The Big Picture

Invincible Season 2 will deal with the aftermath of the shocking revelations in the Season 1 finale, with Mark Grayson working with the Guardians of the Globe to protect Earth. Angstrom Levy will play a major role in Season 2, causing a lot of trouble and leading to lots of violence. The season will be dense and packed with different events and character growth. Season 2, Episode 4 will be insane, but the finale in 2024 will be even bigger. The decision to have eight episodes in a season was made to maintain a manageable structure and ensure a sense of escalation throughout the show.

It’s been a long wait for fans of Robert Kirkman’s Invincible Season 2, but a wait well worth it. The Prime Video series returned to the streamer on November 3, but before the first episode landed Collider’s Steve Weintraub hosted an early screening for Episode 1 as well as a Q&A with creator, writer, and EP Kirkman. If you missed out on the screening, you can check out all the Season 2 behind-the-scenes and teases for future seasons in the full transcript below.

Invincible Season 1 ended with a confounding finale. Based on Kirkman’s Image Comics series with Cory Walker and Ryan Ottley, fans and Mark Grayson, aka Invincible (voiced by Steven Yeun), found out that Earth’s mightiest hero, Omni-Man (J.K. Simmons) wasn’t the man they believed him to be. In fact, he revealed to his son that he was a Viltrumite on a mission to conquer the planet. The entire show up to that point was capsized as the battle that ensued caused global destruction. In Season 2, Grayson will have to cope with the heartbreaking revelations and work with the Guardians of the Globe to protect their home. The series is voiced by an ensemble roster of talent including Sandra Oh, Seth Rogen, Zazie Beets, and Season 2 introduces Tatiana Maslany, Ben Schwartz, Jay Pharoah, Lea Thompson, and Transformers’ Peter Cullen.

During the Q&A, Kirkman shares what he’s most excited for fans to see in the upcoming first half of Season 2. He teases that the main arc will deal mostly with Angstrom Levy (Sterling K. Brown), who fans will recall from the comics, and promises “lots of violence,” as well as assures us that while Season 2, Episode 4 may be “insane,” it’s got nothing on the finale that will release in 2024. For any Invincible viewers curious about the release schedule, Kirkman explains the method to the madness, why only eight episodes, the “rough roadmap” he’s adhered to since the beginning, and “pushing everything to the limit.” They also discuss the chance for more spinoffs, if we can expect a new season each year, and tons more.

Read Our Invincible Season 2 Review

COLLIDER: You have written a lot of stuff, you’ve been involved in a lot of stuff. If someone has never read anything or seen anything that you’ve done, what’s the first thing you want them checking out and why?

ROBERT KIRKMAN: I did a Space Ace miniseries in 2004. No. I don’t know. I don’t really care! I mean, whatever they want to do, I don’t know. One thing will lead you to something else, it’s all fun! Whatever anyone finds. I mean, I can’t play favorites. Right now, I like Invincible more than anything else. So, that’s cool. And it’s funny because I finished the Invincible comic book series, there was a few weeks’ break between writing the last issue of Invincible and then writing the pilot episode. So I haven’t ever really had a period where I haven’t been writing Invincible in some form over the last, Jesus, 20 years. Yeah, we’re celebrating the 20th anniversary this year. But I don’t know, I guess I got sick of The Walking Dead. It’s a real depressing thing. I worked on it a long time. It’s sad. But this is a lot more happy and fun!

So you are a fan of Transformers, and I know you like collecting things. If you had to save one of your Megatron and one of your Optimus Prime figures, which one are you saving?

KIRKMAN: I’m partial to the Power Master Optimus Prime. That’s the one that had the little guy that turned into the thing that plugged into his engine, and he had a big metal suit. And then I have one of the original Japanese Microman Megatrons before they adapted them into Transformers. And that was really cool. So I’d probably snag those if my house was on fire, and then I’d go get my kids.

What to Expect in ‘Invincible’ Season 2, Part 2

So, everyone in this audience just saw Episode 1 of Season 2. What do you want to tease people about the next three episodes of Part 1?

