With Angstrom getting his revenge on, Invincible blasted into another dimension, and Invincible’s pregnant girlfriend (who can’t use her powers lest she zap her unborn baby) held captive by said revenge-seeking super villain, the end of the last issue left me wanting more. Now I get more, so that’s good for me.
Note: This recap may contain spoilers!
I’m digging on this Angstrom fellow. His monologuing is pretty good. It’s a fine art, writing a diatribe for the villain that simultaneously informs the reader of certain plot points, gives the reader the villain’s rationalization for what he’s doing, and sets up a little foreshadowing, all without being obvious that it’s really just exposition. Angstrom’s got that talent (way to go, Robert Kirkman!).
Especially entertaining: Angstrom’s realization he’s kidnapped “the mighty Eve,” followed by the observation that she has “a mighty waistline.”
Meanwhile, Invincible has to deal with the cannibalistic Invincible he ran into in the alternate dimension that Angstrom sent him to at the end of the last issue. The dude is messed up in the head, which leads to some decent airborne fighting. Also some other dude I don’t recognize but has super powers and a mohawk (and is probably some alternate version of Invincible) shows up and helps out.
But what will Eve do to defend herself if she can’t use her powers? She’ll talk to Angstrom, that’s what she’ll do. There’s nothing like a pregnant woman to talk a man into such utter confusion that he short circuits and decides to just give up and do whatever she says he should do. That’s pretty much what Eve does by asking him, more or less, “why are you focusing all your efforts on revenge when you could be doing all this other stuff with your powers?”
Of course, this has been done before in this comic. A few issues ago, Invincible talked Dinosaurus out of his plan to kill everyone by reasoning with him. Talking down the bad guy is a neat trick in a superhero comic, since it’s unexpected. But if you rely on it too much, you become another Joss Whedon (except your characters are reasoning with bad guys, instead of dying for no good reason). Still, it’s good stuff in this case, with the irony of a pregnant woman using logic and whatnot.
So Angstrom brings Invincible back and Invincible listens to Angstrom’s confession that he’s been a bad boy and he’s willing to surrender. But the dude with the mohawk also came back with Invincible. Angstrom opens a portal to allow him to get back to his home dimension, but at the last moment, the Mohawk dude drags Angstrom into that dimension with him, leaving Invincible and Eve to gratefully kiss each other.
This one was great. Good stuff.
Rating: 4 / 5 Stars
