Though many of us have become Invincible fans recently, thanks to the animated series that began on Prime Video in 2021, the comics are now 21 years old, having begun in 2003 and ended in 2018. Toys based on independent comics were more of a thing 21 years ago, so it’s unusual that it took until now to get action figures — but these are specifically based on the animated appearances, To affirm that, in case there was any doubt, a special Previews exclusive Invincible figure came packed with Volume 1 of the comics. Indeed, those who only know the cartoon might be surprised that the characters have more of a manga look on the page. The animated series plainly has a cartoonized appearance, but the characters’ proportions remain reasonable and not obvious caricatures, except when specifically relevant to the plot.
Brought to Life
Diamond Select sent us several of the figures for review, including the Previews exclusive Invincible, Atom Eve, Omni-Man, Dupli-Kate, Robot, and Monster Girl. As 3D renditions of the characters in the 2D show, they’re as good as anyone could hope for. There are, however, a couple of issues in the execution.
To keep the cartoon sculpt mostly uninterrupted, the figures have less articulation than some, but enough to get decent poses. The majority include a barbell neck joint, ball mid-torso, disc-and-pin shoulders/wrists/ankles, upper bicep cuts, thigh cuts, and hinge knees/elbows. The female figures have ball-jointed hips, while the males use hinge-and-cut pseudo ball joints. The exceptions are Monster Girl’s monster, who also has a cut waist joint, and Monster Girl herself, Amanda, whose joints are limited to a ball neck, cut waist, and disc-pin shoulders. Shrinking Rae, who comes as a tiny mini-figure with Atom Eve, has no articulation.
Every figure save Rae comes with a hole in the back for the Diamond Select standard flight stand. Even Monster, to whom it’s less than useless at holding his weight. The one to watch for, though, is Omni-Man, If you even try to pull his cape up to get the regular stand in there, it may come off, with his head, and it’s not meant to. The capes are made from harder material than perhaps they ought, but Diamond Select does not care much for soft goods. Perhaps a softer plastic would be better for any future capes.
Size Matters
Instead, Omni-Man comes with a much smaller, slenderer stand that isn’t tall enough to really even hold him off the ground. For a character who flies, that’s a bit of a problem. He also includes an extra head (for angry and calmer looks), and bonus hands that include baseball-holding and catcher-glove.
Your best solution for flying displays with him, even if it’s a touch more visibly clunky, is to use a pincer stand like McFarlane’s and grab him from the front. Unless you’re one of those hobbyists who gets really sophisticated and hangs figures from wires.
Regardless, even though every figure has that hole, including Amanda/Monster Girl, not all come with the classic stand (which, I’m happy to say, doesn’t break like it used to on the Avatar: The Last Airbender figures). Robot, Dupli-Kate, and Atom Eve include it, while the Previews exclusive Invincible includes one with a special “20 years” logo on it. Not great for dioramas and group shots, but nice enough if you plan to display him by himself.
Diamond Diversity
Like the onscreen characters, these figures come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but for the most part are 1/10 scale, like most Diamond figures. The box containers resemble most other non-Marvel Diamond lines. Their art style is different enough that they don’t necessarily mix with other lines, but if you want to make them fit in with the Multiverse, they’re in scale to McFarlane DC figures and Diamond Select Marvel. Purists may want to wait for the in-development live-action movie, and its inevitable toys.
Now let’s look at them one by one, since they’re much more individual than a lot of other figure lines. Previews exclusive Invincible comes with the trade paperback, anniversary stand, and nothing else. No extra heads or hands, nor the baseball accessories the regular release did. Fair enough — he seems geared toward fans who might want just the one Invincible figure, and no more.
Robot has the second-least amount of extras — just bonus hands and the standard flight stand. His articulation breaks the sculpt the least, since it’s all canonical: Robot has joints where the figure also utilizes joints. So he’s arguably the most accurate in the bunch.
Eve; Of Construction
Atom Eve includes some pretty distinctive extras. In addition to the usual extra hands, she includes force-field hands, and force-field effects that can attach to her footpegs. As mentioned, she comes with a Shrinking Rae minifig. In order to get the flight stand to plug into her back, her cape is really only a “lower part,” so as not to get in the way of the hole — bot then her hair actually is in the way, so you have to make her look to the side or look down in flight-stand poses. This makes her look even more like M3GAN the robot, from the movie of the same name — if the figure doesn’t look quite as attractive as you remember from the show, it’s a good demonstration of how much the right talent adds to an animated portrayal. Gillian Jacobs’ voice is part of what’s so appealing.
Dupli-Kate has a lot going on, and Diamond sent us multiples so we could really show it off. Her arms and legs pull off, and in their place can go the bloody stump effects. She also comes packed with one each of a bonus “battle-damaged” leg and arm. Two heads come in each package, as well as a sticker sheet of numbers to replace the one on her chest, if you like (it’s also a sticker, though the circle around it is not).
She has extra hands like everyone else, but be careful — when I tried to pull one off, it broke in a different way than it was supposed to. Fortunately, there are plenty of replacements, but take it easy if the regular hands don’t come right out.
Stumps Don’t Share
The bloody stumps only work on Kate. Since Atom Eve’s left leg has a tendency to pop off, I tried one of the effects on here, and it didn’t want to easily fit, so I left it. Determined customizers could probably work with it, but I wanted these figures to go back to normal after the photoshoot, and left it.
Most thorough, out-of-package collectors will probably want at least two of Kate for her very different looks.
Monster is a huge chonk of a figure, for those who love them (and that’s most of us who buy toys). The Monster Girl 2-pack, if you can find it, can go for as low as $40, which was the same price as two individual figures in wave 1, though it’s gone up since to $21.50 and then $25 per figure. So in theory, barring scalper pricing, it’s a good deal. The three separate heads swap out easily, but I have not been able to pull out the hands, and I don’t want them to break. If you really want to swap them, use the hot water/hairdryer trick of heating them to soften them first. Amanda’s legs are all one piece, and in great heat, might warp over time, but she does have pegholes in her feet for regular stands.
Invincible…Incomplete?
Not included in this review are the previously released Allen the Alien, and the upcoming wave of Rex-Splode and Mauler Twin. But there’s a deep roster of characters to be done, and so long as the series keeps doing well, no reason to stop. Odd QC issues aside — can we get an Omni-Man redo with a softer cape, and maybe more bloodstains? — it’s a fun toy line that doesn’t adopt the sort of one-size-fits-all mentality so many superhero lines do these days. Long may it continue.
Many more images are below:
