Invincible: 8 changes that the TV show made from the comics

Sped up and slowed down

The title above definitely sounds like an oxymoron. How could something be slowed down and sped up? Well, it happened a lot in Invincible.

A lot of the things that happened in the book series occurred after Mark left high school. There were also a lot of things that happened before Nolan/Omni-Man fought his son and left Earth. He wasn’t around when Invincible fought Battle Beast, when Robot got his new cloned body, or when the reanimen was created.

There are 25 volumes of the Invincible comic book series – and that’s not including the companion comic books that tie into the story. There is absolutely no way of adapting that level of source material directly – no matter how long Invincible runs for. It would simply take too long, perhaps come off as clunky and not all of the events would translate well. To make things work, the creative team combined various elements – and they pulled it off.

Let’s take Nolan’s time on Earth. Seeing Battle Beast almost kill his son and doing nothing about it revealed how horrible he could be, adding adding evidence to the running theory about him being evil. Moreover, the fact that he was still around when the reanimen were created benefitted both him and the reanimen themselves. We got to see how formidable they were against someone as powerful as Omni-Man, so when we eventually see an army of them, it looks much more intimidating.