I seem to be having a very bipolar reaction to Invincible lately. Issue #97 left a severely bad taste in my mouth with its exploration of Zandale's origin and the grotesque twist, and the meta-textual guffawing that followed. Issue #98 turned things around by tossing Zandale to the side and shifting focus to the conflict between a restored Mark Grayson and Diosaurus. Sadly, issue #99 is another significant misstep for the series. It reads far too much like a placeholder Neil the real crux of "The Death of Everyone" next month.
Kirkman's recurring flaw with this series and certain others is a tendency to overwrite his dialogue. Characters can be overly talkative to an excessive degree. That problem has rarely been more pronounced than it is this month. Everyone from Mark to Robot to General Thragg is guilty of rambling on and on. It really kills the momentum of a story where countless lives are on the line.
This problem is compounded by the fact that Ryan Ottley delivers little but splash pages throughout the issue. It becomes tedious to cycle through one page after another without individual panels to shape the conversation and provide a little visual diversity. Mind you, Ottley's pages look terrific individually, but there needs to be more variety. Comics are a sequential art form, and there's precious little of that on display here.
In a series rocked by over-powered villains and dramatic plot twists every few months, Kirkman has managed to deliver a conflict with proper dramatic weight leading up to issue #100. Unfortunately, this penultimate issue derails the momentum established last month thanks to some terribly uneconomical dialogue and poor storytelling choices. Hopefully we can expect more from the finale chapter.
Jesse is a writer for various IGN channels. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.
Source : ign[dot]com
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