WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the first episode of Invincible, "It's About Time", streaming now on Amazon Prime.
One of the joys of the Invincible comic came in not only embracing classic superhero tropes, but in subverting them. To that end the animated adaptation continues in the same tradition and manages to take it a step further. Both stories depict the shocking deaths of Earth's premiere superhero team the Guardians of the Globe early on in the plot, but the Amazon series put its own unique spin on it that made the sequence better than ever.
Originally occurring in issue #7 of Invincible, the story follows many of the same beats both on the page and in animation. The illustrious team of heroes are introduced, some space goes toward fleshing them out individually, and then they are shockingly killed at the end of the story by Invincible's father, Omni-Man. As far as those main plot beats go the Amazon series sticks to its source material to the letter.
The significant change comes in stretching all of that out, granting substantially more space to the Guardians even in the single episode in which they appear. The series itself opens on an action sequence as the Guardians show up to save the White House and all civilians present from the Mauler Twins, showing off not only their extraordinary powers but their veteran experience at saving the day. The mission also pulls in Omni-Man, establishing their working relationship with the prominent hero.
Along the way the Amazon series makes changes to certain details. Darkwing's race and the Green Ghost's gender are changed, Martian Man and War Woman have the flashes of their personal life significantly altered, and in general they just get more to do. But the biggest change comes in the final scene depicting the team's slaughter at Omni-Man's hands. In the comics he has little difficulty demolishing the team and leaving the scene of the crime so he can later try to pin the blame on Black Samson. In the animated adaptation it goes quite differently.
Instead the sequence is drawn out into a full-fledged flight. The speedster Red Rush saves many of his team mates from the super fast Omni-Man before getting his head squashed to pieces. Without Red Rush to protect them the rest try to gang up on Omni-Man and quickly find he is more than a match for them. But in the end they put up enough resistance that he collapses, injured amidst the carnage and in need of recovery. This casts far more suspicion on him in the fallout afterwards as he has a harder time feigning ignorance and surprise, and Damien Darkblood's role as a detective grows in prominence in the aftermath.
Even beyond the plot implications the alterations work immensely well on a narrative level. Knowing the Guardians better helps invest the audience in them and feel for them following their deaths. The Red Rush's companion, seen weeping at his funeral, adds a layer of pathos somewhat absent from the comics where we hardly know the Guardians.
It also exalts their position as the world's strongest heroes to actually put a fight up against Omni-Man, and even though he proved stronger than all of them combined the fact that they managed to actually injure him attests to the high bar they have set for their successors. The lineup was meant to consist of legendary heroes representing the best of what Earth had to offer, and in the animated series that golden status really shines.
Invincible stars Steven Yeun, J.K. Simmons, Sandra Oh, Seth Rogen, Gillian Jacobs, Andrew Rannells, Zazie Beetz, Mark Hamill, Walton Goggins, Jason Mantzoukas, Mae Whitman, Chris Diamantopoulos, Melise, Kevin Michael Richardson, Grey Griffin and Max Burkholder. The series is produced by Skybound, and executive produced by Robert Kirkman, Simon Racioppa, David Alpert and Catherine Winder. New episodes premiere Fridays on Amazon Prime Video.