Yesterday Robert Kirkman announced the end of Invincible, his long running superhero epic, is coming in a year’s time with issue 144. It’s a more than respectable run after 13 years, and actually one of the longer running continuously published comics. He’d have a ways to go to beat Spawn and Savage Dragon which are up over 200 issues (and I’m sure Spawn has had a glitch or renumber or two along the way, so feel free to correct me in the comments, loudly and at length) but the whole piece is an interesting meditation on what the creator doew when he owns his own comic.
“My greatest hope in life is to one day, when I’m much older, be reading an INVINCIBLE comic book by younger creators I haven’t met, who are doing a book that I hate.”
I’ve been asked many times over the thirteen years of writing INVINCIBLE how long I think this book will go. Some form of that statement has always been my answer. I always thought it would be a great honor to see Invincible rise to the level of Superman or Spider-Man in the pantheon of comic book superheroes. Characters who far outlived their original stories and eventually transformed into story engines that sort of tell the same story (to a certain extent) in perpetuity for generation after generation.
It wasn’t until recently that I realized that goes against everything INVINCIBLE, as a series, has stood for since the very beginning.
Instead of someday throwing an issue by different creators across the room with a “This isn’t Invincible” Kirkman and artist Ryan Ottley will end the story with a big wrap up.
Of course, left unsaid is that one of these days there could be an Invincible special…and a return mini series. A “Tales of…” Because that’s as much a part of the comics tradition as the endless never ending soap operas that Kirkman is leaving behind.
I think this is a really good thing. All the best stories have endings, and Invincible deserves one too.
It’ll free up some headspace for Kirkman to do other things, and perhaps more importantly also nudges Ryan Ottley to move on and do something new. Imagine a world in which Maverick was never cancelled: there’d be no Rockford Files. Or Malcolm in the Middle, leaving us with no Breaking Bad. Or I Dream of Jeannie and no Dallas. Or Star Trek and no T.J. Hooker!!!
Oh no, so sad to see this one ending in over a year. It kept pushing boundaries of the super-hero genre like no other. I had great hopes it would still kept doing for still many many years.
Good thing issues come out so slow, we’ll have 4 more years waiting on these last 14 issues.
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