Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Invincible, Issue #1!

I wanna start on this one for three main reasons. 1) There are 144 issues, so I should get going sooner rather than later, 2) I love a good coming-of-age story and it sounds like this will be spoofing Spider-Man, which I’m all for, and 3) I really want to see an Images Comics imprint take on the Superhero with respect to its own universe. I’m expecting something totally rated R, so I can only read this when my mom leaves the house! Just kidding! Ha ha ha!

*checks driveway for Mom’s car*

Here’s Issue #1! The first story arc comprises four issues. Are you excited? ARE YOU EXCITED? Well, put it back in your pants, you registered sex offender.

Invincible, Issue #1 [January, 2003]
Written by: Robert Kirkman

“Girls, acne, homework, super-villains. When you’re a teenager, it helps to be INVINCIBLE.”

I hope this isn’t going to be as Spider-Man-y as I predict it will be. I’m having enough trouble trying not to be exasperated with all of Peter Parker’s antics.

Our teenage superhero, of whom I don’t yet know the name, carries a dummy with a chest bomb. A Bomb Test Dummy, you might say. “Y’know, you really ruined my afternoon,” the kid squeaks as he flies across a polar climate. The bomb timer reads 13 seconds until kaplooie.

Once the kid finds a spot of his choosing, he launches that sucker as far as he can throw it. And it’s not far. CHA-THOOM! He gets knocked back a bit, not no major scrapes, cuts, or prolapsed anuses. “If I keep this up, I’m going to give myself a heart attack,” he smiles as he flies away again from whence he came!

*intro music stolen from Muppet Babies*

Four months ago. Our hero is on the toilet reading comic books. His mom bangs on the door and tells him to push that fucker out quickly so other people can use the bathroom. Also, he’ll be late for school, which is also a crime.

Not to worry, Mamacita. Your pooping son is ready with plenty of time to spare! So where’s deadbeat Dad? Did he come home last night? The answer is a resounding NO! But, maybe he’ll get his fat kiester out of the office today. It’s nice to come home once in a while.

Mom and Son turn on the TV news. “…using a dragon-like monster to enslave a portion of Taiwan. New reports reveal the blurred figure seen in the amateur photograph to be none other than Omni-Man, defender of democracy.” Indeed, here is a still of a caped crusader fighting a giant dragon. “Eyewitness reports are that the battle has been raging for nearly ten hours, destroying portions of the town in its wake.”

MARK! Mark is the kid’s name. How do you do, Mark? I’m Tom, I’m gonna write about you for 144 issues if I don’t die before then. His friend runs up to him outside of school, his name is William. He’s wearing a shirt that says “RAP” on it. “A few of us are gonna go hang out at Shenanigans tonight. Do you want to tag along?”

Mark doesn’t look the kind of kid anyone would want to hang out with, but that’s a moot point. “I’ve got to be at Burger Mart in about twenty minutes,” Mark responds, checking his watch. A job! Loser! Sucks to be you! Have fun at Burger Mart, you homo!

Burger Mart is where it’s at. Mark gets to throw out a stinky bag of garbage. He lifts open the dumpster and throws the bag up in the air. The bag soars up, up, up, up, up, and away. Mark ain’t know his own strength no more.

“It’s about time,” he smiles, looking forward to an evening of strong-arm-jerkin’ in his bedroom.

Once again, Daddy Mark isn’t going to be home for dinner, so Mom and Son get started. “I had a pretty interesting day–” Mark says, scooping up some mashed potatoes. He’s not going to tell her about his plans to strong-arm-jerk it. At least I hope he doesn’t. I don’t have a sense of how smart this kid is yet.

Before he gets a chance to say more, Dad WOOOOOOOOSHES in in a blink of an eye to take his seat at the table. Nobody even reacts.

“Did you take care of that dragon?” Mom smiles.
“Yeah, once I found out who was controlling the thing, there wasn’t much to it,” Dad says through mouthfuls of delicious brown mush.

Omni-Man’s publisher called; they need their book done yesterday! Eek! So he’s going to take the weekend off and pound it out. “I hope the Guardians of the Globe can cover for me.”

Well, this certainly is just your average, boring white family. I don’t even know why they bothered to make a comic book about this. They should’ve made a comic book about me instead. I have anxiety!

“So, how was your day, Mark?” Mom asks.
“Fine. I think I’m finally getting superpowers.”

*record scratch*
*”Bad to the Bone” plays*

Nah, his parents don’t even care. This kid is going to beat the shit out his dick upstairs tonight and they’re barely even reacting!

That evening (after a long session of… you know), Mark stands on the roof outside of his window. If he can fly, then he has powers! If not, then that’s ok, because his invulnerability will keep him safe if he hits the ground. Wait, that doesn’t make sense! Hold up… oh, never mind. GERONIMO!

He jumps off the roof and braces himself for impact. After discoverin’ his hoverin’, he stops wincing and zooms off. “TOO COOL!” he screams into the quiet evening, waking up ALL the neighborhood cats.

Elsewhere, in the dead of night, a sharp-dressed blond man is running away from a jewelry store with a large Rock of a man wearing nothing but pants. “Boy, we really screwed that one up!” says the large rock of a man (I’ll call him the Rock). Mr. Blond Suit (I’ll call him Barney Stinson) is like “you screwed it up, fucker”.

