Have you seen Amazon Prime’s Invincible adaptation yet?
Woof. It was an orgy of violent, no holds barred super heroics with plenty of everything else thrown in for good measure (there was maybe even a kitchen sink or three somewhere). While there was plenty of violence (the White House had canons mounted on its roof to protect it from regular super villain attacks), there was also no shortage of personal angst, drama and even a little suspense thrown in.
But now that we’re waiting to see when season two will drop (a third season has also been given the go ahead), the fun part is debating who was the strongest character. Taking Omni-Man out of the equation for obvious reasons, who would have been the biggest, baddest heavyweight on the block?
Was it Invincible himself, Omni-Man’s son and obvious heir apparent? Would it have been Battle-Beast, a violence addicted super villain who nearly killed Invincible in a savage fist fight? What about Atom Eve, who seems to possess the very powers of creation? Or The Immortal, leader of the The Guardians of The Globe, world’s premier super hero team? What about the Guardians second in command Warrior Woman? Was it maybe Cecil, who has unlimited technology and intelligence at his disposal as the head of the Global Defence Council? Don’t forget about Allen, whose job it is to test a planet’s strongest defender by fighting them one-on-one (“what’s on your calendar today Allen? Fighting Superman before lunch? Then Gladiator tomorrow? And Thor next Monday? Cool, have fun with that.”)
An interesting debate to be sure. You could probably spend hours arguing the merits of each aforementioned name. But every aforementioned name is wrong.
Because the strongest character in the whole show was Omni-Man’s wife and Invincible’s mom Debbie.
Don’t get the wrong idea; Debbie had no super powers to boast of. In a universe packed with over-powerfed heroes and villains capable of virtual miracles, Debbie was pure flesh and fragile bone. No super strength. No super speed. She wasn’t invulnerable and couldn’t fly. She couldn’t shoot laser beams from her eyes or move things with thought or summon lightning from the sky. Instead she was a regular real estate agent, wife and member of the PTA at her son’s high school.
But she was still the most powerful person on the planet.
There’s the obvious reasons. She captured the attention of an omnipotent being from a super advanced alien civilization and then his heart. She managed to lead a perfectly happy and productive life despite watching her husband battle intergalactic warlords and monsters from the depths of hell on a daily basis. And she totally kept it together when her son decided to follow in his father’s heroic yet impossibly dangerous footsteps.
She stood up to her husband without hesitation and never let her son’s incredible new power prevent her from kicking his spandex clad posterior when he needed it. She made a habit of getting in the face of men who could kill a dozen times in a single heartbeat. She always had advice ready when her super powered husband and her super powered son hit a communication impasse.
Even when she started watching her son go toe-to-toe with the biggest bads the universe had to offer, you couldn’t see her greys. She shed plenty of tears when Invincible was broken and shattered, but she never failed to support him flying back into battle. She stood in the face of demons, she never flinched from the world shattering truth unfolding around her and she stood tall when she learned what her husband truly was.
But all of that makes her the toughest character on the show. What makes her the most powerful? Well if you want to know then you need to be warned because there BE SPOILERS AHEAD.
Omni-Man was the most powerful being on Earth. He slaughtered all the Guardians of the Globe at once and singlehandedly. He committed genocide on a planetary level against an alien world with is bare hands. He shrugged off nearly everything Cecil and the GDC threw at him, suffering nothing but a bloody nose until bumping into a hopped up Kaiju. After all that nearly beat his own son to death. No matter how much everyone was cheering for Invincible to win that fight, Omni-Man’s victory was never in a question.
In a word, Omni-Man was unstoppable.
The entire planet at his mercy and the only thing that finally reigned him in was a sliver of humanity. A shred of compassion that flared within his soul as he loomed over his son’s mutilated body, poised to deliver the killing blow, was all that stood between the human race and conquest by an impossible alien power. Overcome with emotions and paralyzed by conflict, Omni-Man fled into space, sparing both his son and the entire planet.
And that sliver of humanity, that shred of compassion, was put there by Debbie. The emotions that saved the human race from it’s most powerful threat were both inspired and nurtured by one fearless but genuinely caring woman. The show never explained why Omni-Man married Debbie or had a son with her. He may have explained it away as part of his mission. Maybe a family was merely a means to his end. Or maybe, just maybe it was because he saw a woman who possessed relentless emotional strength and infallible courage.
Whatever the motivations for his actions, if it hadn’t been for the feelings Debbie instilled in him, Invincible’s first season would have ended with another super-hero’s funeral, half the world in smouldering ruin and an alien invasion on the way.
In the end, regular, powerless Debbie defeated the world’s most powerful being where it’s heroes and villains and protectors all failed. And she did it with the love of a wife and the fortitude of a mother. She may even rescue the world again, raising her son to be the man, the hero, her husband could never be.
That’s something everyone should keep in mind today.
Happy Mother’s Day
Image www.cosmicbooknews.com
