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wizardofwizz · 3 months ago

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Something this season of Invincible has been doing that I find interesting is how it's engaging with the Superman archetype in the specific context of his role as the quote-unquote "top superhero-" what happens when "superhero" is enough of a demographic that you've got a bunch of moderately powerful ones, but then you've got one who's basically so overwhelmingly powerful compared to all the rest that from the perspective of the people in charge of planetary security, he's basically the only one who matters. There have been several subtle beats this season about how holding that position is distorting Mark's interactions with everyone around him without him even realizing- Robot leaves the Guardians not because he necessarily thinks Mark is right, but because he thinks it's important to stay on his good side. The Powerplex subplot has Scott's coworkers at the GDA expressly state that Mark is being granted infinitely more leeway by Cecil than anyone else would be, because he's their only plausible answer to the Viltrumites.

What's interesting is how they've made Rex the site of a lot of this. One of the first scenes of the season is him complaining about the needing constant adjustments to the hack-job prosthetic he was issued after the Lizard League debacle, juxtaposed against the bajillion dollar bespoke machine that was built for no purpose other than training Invincible specifically. When they go out into the field together, Rex is perfectly in his element against a single street-level opponent, but when Multipaul jumps him, Invincible has to pull his ass out of the fire via intense meatgrinder violence. It isn't a coincidence that in the same episode where (Debbie's boyfriend) Paul realizes the gulf between the impact his job has on the world and the impact that Mark and Oliver have, with Debbie assures him that it's okay to be normal- Rex gets his fatal crossing-the-Rubicon moment by refusing to retire with Rae.

Rae can read the writing on the wall here about the power scaling of the story she's in; capes like Invincible and Immortal brush off everything the world can throw at them, but she and Rex are gag characters- a couple extra bodies who, in the best case scenario, are somewhat useful to have around, and in the worst case scenario end up in the hospital for months at a time before getting stitched up and thrown back into the fray so the GDA can wring a little more utility out of them. But even though his lifestyle is very clearly going to get him killed, Rex refuses to quit because being a superhero- even a middling one- is all he has going on. He's never going to be as relevant as Invincible because he's nowhere near as powerful as Invincible, but if he doesn't keep throwing himself at the same kinds of problems Invincible does, he'd be nobody. He'd be Paul. Is being Paul worse than dying? Well, we're gonna find out in a minute

#invincible #this is one of those takes that recontextualizes the story for me #honestly #powerscaling like as a theme is so central to the plot of invincible

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wizardofwizz · 4 months ago

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