The adult animated superhero series, Invincible, is currently in its second season, awaiting the second part of season 2 to premiere. Created by Robert Kirkman based on the comics by Kirkman himself, alongside Cory Walker and Ryan Ottley, the Amazon Prime series is getting rave reviews. The show stars J. K. Simmons, Sandra Oh, and of course, Steven Yeun in the lead role of Mark Grayson/Invincible.
Recently, creator Robert Kirkman talked about race bending the leading characters of his show and how important it is to have representation. Calling himself and his comic co-creators “dumb white guys,” he said that when they wrote the comics, they didn’t understand how much representation mattered, and why he decided to change things up in the series.
Robert Kirkman Talks About The Importance of Representation
Robert Kirkman, the man who co-wrote the comics on which the Amazon Prime show is based, is not one to shy away from owning up to his faults. Talking to TV Guide in 2023, he spoke about the lack of representation in the comics and why it was important to him that the show does not go the same route. Talking about this, Kirkman said,
“That’s something that’s been really important to us. We have to recognize that a couple of dumb white guys made this comic book in the early 2000s. And there was a real lack of diversity in that series.”
Their lack of awareness when they wrote the comics and how things have changed since, is a big reason that Kirkman decided to make changes to his lead characters. Mark Grayson, whose ethnicity was kept ambiguous in the comics, is a Korean-American in the series, being voiced by Steven Yeun. His mother, Debbie, who was white in the comics, is Korean in the series. And his girlfriend Amber is African-American instead of white, like in the comics.
While these changes might have upset a few people, looking at the bigger picture, Kirkman says that race-bending these characters has brought more positives than negatives. And while Mark’s ambiguous ethnicity was cheered by fans of different races who could all identify with him, making him belong to a certain race has given the character more stability.
Creator Reveals Reason Behind Mark Grayson’s Biracial Identity
It is not news that audiences belonging to diverse racial groups don’t always find themselves represented in arts and media. To change that, the creator decided to race-bend his leading characters so that more people could identify with the story. Talking to CBR, Kirkman said,
“I think representation matters – not to get on a soapbox or anything – especially in the world of superheroes. You don’t start getting non-white superheroes regularly until the ’70s and, even then, through the ’80s, ”90s, and 2000s, they’re still somewhat rare. There’s not a lot of these characters to this day, that are different races. Anytime something can be changed to bring more representation into it, I think it’s very important because there’s a tremendous amount of people out there who don’t see themselves in what they consume. But it’s also very important because there’s an audience hungry for this stuff; it actually benefits projects.”
He further added that race-bending the main superhero of the series, and making him not just half human and half Viltrumute, but also biracial has been beneficial to the series. And given that his race in the comics was never outrightly expressed or had any importance to the story as a whole, changing it did not make a difference to how things would progress in the series.
“Aside from being the right thing to do, it actually helps projects these days, which is a really great thing. And in the Invincible comic, there is at no point in the comic book series where we say Invincible is white; his race is, more or less, ambiguous. There’s nothing about his race that is essential to that character, his race could literally be anything. I think because we were in that position, we decided it’d be a responsible thing to do, and a really cool thing to do, and do something with his race that was interesting in the animated series, and that’s why we decided to go down that road.”
Invincible Season 2 Part 2, streaming on Amazon Prime from March 14.
