by Punchy » Sat Mar 21, 2009 11:15 am
Invincible #60 - 'Invincible War!' - Kirkman, Ottley, Rathburn & Plascencia
Story - Holy Fuck, that was different huh? Invincible is normally a book which features slow moving subplots and character development, but this was something else entirely. Kirkman was attempting to do a whole crossover event in one issue, and I think he mostly succeeded, you could recognise a lot of the beats he was homaging/mocking from stuff like Crisis or Secret Wars, the heroic sacrifice, the injured love interest, the massive team up, it was very clever, and very well done, but I think what makes it interesting is that with Invincible, it's a creator-owned book and universe, and the changes will stick indefinitely, and not be gone by next year. Yes, it was kind of confusing and jumpy, but it worked, you know how Grant Morrison claimed he was writing Final Crisis to be like channel-zapping and only getting a snippet of each scene, but he was actually spewing out crap? Kirkman succeeded here where Morrison failed, you really felt the scale and unpredictability of the multi-Invincible attack, anyone could die. and you might not necessarily see it. Another factor adding to this unpredictability was the usage of the other Image characters, yes while it may be a gimmick to get more sales (my LCS certainly had more copies of this issue than any other previously) but it showed how widespread the attack was, plus, as a fan, it did make me feel happy in a guilty nerdy way, like OMG! Spawn! Youngblood! Awesome! With these characters it's quite rare for them actually to meet, as opposed to Marvel or DC, so a crossover is actually interesting, and Kirkman managed it well, this was still an Invincible story, and the cameos were used effectively.
Overall this was a great issue, which really shook up the Invincible world, almost as much as the Omni-Man reveal back in #8, this is the advantage of creator-owned books, the creators can do what they want, and this was like the end of the Prison arc in Walking Dead on steroids, a unique reading experience and I can't wait to see where Kirkman takes this.
Art - You know how I said that Kirkman succeeded where Morrison failed, well a lot of that was due to the artistic strengths of Ryan Ottley, as opposed to the mess that was Final Crisis art-wise, Ottley is a fantastic artist, everything he draws is spot on, and I now I can't imagine anyone else drawing Invincible, which is a great achievement when you consider how strong Cory Walker's initial work on the series was, the book wouldn't be half as good without Ottley, I should also comment on the colours of Fco Plascencia, Bill Crabtree's colouring was a very important part of this book, but Plascencia has done an excellent job of replacing Crabtree, it meshes perfectly with Ottley.
Best Line - 'My skeleton'
8/10