KIRKMAN: I think that it’s a very dense season, and I’m really happy about that. Especially with our second episode, it’s just scene to scene to scene different things happening. There’s a lot of stuff going on. By the end of the season, you’re gonna see so much and I’m really excited about that. But I don’t know, Angstrom Levy, the guy, he’s a big deal. He’s causing a lot of trouble, and he’s like the main arc for the season. So if you like that situation, you’re gonna get more of that. A lot of violence, and you can see the characters grow and evolve over time. So that’ll be a lot of fun.

What do you think people’s reaction will be at the end of Season 2, Episode 2?

KIRKMAN: I don’t know. Hopefully they’ll like it. What’s the end of Season 2, Episode 2? I can’t remember. I can’t remember and I watched it yesterday. [Laughs] 20 years.

What do you think people are gonna think about at the end of Season 2, Episode 3? Then the following question is what do you think people are gonna think about Season 2, Episode 4?

KIRKMAN: Those were the next questions? Oh my god. All this specificity is just too much for me. The fourth episode, I think people are gonna be exhausted. So I’m happy about the break, which I think most people will be unhappy about, but that’s fine. You need the time, you need to rest. But I think that each episode builds, so by the time you get to the fourth episode, you’re like, “How is this all happening? It’s crazy.” Which is cool. There’s a lot of people that I interact with that have only ever seen the first season and have never read the comics. I hear from people in that demographic a lot that are like, “How are you gonna top the end of Season 1?” And then people that have read the comics laugh.

So yeah, we’re getting to the bigger stuff. Cory [Walker], Ryan [Ottley] and I were working on the comic for 16 years, and we really tried to maintain a sense of escalation through the 144-issue run. And that’s one of the things that we really painstakingly paid attention to. When I’m working with Dan Duncan, and everybody on the show, making sure that sense of escalation is present, and we’re able to add different things, and make the show denser and trim some of the fat that we had off the comic. I’m really proud of that. So as we get deeper into this, I mean, Season 2, Episode 4 is an insane, huge episode, but Season 2, Episode 8 tops it. And when you guys see [Season 3, Episode 8]? Whoo. [Laughs].

Image via Prime Video

The season is eight episodes. Is that a decision from you guys? Is that a decision from Prime Video, or that’s just like, “Realistically, we can do just eight episodes a season?”

KIRKMAN: I think six is too little, 10, that’s a bit much. The hour-long format is harder than the number of episodes. So, if we had been a half-hour show we might have been able to do more episodes, but I like the hour-long format for this show. I mean, realistically, I think we could do 20 episodes a season. It would just take seven years for a season to come out. But eight, I guess, is the most manageable, and structure-wise, I feel it’s a nice even number.

How did you decide where you wanted to start Season 2, Episode 1? Was it always the way it starts or did you debate it?

KIRKMAN: There was some heightening at the beginning when we realized there was gonna be a gap. The fight with Immortal, and the tricking you into thinking that you might not be in another dimension, that stuff was kind of enhanced. And then a lot of the scene with Angstrom Levy and introducing him was kind of beefed up. And the sequence with Radiohead wasn’t originally in the episode, because we didn’t know how long the gap was gonna be between Season 1 and Season 2. A lot of that stuff was added just to make sure that we hit the ground running. There’s almost three big scenes to open the episode because it’s the Omni-Man and Invincible/Immortal fight, and then the big battle with Angstrom Levy and the rebels, and then this sequence with Mark getting back up to speed and doing the superhero action stuff.

You can kind of look at it like this season starts three times. But I really like that. I like double endings. I like double beginnings. I like doing stuff where it’s like, “Wait a minute, did this just end twice?” I enjoy the end of Return of the King. “Give me another ending, come on. Oh, it’s not over yet!” I love it. So, some things were changed because we honestly thought that in the 30-month gap between Season 1 and Season 2, people would forget the show and that we’d have a really tough time getting people re-engaged in the show, and that there would be a period of time in that gap where no one was talking about the show, and it didn’t happen. I’m constantly getting bombarded with, “Where’s Season 2? Where’s Season 2? What’s going on?” Which is awesome. Annoying and awesome because the alternative is scary. So we didn’t have that, but we really were preparing to have to re-engage everyone into the show with our first episode.

