I just finished watching Invincible: Atom Eve, and I felt like talking about it. In short, I thought it was fantastic! In a world filled with superhero origin stories, this was the superhero origin story I didn’t know I needed.
Full disclosure, I’ve always liked the character of Atom Eve, both in the comics and the TV show, so I might be biased or at least already primed to like this one-shot. That said, I thought the animation was great (in keeping with the rest of the series), and the voice acting was spot on. It was a bit bittersweet to hear Lance Reddick again (I assume for the final time), but he was perfect in the role.
They did a brilliant job capturing the wonder, excitement, and heartbreak of Samantha’s story. I literally gasped in time with her when she discovered her power, and nearly shed a tear in disappointment with her over her family. It’s been a very long wait to get new Invincible, and Nov. 3 is still a long way away, but I thought this was a great reminder of what we’ve been waiting for.
What did everyone else think?
It’s entirely possible I’m missing/misunderstanding something, but I was frustrated by most of the fights in the special in relation to Samantha’s powers. I was under the impression her only limitations in atom manipulation were against people and animals. So why bother forming shields or blocking attacks when you could just directly change the gun/bullets or dangerous object into air or powder or something. Kill Cannon appears to be mostly mechanical – turn everything not flesh into sticky glue. The fight against her siblings they start fusing concrete and metal to attack with, turn that into jelly (I think she only did this once with the tire->parachute conversion). Same with cutting cars in half or dodging them, just directly transform them into something not dangerous. That’s just from a defensive standpoint, could argue the inverse as well; like can she play “the floor is lava” on enemies instead of throwing punches? Or convert oxygen to mustard gas in a targeted area etc.
I had the same reaction. The real life reason of course would be that the fight scenes wouldn’t last very long if she could just Doctor Manhattan her way through them.
I think that’s a fair criticism. I chalk it up to her being young and inexperienced at this point, and as a result thinking about being a superhero just like the ones that already exist. It didn’t bother me personally as I was watching, but fair point nonetheless.
For the young and experienced point: I was shocked how well she could fight. I thought the first fight against kill cannon would be the humbling “maybe I’m not ready” fight, but she fought like a god damn pro, ducking and dodging punches. Overall, I felt like she was way to good at fighting, though I guess that can be chalked up to her being created to be a weapon, so there could be some muscle memory implanted in her or some such.