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While writing “Invincible,” Robert Kirkman wears his love for other superhero comics on his sleeves. As you read or watch “Invincible,” you can tell Kirkman is getting his desire to write Spider-Man out of his system; Mark Grayson is one of the best portrayals of Peter Parker, with similar strengths and flaws.
Most of the other major heroes and villains in “Invincible” have Marvel/DC counterparts, too. Mark’s girlfriend Atom Eve is Mary Jane Watson but with superpowers. Cecil Stedman is Nick Fury, just with a scarred cheek instead of an eyepatch. The original Guardians of the Globe are the Justice League, to a member: Darkwing is Batman, War Woman is Wonder Woman, and Red Rush is Flash. That’s why it’s so harrowing when Omni-Man brutally kills the Guardians. There’s only one survivor, the Immortal, who lives up to his name and regenerates. But which hero is the Immortal based on? Omni-Man is already the series’ stand-in for Superman. The Immortal’s blue and yellow costume evokes Wolverine, another superhero with a personal fountain of youth in his blood, so could he be the “Invincible” version of Logan?
There’s another character whom the Immortal resembles even more, though: DC Comics villain Vandal Savage. 50,000 years ago, a Cro-Magnon hunter came across a crashed meteor and huddled near it for warmth. He, and the world, were changed forever by the experience. The meteor’s radiation rendered him completely indestructible, with an unaging and regenerative body. And so that man lived up to the present day, adopting many names, but chief among them being Vandal Savage.
The Immortal has the same backstory as Savage, but with added Superman-like powers of flight and strength. He’s also a hero, unlike Savage, who is as much a monster as his name suggests. Compare the long lives they’ve lived and you’ll find only surface similarities.
The Immortal is Vandal Savage, but a hero
One of Vandal Savage’s long standing character gimmicks is that, in the DC Universe, many of history’s greatest villains were all him. Genghis Khan? Attila the Hun? Edward “Blackbeard” Teach? All mere aliases of the same immortal man, Vandal Savage. (He wasn’t the Führer himself, but Savage was a high-ranking official in Nazi Germany.) “Invincible,” in brief glimpses of the Immortal’s past, show at least two lives he lived. One of them is an ancient Celtic warrior (perhaps the inspiration for King Arthur?). The other is President Abraham Lincoln, a historical figure who most count as truly superheroic.
Savage, fittingly enough, is one of DC’s oldest villains. He debuted in 1941’s “Green Lantern” #10, created by writer Alfred Bester and artist Martin Nodell. Despite that, Savage is not much of a Green Lantern villain; like Darkseid, he’s more a foe of the entire DC hero pantheon. (Savage also doesn’t fit well into the space opera direction “Green Lantern” has taken since the 1950s.)
Now, Vandal Savage debuted long before superhero comics were taken seriously. Writers weren’t plotting out mythology, they were just trying to put out a fun issue for the month with a compelling challenge for the hero. “Immortal caveman” was a fun gimmick for a villain, but I doubt Bester and Nodell truly thought through the logistics of one man shaping human history.
Young Justice offered the best take on Vandal Savage
One writer who has thought that through is Greg Weisman, creator of cartoon series “Young Justice.” Vandal Savage (voiced initially by Miguel Ferrer, and then David Kaye after Ferrer’s passing) is the series’ main villain and a visionary — we’re all living in his vision.
When writing the X-Men villain Apocalypse (who hails from ancient Egypt), comic scribe Jonathan Hickman said he came to understand the villain by trying to look at things through Apocalypse’s ancient eyes. When you’re older than modern civilization, and have witnessed nation after nation fall, you see the world in a very different way and morality as we hold to it fades away.
The same can be said of Vandal Savage in “Young Justice.” He doesn’t think in terms of days, weeks or years like we do, but in centuries. He understands better than anyone how everyone (else) dies, so, of course he’s a utilitarian. He’s seen thousands upon thousands of his own children grow old and perish — how could individual lives hold value to him after that? With 49,600 years of experience to compare the enlightenment period against, democracy probably seems like a fad to him, a bump on the road for his plan for “Earth [to] take its rightful place at the center of the cosmos.”
In the recent “Invincible” season 3 episode, “You Were My Hero,” Mark travels to a distant future where the Immortal is the tyrannical king of the world — and wants nothing more than to die. His heart stayed purer than Savage for a long, long time, but in the end, the Immortal might succumb to the same apathy as his inspiration.
“Invincible” is streaming on Prime Video.
