Robert Kirkman has his Invincible comic series, a popular book which ran for 144 issues, headed to Amazon in animated form. Having also created The Walking Dead, this is not Kirkman’s first rodeo in adapating a well-known comic story to a new medium. This time around, the Invincible series is being brought to life by an impressively star-studded cast, including Walking Dead stars like Steven Yeun, Khary Payton, and Ross Marquand. Ahead of Invincible‘s release, Kirkman connected with ComicBook.com to discuss the upcoming series (and also offered some insight about the final season of The Walking Dead).
“I think that any time you are able to find a new audience for your story, I think that going from comics into television, it’s gonna reach more people, and I think that’s really exciting,” Kirkman says. “I think the most exciting aspect to me is that it’s gonna bring more people to the comic shops, which I think is really cool. So being able to do that again is a lot of fun. And I also just love being able to revisit Invincible again, I’ve missed it since we ended the comic book series, and now I’m getting to tell the story all over again, and get in there and muck it up, and really tweak things, and hopefully make it better.”
Invincible does an impressive job of following the comics, at least through the first three episodes which would provided to ComicBook.com for advanced viewing. As with most comic book titles, the adaptation does change a few details from the books, which Kirkman sees as an opportunity to try something new which might end up being better than the original effort.
“I look at it like a second draft,” Kirkman says. “I think the baseball sequence that we’ve already released is a really good example of that they play baseball in the comic book series, but they’re not talking about anything of note, the conversation that exists in the television show that I wrote, not only has, you know, really added level of performance if I could learn how to speak or added level of like what’s going on there. They’re talking about Invincible getting his superhero name but there’s also like little tweaks…I think that’s a really good example of how we’re able to take a scene that exists in the comic book and really plus it up in some cool ways.”
Invincible pulls together an impressive cast outside of The Walking Dead alum, as well. J.K. Simmons, Gillian Jacobs, Jason Mantzoukas, Zazie Beetz, and more are all a part of the series. Kirkman joked about how much better their voice work is than the voice that he heard in his head while writing these characters were.
“The voices in my head for these sucked so much,” he laughs. “It’s just the worst. I think back and I’m just like, ‘Wow, Allen the Alien sounded like what? That’s ridiculous.’ But, yeah, no, it’s great.. I had like some vague sense of what the characters are supposed to sound like, but I guess for the most part, it’s just some variation on my voice in my head, which you can imagine is not great. So, being able to learn about these characters that I feel like I’ve known so much about, like through these actors, and hear their portrayal it’s just spectacular. And I couldn’t be more happy with the cast. I mean, it is literally the best cast any television show has ever had in the history of anything.”
Watch our full interview with Kirkman in the video above. Are you hyped for Invincible? Share your thoughts in the comment section or send them my way on Instagram!
Invincible drops its first three episodes on Amazon on Friday.