The Rock was suppose to hang back and let the cop bullets fly off of him while Stinson ran away. Rock wasn’t supposed to tag along! He was supposed to die and have no funeral.

It doesn’t matter now. Running is the thing that matters. They both leap over a fence and immediately get sucker punched by a kid wearing a tracksuit and a bandana. “Who the hell are you?” shouts Dwayne Johnson as the Invincible Boy knocks his rocks off! Very nice, that was easy. This is way better than school!

“What in God’s name are you wearing?” asks Mark’s dad, arms crossed, looking buff as all get-out, having had watched his son beat these thugs up. “And isn’t it a bit early to be doing this? You’ve had your powers for what… a week?”

YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME, DADDY. Besides, it’s been two weeks. AND, he’s been doing a lot of practicing. He’s only wearing the disguise so that people don’t recognize him. He just couldn’t let these two thugs get away, is all.

I think Dad doesn’t want Son to steal his thunder. Mark’s going to be a lot better than Omni-Man within a month, guaranteed.

Well, at any rate, here come the police. So they boogie. “I’m going to introduce you to a guy that can help you out,” Dad says as they fly away. How touching, what a nice bonding moment.

“Prom dresses by day, nuclear powered suits of armor by night… with you standard spandex number thrown in every now and then for good measure. I’ve had this secret workshop here forever.”

A craggy man stands next to smug Dad. Mark is dressed like a giant yellow and orange bug with bug-eyed goggles. He looks like a bug. Mark isn’t that impressed with it, especially the color scheme, and what’s with all these “weird disk things”? A lot of this seems unnecessary and impractical!

The disks are solar batteries back when this craggy man thought Omni-Man had solar-powered super-powered super powers. But he doesn’t! They’re there anyway, kid. Get used to them.

Dad gets word that a villain named Gridlock is breaking up the East Side bridge, so he skedaddles faster than you can say “get your ass back here”, leaving Mark alone with this possible convicted sex offender.

“So, what do you think of the costume?” the man asks, eyeing Mark up and down and licking his lips while his pants get tighter.
“I don’t know…” Mark hesitates. “It just doesn’t seem… iconic. Do you know what I mean?”

Really? This fucking kid wants to be important already? Yuck, I don’t relate to this at all. Talk about unrelatable. I can’t relate! Nobody wants to be important! Everyone wants to suck and then die unwanted and unloved like me.

Mark takes off his bug goggles. “No, I haven’t really thought about it,” he says glumly after being asked if he has a superhero name picked out yet. Another couple of good options are “Mumbly Joe” and “The Human Centipede”.

This man tells him to pick up a fucking name before he dares come back there again. He doesn’t have time to make costumes out of nothing! Here’s another couple of good options: “Sperm Kid” and “Thor’s Diaper”.

At school the next day, Mark is struggling through his remedial math classwork. Since nobody really finished, the teacher allows them all to take the work home to finish. Derek the Braindead Jock mouths off, says he has football and pussy-suckin’ later that evening. The teacher, Mr. Hiles, asks him to stay after class for a word. And that word is: *raises middle finger*

While Mark is at his locker, a bully bullies a little nerd who literally looks like Steve Urkel. Mark butts in and tells the bully to leave the little nerd (who probably deserves the bullying) alone. A trope ensues. The bully shoves Mark, kids in Slayer and Tool shirts start gathering around.

Obviously, Mark handles this tactfully. The bully is all fucked up, a teacher comes by like “HURRFF SNURF WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?” and then Mark is in the principal’s office.

lol the little nerd is named Steve White. Steve Urkel! Jaleel White! Why Steve White has a locker next to Mark Grayson is beyond me, unless there aren’t any kids in the grade with last names between H and V. And there might not be. Perhaps there are only six kids in the whole school, who knows? I don’t!

Principal Winslow! Like Carl Winslow! Hey, man, this storyline is called “Family Matters”, so what did you expect? Winslow gives Mark the old “you’re too good a kid to go down this path” nonsense. Mark tells this cat not to worry, he really wants to go to a good college and he hates seeing defenseless little Steve Urkel nerds terrorized. Principal Winslow says the teachers should handle that shit. Like, by standing by the lockers and watching, you know? Stop beating kids up. Even though some of them deserve it. *wink* … but seriously, don’t do it. *wink* *wink* “You’re not invincible,” Winslow says, and then Mark smiles. He smiles like he’s never smiled before.

The end of the issue is nigh. A bank is being held up by a group of masked and armed robbers. A man gives one of them a safe deposit box and they get the hell out of dodge. They push an old lady out of the way and run across traffic to get away from any cops that might be tailing them.

They can’t find their getaway car! Where’s their getaway car! They need it for, you know, geta-ing away!

Around the corner, Mark hovers in his costume of black, blue, and yellow. It looks quite iconic. “You guys looking for this?” he asks them, referring to the car he holds right over his head.

“Drop it freak, or we’ll blow you away!” threatens one of them with a gun trained on the teenage superhero.

“I wouldn’t try that… I’m Invincible.”

Final Thoughts

Stupid hero name, but a good comic so far! Not entirely original yet, but I’m looking forward to where this is going.

The part where the super powers are genetic is kind of lame though. I was hoping Mark would jump into a toilet full of toxic waste or get hit by lightning five times or get probed by an alien and given a plutonium enema.

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