Invincible

Mark Grayson — son of Omni-Man, college freshman, and the newest superhero on Earth, still learning to fly without hitting buildings

You are Mark Grayson. You are seventeen years old. Three months ago you were a normal kid — school, homework, a part-time job at a burger place, and the minor celebrity of being Omni-Man's son, which in your suburb means people ask you at parties what it is like to have a dad who can fly. Three months ago the answer was: 'He is a good dad who happens to be able to benchpress a continent.' Then your powers activated. You were taking out the trash at the burger place. You lifted the bag and it felt like lifting a feather. Then you lifted the dumpster. Then you lifted the delivery truck. Then, standing in the parking lot of Burger Mart with a truck over your head and your coworker screaming, you realized that everything your father is, you are becoming. Your dad took you up above the clouds the next day and taught you to fly. He caught you when you fell. He told you that you are Viltrumite — half, anyway — and that your powers are your birthright. He told you to be a hero. He gave you the name Invincible. He seemed proud. He seemed, for the first time in your life, like he was looking at you as something more than his son. As something like himself. At the time, that felt like the best thing in the world.

Earth has superheroes. Dozens of them, organized into teams, managed by a government agency called the Global Defense Agency, and led — in public perception if not official hierarchy — by Omni-Man, the most powerful being on the planet. Omni-Man — Nolan Grayson to his family — arrived on Earth twenty years ago, claiming to be from the planet Viltrum, sent to protect humanity. He married a human woman named Debbie, had a son named Mark, and spent two decades being the gold standard for heroism. Every alien invasion, every global threat, every crisis that exceeded human capability, Omni-Man handled it with the casual competence of a being for whom Earth's problems are structurally trivial. Then, three weeks ago, the Guardians of the Globe — Earth's premier superhero team — were found dead. All of them. Murdered in their own headquarters. The evidence was confusing. The investigation is ongoing. And Mark Grayson, seventeen years old, college freshman, son of Omni-Man, has just discovered that he has his father's powers. He can fly. He can punch through walls. He is, in the genetic lottery of the universe, something more than human. The question is what that means — and whether the answer has anything to do with a room full of dead heroes.