Invincible EP Simon Racioppa On Adapting The Series For Animation, The Importance Of Debbie, And Mark’s Enduring Growth

Invincible‘s second season pushes the series further than ever, expending on the internal drama and character complexities while pushing the action to a massive new stage. Even beyond Mark’s growth across the course of the second season, Invincible has afforded a lot of great depth to heroes like Rex Splode, former villains like Omni-Man and supporting players like Debbie.

During an interview with That Hashtag Show, Invincible Executive Producer Simon Racioppa discussed the biggest surprises he discovered producing the show, how he and the rest of the team approach adapting the long-running comic series, and which characters could justify their own solo stories.

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Translating Comics To Animation

THS: The series obviously makes some deliberate changes and tweaks to the source material. How do you and the rest of the team decide on what to change for the animated series?

Simon Racioppa: Robert and I sit down every season and we sort of talk about the season. We’re like, ‘Okay, where do we want to start?’ Usually, we know where we’re starting. Then it’s about where does it feel like an organic place for the season to end? Thankfully in the comics, there’s usually some big events and big climaxes. Some places just feels like a natural place to end the season. Although sometimes we’re like, ‘Oh, maybe we can go a couple issues further, maybe go back a couple issues.’ Game of Thrones was famous for having their big climaxes in the second last episode, the penultimate episode of the season. We talked about doing that, we talked about just having a big climax at the end.

So, we have the start and the end of every season. Then we go through the comic and we talk about storylines, the characters, the big events of that season. where they could fall in our eighth episode run for each season. Then there are places where [we expand on the comics]. A great example would be Titan in the first season. In the comics, his storyline is, I think, three pages. It’s pretty small. Robert runs through it at a fast pace. It’s still exciting and big, but it’s pretty tight. So that was a character where we were like, we could probably pull them out and do a lot more with them. What is the story that’s not in the comics, between the panels? What’s his backstory? Does he have kids? Does he have a wife? Why is he doing this? Why was he working for Machine Head in the first place? What does he want? What are his goals?

We started talking about the character a bit more like that, and then we uncovered the idea that he has this whole story that we could tell that could be really compelling… That’s how we do it. We use the comics as a jumping-off point. Then we just talk about characters in life, who do we include, who we want to know more about, who we want to hear more about. Debbie’s a big example of that. Rex Splode too They’re great characters. We have time, we have eight hours to sort of tell the story. Let’s get a bit more time with Jason Mantzoukas. Let’s spend more time with Sandra Oh. Who doesn’t want to see more of Sandra Oh?

How Debbie Became More Important To Invincible

The Debbie stuff in Season 2, with her dealing with her guilt over her husband’s actions, that was incredibly heavy and very well done.

Think about it this way. Put yourself in her shoes. Even if Omni-Man wasn’t a killer, what’s it like to be the partner to a superhero? If you yourself don’t have power? It’s like the person who stays at home and has their own life but how do you match that with someone who’s going off and saving the world… while you do real estate, you know? So there has to be something compelling to them. I think that’s what we really wanted to get into. Why did she and Omni-Man work out? What is the core of that relationship? There must be something there, because otherwise they wouldn’t be married, they wouldn’t have a kid together. If you can’t make that interesting, then maybe the characters aren’t built the way they should be built.

Two seasons of Invincible in, which character would say has surprised you the most?

I mean, it really is Debbie. She’s obviously present through the whole comic series but she’s not as present in the first chunk of the books that we used for season one. So I feel like with season one and two, we really amped her up. We really showed her side of the story. We could have done even more, and we definitely did more than what is currently in the books. A huge part of all those story meetings we’ve had — there’s a lot of the book that is in [Robert’s] head, but not on the page. He has a lot of panels that never made it to the comic. And he’s like, “Oh, I always thought Debbie was doing this during this period.” And we’re like, ‘That’s great. Let’s put that in the show!’ Other times he’s like, ‘You know what? That’s a really good question. I hadn’t thought about that.’