Why ‘Invincible’ Season 2 Is in Two Parts
Image via Prime Video

What was the motivation for the two parts? Did you guys ever debate putting it all out at once?

KIRKMAN: I’ve seen people on the internet that are like, “Oh, why are you doing that? Why are you holding these four episodes back? I want the whole season.” And that’s the wrong way to look at it. We’re giving you four episodes early. I try to be a glass-half-full kind of guy. It was something that was somewhat of a practical thing because it was taking so long to get the show done. But I think that when we saw where the show was falling, schedule-wise, leading into that holiday, you can sometimes lose audiences when you get into the holiday season, and there’s New Year’s, and then there’s all kinds of stuff going on at the beginning of the year and everything. With Walking Dead, we always had this break in the middle of the seasons. It made the second half of the season have another marketing push, and it made the beginning of the middle of the season an event. We thought that that would be something that we could try here, and it allowed us to get these four episodes out sooner.

I think narratively, I can’t really talk about it without spoiling, but when you see how the fourth episode ends, it really does feel like a finale, and it really does set you up for a minor pause where you wanna process what happened.

I’m not saying.

KIRKMAN: No, but you know what I’m talking about. Do you agree or are you like, “This guy’s full of crap?”

You’re an ahole for not giving me [Episodes] 5 through 8. If I could watch 5 right now, I would go home and watch 5 immediately. So, yeah, it’s real good. So I know that Season 3 has already been greenlit and that’s great, but let’s talk about Season 4 and 5.

KIRKMAN: Let’s talk about Season 6.

I’m fine with that. But I am curious, the show is obviously a big hit for Prime Video. Everyone loves it. The reviews are huge. So, at this point, when you were developing Season 2, how much are you laying out in the writer’s room? And when talking about, you know, 3 and 4 and going further and trying to figure out, “Where will we go with each season because this actually might happen?”

KIRKMAN: I’m irresponsible. So when we were wrapping up the first season, you never know how a show is gonna do. And so there was a lot of talk of like, “Well, we need to make sure that we have some level of finality in the Season 1 finale just in case we don’t have a second season.” And I was like, “If we don’t get a second season, I don’t care. I’ll leave it on a cliffhanger,” like, “Okay, sorry? We didn’t get a second season.” I’ll leave it hanging. And I think that’s the way to go because I feel like if you give it this level of finality then you have to undo that when you get into the second season. I don’t agree with that method whatsoever, which I guess is, “Try to do something nice for the people that are watching it,” but I don’t believe in that.

So, I’m writing every season with everybody. I’m working on every season with it in mind that we’re gonna go for as long as we need to go to fully adapt the comics because I want, if we are lucky enough and fortunate enough to be able to do that, for it all to be seamless. And so when we were writing Season 1, I was like, “Okay, well, that’s gonna lead to this. That’ll happen in Season 3, and this will happen in Season 4, and then if we do it that way, that can happen in Season 5 and Season 6.” I’ve got a rough road map for the whole thing from the beginning. So, that hasn’t really changed. We don’t have anything to announce yet for anything past Season 3, but we’re very hopeful that we’ll get to go for a good long while. I mean, I’m thinking like 100 seasons.

Image via Prime Video

I am curious about the animation, though, because I’m not sure how much it costs to animate certain sequences. So, is it more expensive to do an action sequence? Is it more expensive to do certain types of sequences? And how does that factor into the writing and figuring out where and when to spend money?

KIRKMAN: I don’t know exactly minute to minute, “Oh, this costs $6,000, this costs $40,000, this costs $80,000…” that kind of thing. But I know that certain things take more time, and time takes manhours, and manhours takes budget. So I do know that action sequences take infinitely more time, they’re infinitely more complex, but it’s also the amount of characters that are in a sequence, it’s also the amount of locations and new locations that are in an episode. So, that very quickly adds to the budget.

