Amazon Prime Video's animated adaptation of Invincible has concluded its first season like it began: Filled with blood and fury as Omni-Man revealed his true colors to the world that saw him as a protector, as his son Mark Grayson fought in vain to stop him. And as the shocking season finale wraps, series creator Robert Kirkman has spearheaded a fresh take on the comic book story he crafted with Cory Walker and Ryan Ottley nearly 20 years ago.

In an exclusive interview with CBR, Kirkman spoke about bringing the series to Amazon, the changes the first season brought to the original comic book story and what scene in the finale personally moved him to tears.

RELATED: Invincible's Weakness is the Series' Biggest Strength

I'm sure you've seen a lot of pitches and offers to adapt Invincible but what was it about this Amazon series and working with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg that made it all work?

Robert Kirkman: Well, it wasn't pitched, it was built in-house at Skybound; this was our take. Seth and Evan are definitely executive producers but this was something that was homegrown within Skybound. We knew Amazon was looking to do more animated series and we just signed a deal with them and we were like, "I think the world needs an Invincible animated series; we could try to put that together."

I worked very closely with [showrunner] Simon Racioppa to map out what kind of arcs we could follow and where things could go. We just decided to do it, and that's kind of why we're following the comic book so closely -- it was a long road to get to this point but it's great that we finally have this animated series up and running and I'm very excited by how it's going.

This is more of a personal observation because I'm half-Korean myself but I love that you've got Steven Yeun and Sandra Oh in this cast. I was wondering if you could talk about making Mark Grayson not just half-Viltrumite, but also biracial in this series.

Kirkman: I think representation matters -- not to get on a soapbox or anything -- especially in the world of superheroes. You don't start getting non-white superheroes regularly until the '70s and, even then, through the '80s, '90s and 2000s, they're still somewhat rare. There's not a lot of these characters, to this day, that are different races. Anytime something can be changed to bring more representation into it, I think it's very important because there's a tremendous amount of people out there who don't see themselves in what they consume. But it's also very important because there's an audience hungry for this stuff; it actually benefits projects.

So aside from being the right thing to do, it actually helps projects these days, which is a really great thing. And in the Invincible comic, there is at no point in the comic book series where we say Invincible is white; his race is, more or less, ambiguous. There's nothing about his race that is essential to that character, his race could literally be anything. I think because we were in that position, we decided it'd be a responsible thing to do, and a really cool thing to do, and do something with his race that was interesting in the animated series, and that's why we decided to go down that road.

RELATED: Invincible: Omni-Man Lets Loose and Proves His TRUE Power

The comic predated a lot of things since embraced by the pop culture mainstream: Showing the unflinching consequences of superpowers and providing a more sinister Superman analogue. How is it subverting those tropes while still crafting a love letter to the superhero genre?

Kirkman: That's really it. I think Invincible subverts superheroes to a certain extent, and we do call attention to some of the more ridiculous aspects of it, but it is very much a love letter and something to celebrate the medium and celebrate the genre and really pay tribute to everything that's been done in superhero comics. By portraying the stakes as very real and mining the drama that comes out of these very really stakes and very really consequences that happen as the result of superpowers, super-powered fights and all these super-powered interactions, you're really calling to attention to just how rich the superhero storytelling genre is and what you could do with it.

To me, it really puts it on a pedestal and just shows how unique and amazing this concept is and how you could do almost literally anything within it and it just makes your story cooler. It's a lot of fun and, yeah, we did some things in 2003, when the book was introduced, that may have inspired some people here and there and worked its way into other things, but we're not going to be shying away from anything we've done in Invincible because it's become a little more popular since we did it the first time. We're still going to be staying true to the source material.

To that point, while the broad strokes are the same, you do add some revisions to the story: One example being a confrontation between Omni-Man and Cecil in the season's penultimate episode that hadn't happened yet at that point in the comic. How is it adding those new colors to your story?

Kirkman: That's been a lot of fun, because you're making a decision here and there that's very small and there's a cascading effect that moves through the series. And that's something that we experienced awhile on The Walking Dead. We were doing little changes in Season 1, 2 and 3 so, then by Season 6, okay this story has to be completely different now because all the beats are different. We decided very early on to introduce Cecil in Episode 2 and Cecil is not introduced in the comic book series until after the confrontation between Omni-Man and Invincible.

Basically every scene with Cecil this season is new because he's present and you're aware of him. In the writers' room, me and Simon and everybody else are putting our heads together to figure out how to get these scenes to work, and you get to point where you go, "Of course there's going to be a confrontation between Omni-Man and Cecil because Cecil is actually here." He was present and in the shadows but hadn't been revealed yet in the comic book series so you have to change things to make that work.

There's some Cecil scenes later on where Cecil is in a confrontation with someone else in the comic book series that are somewhat similar to that confrontation. It doesn't necessarily steal from that scene in a way that we couldn't do it later if the show progresses to that point. But we are able to take inspiration from the entire depth of the series and draw from it to heighten different things and move things around in a cool way.

RELATED: Invincible Reveals How Unstoppable Omni-Man Truly Is

Omni-Man prepares to attack Cecil Stedman, who points at him with his gun

The last time we talked, you were talking about how you, Cory Walker and Ryan Ottley know these characters better than anybody else...but now you're working with a full voice cast and other writers. What has surprised you the most as we hit the end of Season 1?

Kirkman: The first thing that comes to my mind is Zachary Quinto's portrayal of Robot. I knew he would be great and knew he would be able to handle the role because, to a certain extent, Spock is a similar role, so it's a no-brainer casting choice. But I didn't expect the scene between Rudy and the Rex clone to be as emotional as it ended up being; it's downright gut-wrenching and great because Zachary Quinto is really selling that role and bringing so much humanity to that character that I definitely couldn't have anticipated.

I could go down the line: Gillian Jacobs and the way she handles the various confrontations that Eve has; her arguments with her parents and different things brings a richness to that character is something I couldn't have expected. Sandra Oh as Debbie is just the heart and soul of the series in a way that Debbie was not necessarily the heart and soul of the series in the comics. That's all down to Sandra Oh and how we knew she would do great stuff.

There's a scene in Episode 8 where she's having a conversation with Mark after his fight with Nolan and, in the recording booth, she's going through that scene and she's so emotional delivering these lines. I started tearing up and thinking it was really embarrassing and then I look to my left and literally everyone in the recording booth is also crying. [Laughs.] She moved an entire room of people to tears with her performance. It's been a real roller coaster ride. Walton Goggins is a better Cecil than I could've imagined and Jeffrey Donovan as Machine Head was one of the best recording sessions I was in -- he was so great. I could go on for hours and still bad that I haven't mentioned Seth Rogen and all these other great people. It was a stunning array of actors at work.

You guys cover a lot of story in eight episodes. What made eight the right episode count for this season?

Kirkman: Now that the season is concluded, you can see we wanted to begin the season with the Guardians' confrontation with Nolan and then end the season with Mark's confrontation with Nolan and have that be the bookend to the season. If it was a six-episode season, we would've wanted to do that and, if it was a twelve-episode season, we would've wanted to do that. It would've been harder to do that because then you have those eleven episodes in the middle where you're like, "When are we getting to this Nolan stuff that we set up in the first episode?"

Eight really was the perfect number for being able to begin and end the season with these massive, monumental events that would really cement the show for what it is and what it's going to be while also having enough room in the middle to fill out all the characters to a necessary degree, but not having so much room where you have to plug stuff in and it seems like Star Wars. We have a great block of episodes that I think work really well there.

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, Khary Payton, 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.

KEEP READING: Will Invincible's Most Controversial Scene Appear on Amazon Prime?