In its first issue, Invincible Universe spent a lot of time establishing the status quo, explaining back stories and shoring up characters. With all that out of the way issue two is almost all action. Here’s the official description from Image:

Cecil Steadman’s bargain with Mr. Liu has taken a turn for the worst – and now the greatest heroes of the Invincible Universe must defeat the dragon unleashed! But who will pay the cost for Cecil’s choice?

Phil Hester‘s story moves really quickly. A huge group of heroes, including Invincible, fight the Ghost Dragon while Robot tries to repair Liu’s body. All that takes up most of the issue, and the fight ends rather abruptly. There is one emotional interlude with Kid Thor and Knockout, but we don’t get any payoff from that yet. The real meat of the issue comes at the very end, when things take an extremely dark turn, tying in more strongly with story elements we saw last issue. This tonal change is pretty extreme for the reader, but the events behind it are also the most interesting aspect of the issue by far, giving us more insight than ever into Cecil Stedman.

The somewhat cartoonish quality of Todd Nauck‘s artwork is a great match for the run-of-the-mill, not too serious fight in the first 75% of the issue. However, when the story does get serious toward the end, that quality makes the change all the more jarring. From a strictly technical standpoint, the pencils are excellent, with Nauck particularly excelling at drawing large groups of characters. The inks, however, which he also handles, are a bit light. This results in a lack of contrast and leaves many pages looking flat.

It’s odd and vaguely disorienting to see such a drastic change in tone partway through a second issue like this, and it leaves me wondering about the attitude of the series going forward. Was this a temporary fluke, or will Invincible Universe be this serious from now on? Or, a third possibility, will we see a finer balance struck between the fun and grim elements?

3/5