This is an insanely complicated show, and that’s part of the reason that the delay between Season 1 and Season 2 happened. We had to rebuild the factory, as I’ve said in other interviews, because we shut everything down with COVID going on. But also we had to figure out a pathway to make the show producible. We had to figure out how we were going to get as many incidentals done as we needed to do – those are, like, background characters and crowds and things like that. That has been a constant struggle for the 100 years that we’ve been working on Seasons 2 and 3 together. But it’s something that we’re really passionate about, and I think it sets the show apart. We’re definitely pushing everything to the limit.

There’s a lot of people that have worked in animation before, unlike me, that are working on the show that are like, “How many locations do we have in this episode? That’s not okay.” And it’s like, “Ehh, it’ll be fine!” And we cut corners in ways that hopefully people can’t notice. So we’re trying to be as smart about it as possible. Like every now and then, if you’re really paying attention, there’s an office that’s the same office that someone else was in. We’ll try to double-board locations and things like that to make it as economical as possible.

You have a murderer’s row of amazing voices in this season, including Peter Cullen, and Peter’s really good.

KIRKMAN: I can’t believe it’s happened.

I want to talk, but I can’t. I can just say that he’s very good in the first four episodes of Season 2.

KIRKMAN: He does appear in the first four episodes.

And he’s really good. But my question is, what is it like? Because you love Transformers—I’m going back to the Optimus at the beginning—what is it like to actually watch Peter Cullen do a voice for you and also the rest of the people that you’ve got because it’s really crazy who you got for the show?

KIRKMAN: It’s both a blessing and a curse that we do this over Zoom now. Even with COVID and everything becoming somewhat manageable, there have been protocols in place where you have to limit the number of people that are in the recording booth and in the recording studio. And so the voice director and myself, and Simon Racioppa and Dan Duncan, when he was able to find time, we do the recording sessions over Zoom. And we’re basically looking at little screens on our laptop with the people who are in the recording booth, and we’re getting everything in real time, and it’s basically the same process. But you turn your camera off because the voice director, they don’t wanna have four windows of people going, “Say it louder. Angrier.” So we had like a little chat window where we’re talking about our notes and what we want, “Oh, this guy is supposed to be scared here. He’s not acting scared,” and then the voice director relays those messages, and then every now and then for some kind of nuance or something, I’ll pop in and go, “Hey Jason Mantzoukas, can you please stop adlibbing? We gotta get through this episode.” I only have to do that three times during sessions.

But with Peter Cullen, it was a blessing that we were on Zoom because I could turn my camera off and then wipe my tears because it was very moving. You know, Optimus Prime is a big part of my life. I remember watching that original Transformers movie when I was like eight, and you know, a big deal for me. But he’s also fantastic. He’s a super nice guy. It was a lot of fun working with him. The other thing that’s funny is that I’ve only interacted with people through these Zoom things, so there was a Transformers screening that Peter Cullen came to for that Rise of the Beasts movie and I got to go to it because he was very nice, and I was like, “I should go up to Peter Cullen and be like, ‘It’s good to see you,’” and then I realized he’s not gonna know who I am. So I didn’t.

Are There More ‘Invincible’ Spinoffs in the Works?
Image via Prime Video

So the [Invincible:] Atom Eve special did really well for Prime Video and also demonstrated that there is still a ton of interest in the show. I’m curious if that is the beginning of one-off specials. And maybe tonight is the night to announce one.

KIRKMAN: I think we all enjoyed that. For us, it was great to be able to focus on one character. I’m very proud of the fact that a lot of these characters have very complicated backstories, and it’s hard to shove into an episode without it being distracting. It’s a nice venue to be able to focus on a character. So it’s possible that we may do something else in the future, but, you know, we also have to get these massive eight-episode seasons out in a reasonable amount of time, or everyone will revolt and eventually quit the show. And we’re aware of people being unhappy with the delay, so we’re gonna try to make sure there’s not anything like that ever again. So as long as we can do, you know, a special every now and then without causing more delays, we’d like to try and do that. But it’s something that we’re trying to figure out right now.

