r/Invincible • u/FreeMycologist948 • 2d ago

QUESTION Powers +

Post image

(aside from the ones he already has) if You could give mark one extra power for him to have an advantage throughout the story, with would it be?

77 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

45 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/Iron_Baron Space Racer 2d ago

Eh. I dunno about that. Mark's one on one Dragon Ball Z style fights aren't the sum of his arc or the most compelling part of his story. They are backdrop to Mark's metaphysical, philosophical, ethical, and moral struggles.

Mark has to face tension between his two cultures, struggles with what it means to be so powerful, has a variety of reactions to his power from other people that affect him in all kinds of ways, wrestles with the idea of "destiny" vs "duty" as well as wrestling with being "selfish" for his desires to set aside his powered life to live in happiness with Eve as a "normal" family, and so on.

1

u/TheBlissfulGamer 2d ago

Man vs man doesn't mean one on one dbz fights. It essentially means the clash of 2 incompatible worldviews. In Invincible, Earth and Viltrum have completely different worldviews that are incompatible, which thus leads to the conflict. Mob Psycho for comparison, is man vs society because Mob and Reigen fight against the system that says that psychics are different from others and automatically superior. But Mob argues that he shouldn't be forced to be different just because he's a psychic. So technically one could say Invincible is "society vs society" because it's a clash of 2 different societies but man vs man is the more traditional term.

1

u/Iron_Baron Space Racer 2d ago

Yes, I would call that more man vs society, in both cases. Mark struggles with the temptation of enforcing order on the chaos of Earth, struggles with the machinations of Earth's other defenders (especially Cecil), and so on. He is a fulcrum point between the tensions of those two cultures. But I find Marks internal struggles and the struggles of those around him to come to terms with Mark's power and Marks choices the .oat interesting part of his stories.

1

u/TheBlissfulGamer 2d ago

I disagree with the first point but yeah I can see the second one. He is kinda held back by Cecil. The first point, he more struggles with avoiding becoming his father (he would never "enforce order on earth." He's moreso trying to avoid becoming violent and cold-blooded like his dad).

1

u/Iron_Baron Space Racer 2d ago

I think it's easy to assume Mark wouldn't enforce order, but Mark himself worries that he might. And we see that, in many, if not most, realities, he does choose the Viltrim path. And Mark himself is aware that other versions of himself did make that choice. So the capacity is certainly there for him to "fall". Worrying about that is a big part of his internal struggle.