One of the more subtle changes from the comics to Invincible in the Amazon Prime Video animated series is the depiction of Mark Grayson as a biracial superhero, with his mother Debbie now being a Korean American woman.
For series creator Robert Kirkman, the change came from the opportunity to feature a more diverse representation in the series, such as making Amber Bennett, Mark's girlfriend in the series, an African American teenager. Kirkman observed that many audiences don't see themselves racially represented in the media, even in the modern era, and these changes were made to help remedy this.
"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," Kirkman told CBR. "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."
With Korean American actors Steve Yeun and Sandra Oh portraying Mark and Debbie, Invincible continues to be led by big-name actors. For Kirkman, bringing the two actors in further distinguished the animated series from the original comic book, which had left Mark and Debbie's race relatively ambiguous.
"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," Kirkman continues. "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."
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. The first season is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.