Listen, you don’t have to say anything but my prediction is one a year, or one every other year. Has Prime Video ever said, because you get away with a lot on this show-

KIRKMAN: Has Prime Video never watched The Boys?

Image via Image Comics

But after The Boys are they sort of like, “Yeah, fans love this stuff. You can do what you want?”

KIRKMAN: I mean, that’s not spoken, but that’s how I’m operating. If they ever gave us a note, I’d be like, “Are you guys kidding? We’ve never had anyone crawl inside a penis.” It’s funny because my sensibilities are a little bit more Puritan than Seth [Rogen] and Evan [Goldberg]’s, so, you know, we do weird violence and stuff like that, but we don’t go nearly as far with the sexual stuff. We haven’t really had any problems with that, and I do feel like we’re part of a team and I think that’s cool. And so when Amazon does give us notes, they’re very much like, “Hey, you mentioned this and this one scene, and I’m wondering about this here.”

I was talking to Mitchell, one of our executives, yesterday, and he was like, “I wanted to think of us as the first audience,” and I think that’s a really good way of putting it. They chime in with things from time to time where they’re just like, “This made me ask this question, and I’m worried that audiences will be asking this question,” and we’re like, “Oh, we don’t want audiences to ask that question, so let’s fix that.” And that’s a really good process. But they have never been like, “Less eyeballs here,” to which I would say, “Fuck off.”

Will We Get More ‘Invincible’ Every Year?
Image via Prime Video

In an ideal world, would you like to see Invincible with a new season every year? I’m actually being serious about this. So, Season 3 would be the end of 2024/beginning of 2025. Are you aiming for that, or is that at this point unrealistic?

KIRKMAN: I think that that would be the goal. I’ve said publicly that the gap between Season 1 and Season 2 is the longest gap we’ll ever have. I’ve seen people say, “Oh, it’s gonna be three years for every season. This isn’t gonna work.” But we don’t know. It’s a very hard production schedule. It’s a very tough show to produce. So, the goal is to try and get it as close to a season a year as we possibly can. I can’t guarantee that we’ll hit that. But it’s a weird time for television. Like, name one show that comes out consistently every year because it’s like Stranger Things, House of the Dragon…I know that the pandemic delayed things a lot, but it seems like it’s harder and harder to get shows to come out every year.

The biggest issue I think with streaming shows is that they don’t have the writer’s room going 24/7. So the season comes out, “Oh, we want to make another, then the writer’s room, then we’re making it.” And so it causes a really long delay. I look at a show like For All Mankind, which basically kept the writers’ room going, and every year they’ve had a new season and it’s been amazing.

Going into Season 2, it’s the first day you guys are working on it, you’re in the writer’s room, whatever you’re doing on the first day with everyone that’s involved, what is that first week like in that room, in terms of are you just spitballing ideas? Are you thinking about what Season 2 is gonna be like? Can you sort of take everyone through what are those first few days actually like?

KIRKMAN: We have a real luxury on this show in that not only do we have the source material, but the source material had completely run its course and concluded before we started this show. So it wasn’t like Walking Dead where we didn’t know how important a certain character would be, like “Oh yeah, I’m gonna be doing Eugene stories in issue 140.” Like, I didn’t know that. There was a lot of figuring things out with The Walking Dead, but with this, it’s like, “Okay, this character is very important to issue 133 so we need to make sure that we get this right, and we need to make sure that this line of dialogue sticks to this so that it resonates when we do this scene that calls back to this line of dialogue.”

So the first day of Season 2, we come into the room, and it’s like, “Okay, we’re doing this to this, and let’s just start. Okay, the scene’s gonna break down this way, the scene’s gonna break down this way.” The few of you that are very familiar with the comics, you can see how closely some of this follows in spirit. A lot of the dialogue is completely different, and a lot of the ways that the scenes play out are very different, but structurally, everything is all fairly consistent with some different tweaks and things added in. We’re really fortunate that when we come to build a season there’s a pretty clear road map that’s available.

Image via Image Comics

That first week, how much did you figure out where you’d like Season 2 to end, where you’d like Season 3 to end? Do you have that kind of stuff figured out already?

