The Official Handbook of the Invincible Universe

Key Stats:

• Invincible created by: Robert Kirkman
• My copy signed by: Invincible artist Ryan Ottley
• Number of times Invincible has shown up on King of the Hill: 1

I love Invincible. It's a great story of a teenage superhero growing up. His actions have consequences and he progresses as a character. Since it's an original universe published by Image, it's not held back by any company continuity like Marvel and DC comics are. They can do whatever they want, as long as it's internally sound. Interesting bit of trivia: It's made by Robert Kirkman, the same guy who made The Walking Dead. He actually does really good super hero stuff, but mostly that's overlooked for the cultural phenomenon that is The Walking Dead.

The Handbook made as a parody of sorts to the Marvel and DC Encyclopedias. They've kind of become a thing of the past since the internet has all but negated the need for print materials about things only the most passionate of nerds would argue about. I still think they're cool, though. They usually feature some unique artwork, and they're great for getting a short, concise story of a character who shows up in a comic book that you don't recognize. I have some from the Archie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle series, and they're a great reference for that self-contained universe just as these are for Invincible.

Invincible the comic was started in 2003, and the Handbook was released in two parts in late 2006 / early 2007. Invincible is still running today, so the Handbook is INSANELY out of date. We're missing a lot of important stuff like Dinosaurus, the Viltrumite War, Conquest, etc. We're not even to where he wore just a blue/black suit yet!

I've perused this Handbook, and can tell why there hasn't been an update. As I mentioned before, the internet has all but made these things obsolete, but publishers have one thing over the internet: editors. Clearly no one read this thing before it was put to print. In the first 5 lines of Anissa's entry, there are like 20 grammatical errors. And keep in mind, one of them is that those 5 lines are just one enormous run-on sentence. It's basically like they just published the ComicVine page for each character, so why bother paying someone to write something "official" for it? They're also filled with fairly useless information. Aquarius is in like 5 panels of the comic, but gets 2 whole pages of text here describing how he is able to swim so fast by moving all his molecules forward at the same time and/or vaporizing the water around him to make an air pocket that he swims through. Sounds great, don't care. Dude's been dead forever. It even says in his stats, "Deceased". Two pages of text is more text than was in the series collectively before he first appeared in issue 7.



Page 1. This page should just say, "Dead". The next page should also say, "Dead".

So here's my overall rating of The Official Handbook of the Invincible Universe:

Official-ness: 8/10 Sequids - I guess it's official because it says it's official? The entries themselves aren't written by Robert Kirkman, but I guess if you stole his journal and wrote about what you read in it this is basically what you would get.

Signature-ination: 10/10 Sequids - I got this thing signed by Ryan Ottley, the man, the myth, the legend. The guy does some amazing artwork (even though he didn't contribute much to the Handbook).

Art-ification: 8/10 Sequids - Each character is drawn by a different artist, which is cool. Andy Kuhn's Isotope looks enormously bland though, a missed opportunity to make use of a very awesome monster artist by letting him draw a guy just standing there. How much does it pay to draw a single character for a Handbook?

Grammer Nazi-ism: 0/10 Sequids - Seriously, fucking proofread. The English language includes commas for a reason.

Don’t Touch My Stuff-itude: 5/10 Sequids = Please be careful. Books are meant to be read, so please feel free to pick up and read. But I like having nice things every now and then, so keep your drinks at least a foot and a half away.

Overall Rating: 7/10 Sequids - It would be much better if it was more readable. As it stands, this is a fun little thing to read in the bathroom or when I don't want to really get into something.