naturally creates a rift between Invincible and Eve as she wants him to let this go, but her significant other just can’t since he knows the danger this particular loose end represents.  It’s a predictable development.  It’s main saving grace here is that both sides have good reasons for their arguments and the escalation of the disagreement is handled pretty well so that things only get really nasty when Invincible is about to leave.

Of course, since he SWEARS that this business won’t take him that long at all it shouldn’t come as any surprise that the trip goes horribly, horribly wrong.  It eventually winds up with a last-page cliffhanger that sees “Invincible” step further into “mature readers” territory.  Though that cliffhanger is certainly shocking on the surface, the more I think about it the less I feel concerned for Invincible.  After all, if he’s caught there the other Viltrumites will probably make him king.  Either that, or Invincible tries to take credit for it and then just pisses everyone off.  Both possibilities have potential, and that’s not even touching upon what’s going to happen on Earth when the title character isn’t around again.

In between all this we get some decent character-building scenes as Robot and Monster Girl continue their adjustment to life back in the real world, Nolan continues ruling over the Viltrumites, Doc Seismic makes a very painful return, and the Grayson family has dinner together on the moon.  Mark and Nolan also arm wrestle while their significant others look on, which makes for a fantastic double-page spread.  We also get some hints at future storylines as Allen the Alien hires Battle Beast to hunt down the newly-freed Thragg, and the Viltrumite-woman-whose-name-I-can’t-remember makes a romantic move on Invincible.  There is a big superhero fight as the magmites show up again and it feels like business as usual.  What we get here in these issues isn’t “not entertaining,” but it does feel explicitly like setup than any kind of an actual story.  Admittedly, there are worse ways to feel strung along than what we get here.  Those ways usually don’t involve a superpowered arm wrestling match.

My feelings towards the art in “Invincible” haven’t changed either.  While Ryan Ottley continues to turn in superlative action scenes and character-driven ones, all with a great level of detail, colorist John Rauch still fails to make the art here look as vibrant as it used to.  The strangest/most aggravating part is that the colors on the cover of this volume look just fine.  THAT’S how I want every page in this collection to look like.  I have no idea why he can’t make that happen.

Anyway, “The War At Home” keeps the title’s momentum going as the world faces its next great threat without the title character around to stop it.  Given the nature of this threat, I can see it causing a whole lot of anguish and drama amongst the cast — as the proverbial knife stabs their collective back — as they find themselves up against someone who isn’t stronger than them, but is a whole lot smarter.  Though I can’t say that this was an exceptional volume of “Invincible,” it still puts forth plenty of good reasons as to why I’ll be continuing to read it.