KIRKMAN: Yeah, that’s all mapped out. We had that mapped out when we were working on Season 1. Because Season 1 was, “Okay, we’re gonna open with the Guardians’ death, and we’re gonna end with the Mark and Omni-Man fight.” And then it was, “Okay, we have to stretch those things so we’re gonna pull the Titan storyline and the Reanimen storyline and the Sequid storyline. We’re gonna pull those into the middle of those two stories, even though a lot of that stuff takes place after the Omni-Man and Nolan fight.” And while we were mapping that out, it was like, “Okay, we’re gonna lose that from Season 2, we’re gonna lose that from Season 3…”

And so you kind of get a sense of what your tentpoles are. We’re gonna open a season here and end a season there, open the next season here and end the season there. Then, that gives us the rough structure of the season. And then, we have to break down the issues to find the big moments that make each episode have something big in them. Invincible is a pretty dense comic, so it’s pretty easy to go, “Oh, this guy’s head explodes. That’ll be a great episode.” But it’s all about finding those things.

AUDIENCE: So, what was it like casting Jay Pharoh as Bulletproof?

KIRKMAN: I mean, it was great. I’ve been a fan of Jay since he was on SNL, and he did this Soderbergh movie called Unsane that is really great, and so that shows a lot of range. I think that was something that was really important for the Bulletproof character; comic book fans know where that character is going. [Laughs] There’s some crazy stuff in it. I wanted to make sure that we had somebody that could, you know, have that light, fun, airy personality, but also have the depth needed, and he was great. The actual process was fairly seamless, I think. We decided on going out to Jay, and things kind of went from there, and then it was all done…But yeah, it was great. It was great having him on board.

AUDIENCE: So, characters that you changed, like Science Dog, was that a creative choice or like a licensing issue? And if so, will there be future characters, like Tech Jacket, for example, or like Metal Vest or something like that?

KIRKMAN: [Laughs] So Science Dog was the comic that Cory and I were going to do before we did Invincible. So, just as a gag, I put Science Dog in Invincible as the comic that he reads, and then Cory and I eventually did Science Dog stories. And so, to us, Science Dog is its own intellectual property. So it’s kind of part of Invincible, but it’s kind of not to a certain extent, like Tech Jacket. Tech Jacket is its own book. Tech Jacket is a good example because Tech Jacket is co-owned by E.J. Su, who’s a great artist that designed all the characters, and I worked with him on that book.

But to put him in Invincible, Amazon as an entity may not be like, “Oh, I see that it’s additive, we can pay extra money for Tech Jacket,” the same way that Sony would be like, “Oh, if you let us borrow Venom, we’ll let you borrow this,” because there’s value to that. They might be like, “People will watch Invincible whether Tech Jacket is in it or not.” So then I would have to make a decision about how EJ is handled in that situation. This is just to say it’s very complicated. And so to avoid that complication, we just separated Science Dog out, and then I thought it would be funny to have a kind of Science Dog in the show, so Seance Dog is born. He’s a completely different character. He’s a completely different dog.

Casting Steven Yeun in ‘Invincible’

AUDIENCE: Has your relationship with Steven Yeun impacted his role in being cast in Invincible? Like when The Walking Dead was coming out, did you see him as the role?

KIRKMAN: Did it come out that Steven and I were fighting?

COLLIDER: Definitely.

KIRKMAN: We have a terrible relationship. [Laughs] So Steven, when he was on Walking Dead very early on, Season 1, he would just be like, “Hey man, could you recommend some comics to me?” So I gave him the Invincible comics very early on, and then he would text me from time to time. I used to be hanging out with friends, and he would text me, “I’m in the comic shop. What do I buy?” And so I’d recommend comics that I didn’t write. And so I knew that he was like a big comic book fan. And he had done the show Voltron, he’s great in that show. And so I was like, “Oh, this guy, this guy can do voice acting too. This is amazing.”

