REVIEW - Invincible Ultimate collection by Robert Kirkman

I finally finished the last book in the Amazon.com Purchase from last month. It was the largest book I purchased then, and that was part of the reason it took me so long to read it. The other part was due to the fact that the first arc in this collection was poorly paced and poorly written. That being said, after I finished with the first 6 issues or so, the story got interesting. I had made up my mind not to read another Invincible trade until I read the second half of the book. So I'll review the book in parts.

Part 1

The origin of Invincible happened to be the most generic and uninspired opening to a series I believe I have ever read. It was rushed along so that we could get into the action, and frankly, as a writer you can jump into the action without making the story feel completely disjointed. One minute Mark is a regular kid. The next he's a super hero. TA-DAAAA! That's pretty much it. The origin was bad, the art was bad, the pacing was bad, the action was bad. It was all pretty much just bad. Until I read Part 2

Part 2

Now that was a little better. It still wasn't my all time favorite, but the second half made the first awkwardness more bearable. I still don't like the whole Guardians of the Globe thing, although I understand why it was done that way. Y'see it really gets my goat when people use archetypes to add "instant character" to their creations. Why would you do that? Just flesh out the characters yourself! If you can't write the JLA for DC, then don't write them with different names for you. I could understand if it were a bit more of a parody, and there was a little bit of that, but come on! I would care more about what happened to these characters if they had no personality, rather having stolen personalities. HOWEVER, this did not affect the story really at all. It just made me a little uptight. The art was different on this arc, and it showed. It was similar in tone, but much better executed. I enjoyed the pacing on this one a bit more. It didn't feel like there were huge gaps I was supposed to fill in with my imagination. AND, there were a couple of times I laughed out loud in this arc, so THAT also is good. In short, it left me wanting a bit more which is a good thing.

The Final Say!

According to my new personal rating system, I give the Invincible Ultimate Collection volume one a 6/10. If the first arc felt as good as the second, this book would have earned a solid 8, but alas, it wasn't. As a matter of fact, if I had read the first TPB instead of getting a 13 issue collection, it would have rated a measly 4 and I would never have opened an Invincibe book again. As is, I will try Vol. 2 a chance when it comes out in a few weeks.