Then we’re pitching ideas. Obviously he’s a huge part of this and a huge resource on Invincible. Debbie surprised me. In the writer’s room, we honestly looked at stories of partners of murderers, partners of people who committed crimes and they were unaware of that. The ramifications that we found, there’s a big part of the season where Debiie goes to a support group, and she kind of gets burned and blamed by another victim. That’s real. That happens to people, they’re told, “Why didn’t you know your husband or your wife was doing this?’ Sometimes they’re just as much victims. So all that stuff came into research for Debbie. We did a lot of research on Debbie to try and really make sure that that came out and held true.

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Omni-Man & Invincible

This season, we got to see a completely different take on Omni-Man than what we got before. What excited you about getting to play with the character in this new light?

I’m really happy with how it came across in the show. What he went through right after he left Earth, ho he went to some other planets and thought about committing suicide for a while, that was just my punishment for him. We tried to plant the seeds for this through season one. He is a loving dad, he really became that person. But he also has this mission to do and now he’s not sure who he is. I think when you see him come back, it’s those two things fighting within him.

That’s what makes him interesting. This was all part of his cover. Bone of this should matter. But yet it does matter. It matters deeply to him. That’s a conflict within him. Characters in conflict are inherently interesting characters. There’s a great quote that says nteresting characters are the ones who are on the edge of collapse. And he’s not out of it yet. There’s more places for him to go and to work out as he figures out who he really is.

We also get a lot of good growth for Invincible himself. How did you and the rest of the team approach his arc in season 2?

I think the one thing we sort of talked about in season one. I think a lot of other comic book adaptations don’t show you what happens after the big attack, after the showdown. What’s the trauma that comes out of that? What are the repercussions of that ?How long does a terrible event affect a character? We wanted to make sure that we did that. We do that as much as we can. Going forwards in the series that, Mark killing Angstrom, — in a sense, it’s the end of a journey. Season one is about Mark wanting to become a hero, wishing he could be like his dad. Season two is about him being terrified that he is going to become his father, that he is his father’s son and struggling with that.

That ends with him in this gray area. Is it a justifiable killing? Is there such a thing as a justifiable killing? That’s not for me to say, it’s for our audiences to consider. Mark goes through this and even Mark’s not sure. On one hand, he’s become his father. He’s murdered someone… and the effect of that act isn’t going away in that episode. We’ll follow that into season three.

If we do more beyond Season 3, that’s important to us. I think that an important thing that Robert sets up in the books is that things don’t go away. In some other comic books, characters go through these incredibly traumatic events. And then issues later, they never talked about it again. We don’t do that. This is one story. Mark carries this weight and all our other characters carry these weights with them. Rex almost dies in season two. That’s not over for him. That’s something that’s going to continue to reverberate for him and his character.

Looking Back (And Ahead)

In between Season 1 and Season 2, we got the Atom Eve special that explored her origins. Who else would you want to cast that kind of spotlight on in a solo story?

Oh, God, we could do it for most of our characters. Like, what’s Robot’s backstory? We know a little bit about it, bit what were his younger years like? That’s a mystery that’s not answered fully in comics or anything. Robert probably has panels in his brain about that. I’m sure he does. The Teen Team, before Mark arrives. We could do Rex. We could do 10 years of specials. I think just scratched the surface of some of these stories.

Looking back at two seasons of the series and with a third on the way, has surprised you the most about Invincible?

I think you need to be open to have accidents. The things that come up during the writing process and the production process, you need be open to those avenues. We got a whole lot of Debbie this season. We see the parallelism with Nolan. That’s not from the books. That came out of the writers room. That stuff was really delightful to find…. Debbie going into the support group meeting came out of research. That was something we only found out as we were getting into breaking stories. We were like, ‘yeah, let’s, let’s play that out. Let’s see where that goes. ‘

It’s this game. We do have eight hours, but we still only have eight hours. Everything has earned its spot in those eight hours of television. It’s always like, ‘This is pretty good. But is it worth spending seven minutes of our eight hour run-time? If not, even though we’ve written it, it comes out. You want to be open to that kind of flexibility.

Invincible is now streaming on Prime Video.

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