This was before he got nominated for the Oscars and the Emmys. I was like, “Oh, you know, this guy was amazing, if there is ever a cartoon, I’m gonna consider this guy.” And so, before Invincible even became real, I started talking to him. He actually did me a favor because the two guards at the White House at the beginning of the first episode, that scene was about four minutes longer because I really like the idea of two people talking about random mundane things at the start of the show. And Amazon was like, “This is the stupidest decision. We will let people crawl inside of penises, but we won’t…” So I started pushing back. So, I actually got Steven to come in and do the part that Jon Hamm eventually did so that I could get the dialogue recorded, so they could hear it and be like, “Oh, okay. I guess this isn’t the most boring thing in the world.” And he came in and recorded that entire scene, and then we played it for them, and they were like, “Okay, well, trim it a little.” So I trimmed it a little, but the scene was very involved. So, yeah, that was definitely because of the relationship that we built on The Walking Dead. I will ask for favors from anyone I work with.

Image via AMC

AUDIENCE: When you were starting out, how did you develop personal and professional relationships to bring your visions to life, whether it be like the comic format or animation?

KIRKMAN: The Walking Dead ended up being so successful that there were a lot of people who just came to me and stuff. So that was fun. But when I was doing comics, I went to conventions, I met people. It very much is who you know, like people say that, like, “It’s all about who you know.” You have to have talent, too, but I think in the modern internet age, it’s not that hard to get to know people. So, you know, hound people on Twitter. Be a person people remember. People come to things like this, and you can bug them. I wholeheartedly recommend doing that, just not to me [Laughs].

AUDIENCE: What shows or comics do you like, and what influences and what characters do you like that have an influence on the show?

KIRKMAN: I mean, there’s a comic called Savage Dragon that Eric Larson did for Image Comics. It’s been running over 250 issues, and it’s very much about a guy’s life and the crazy crap that happens to a superhero over that time. That’s a big inspiration for this series. There’s shows I like right now, I just watched the end of Billions. I love that show. I love The Boys, I love Jack Reacher, I love Jack Ryan, Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

Image via Prime Video

COLLIDER: I feel like there’s something about Prime Video…

KIRKMAN: Have you guys seen Swarm? Swarm’s real good. Most of those shows are actually really good.

COLLIDER: I strongly recommend Rings of Power, but that’s a whole other thing.

KIRKMAN: There’s a fight scene in Deadwood where a guy punches a guy’s eye out, and I remember watching that and being like, “I wanna do that.”

AUDIENCE: With the Omni-Man and Mark fight at the end of Season 1, I noticed it was a lot more brutal than how the comic book was. I was just wondering what was your thought process with going into that compared to how you wrote it in the comic book?

KIRKMAN: [Laughs] It was, “I can make this worse.” I wrote that episode myself, and so I was able to just drill down into every moment. The train sequence is in the comics, but it’s just like one panel. And so when you’re adding motion and sound, you can fit more things. When you’re writing comics, any kind of action takes a panel, and so it can make things like take 10 pages if you’re not careful and it’s not like that with animation. So I just got in there, and I was like, “I just need to make this hurt more and freak people out more.”

Image via Prime Video

AUDIENCE: So what is your advice to younger writers, specifically ones who wanna write high concepts, absolutely wild shit like you write?

KIRKMAN: Make everything not boring. I think that’s the most frustrating thing – a lot of boring work out there. And then, you know, write every day. And also, don’t try to make anything good because you don’t know what’s good and what’s bad when you’re writing. So just write something you enjoy and try to not let that voice in your head say, “This is bad, slow down.” Just keep going.

AUDIENCE: How do you feel about Omni-Man being in Mortal Kombat?

KIRKMAN: It’s my favorite thing in the world. I love all of my children. I think about it all the time. That trailer got released, I watched it like 400 times.

AUDIENCE: Was it very cathartic for you to write this after working for Marvel as a freelancer?

KIRKMAN: I don’t think about Marvel. [Laughs]. I left Marvel in like 2010 or 2009. It was cathartic for the people at Marvel to be like, “That guy’s career is over, that guy’s a loser.” And then The Walking Dead show happened.

AUDIENCE: How did you decide what you wanted to do with the title cards of the episode, and why were there so many fake-outs in this recent episode?

KIRKMAN: Well, we thought it would be funny. I will say this. I’ll try to get this as brief as possible. The tone of the show is stupid. And it’s a serious drama, and there’s serious scenes, but there’s funny scenes, and there’s scary scenes, and there’s weird scenes. The title gag sequence is another thing where it’s like, you’re in a dramatic sequence that you’re supposed to be paying attention to, but we’re doing a meta gag that’s pulling you out. I’m trying to think of this show as unique and weird as possible. I think that if people are watching it like, “I’ve never seen that before,” like, that’s cool. And so I think it’s hilarious that if you’re paying attention, if you’re in on the gag and you’ve watched the first season, you’re like, “Oh, it’s that damn title thing. They do that every episode. Really?” And coming up with new ways to keep that fresh is a lot of fun. But I thought coming back after the gap for the second season and people be like, “Well, they’re not gonna do that, are they?” And it’s like, “Oh, they are? Oh, they’re not. Oh, they are. Oh, they’re not. Well, it’s gonna be here. It’s not this one either, I guess they’re not doing it. Oh, god, they did it.” I think it’s cool. And then it also built to the Angstrom moment, and I felt like, narratively, it makes that moment feel super important, which it is.

AUDIENCE: In the comic book, you bring up pushing the bar on tropes. With it being animated, are there any animation tropes you’re trying to push the bar on?

KIRKMAN: Yeah, but I can’t spoil things. But yeah, there’s a lot of stuff.

Image via Prime Video

AUDIENCE: Are you excited that Omni-Man is gonna be a character in Mortal Kombat?

KIRKMAN: Oh, people can’t hear the questions. So, yes, it’s all I think about every day of my life, but it is the greatest, and all of the moves are based on things from the show. But there’s some things that you haven’t even seen in the trailer. He’s got a taunt.

AUDIENCE: Is there possibly gonna be an Invincible and The Boys crossover?

KIRKMAN: You guys really want that? How much do you want a Boys and Invincible crossover? Not a big enough response. [Laughs]

AUDIENCE: How did you and Cory design the costume?

KIRKMAN: Well, I had nothing to do with it. So, let’s just get that out of the way. There’s a sketchbook section in the back of the hardcover that shows the whole design process. Invincible was originally named Bulletproof, and he actually wore Bulletproof’s costume even though it was yellow and blue instead of orange, and we ultimately didn’t decide to go with that. And at a certain point, I was looking at the image, or Cory was looking at the image, and we were like, “Oh, it would be kind of cool if we incorporated some form of that.” And so Cory kind of built the costume around that concept. Cory is one of the best concept designers and costume designers in comics. Everyone that works in comics knows this. He’s just excellent at it, and you can see that in his work in the show.

Image via Prime Video

AUDIENCE: What do you say to some kids who want to create their own comics, and create something cinematic with them?

KIRKMAN: Don’t set out to create something cinematic with them. Set out to create something that you enjoy. I feel terrible giving advice. I’ve always just done something that interests me, that excites me. A lot of my ideas come from watching a movie and going, “It shouldn’t have ended that way, it should have ended this way,” and then I just turn that into a comic. And so, do things that get you super excited that you think you haven’t seen anywhere; do things that you feel are unique. And then, hopefully they actually will be, and other people will be as interested in them as you are. Don’t ever set out to do anything just because you think it’s popular or just because you think people will like it, or just because you think it’s a hot thing right now, because by the time it actually happens or comes out that trend will be over. So just do whatever you want.

Invincible Season 2 is available to stream on Amazon in the U.S.

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Invincible
Invincible is an adult animated superhero series that revolves around 17-year-old Mark Grayson, who’s just like every other guy his age — except his father is the most powerful superhero on the planet, Omni-Man. But as Mark develops powers of his own, he discovers his father’s legacy may not be as heroic as it seems. Release Date March 25, 2021 Cast Steven Yeun, J.K. Simmons Main Genre Superhero Genres Science Fiction Seasons 2 Creator Robert Kirkman Developer Simon Racioppa Number of Episodes 9 Network amazon prime video Streaming Service Prime Video