Why Invincible's Ethnicity Was 'Not Essential' In The Comics - So What Changed?

Fans of the "Invincible" comic will be well aware that there have been some significant changes to the Amazon Prime adaptation. While perhaps the most notable is that Omni-Man's (JK Simmons) vicious massacre of The Guardians of the Globe was moved up on the timeline, another notable addition comes in the change of Mark Grayson's (Steven Yeun) ethnicity and that of his mother Debbie (Sandra Oh).

While making changes to franchise characters for the sake of inclusivity is pretty standard practice, to hear it from "Invincible" creator Robert Kirkman, there's a good reason why it was so easy to make this change for the series' main character. "In the Invincible comic, there is at no point in the comic book series where we say Invincible is white; his race is, more or less, ambiguous," Kirkman told CBR.

"There's nothing about his race that is essential to that character; his race could literally be anything," Kirkman went on. "I think because we were in that position, we decided it'd be a responsible thing to do, and a really cool thing to do, and do something with his race that was interesting in the animated series, and that's why we decided to go down that road." 

With all of that in mind, Kirkman also said that he thought it was important to make the change and that he saw it as an asset that could help "Invincible" penetrate markets it might not otherwise reach.

"I think it's very important because there's a tremendous amount of people out there who don't see themselves in what they consume," Robert Kirkman said. "But it's also very important because there's an audience hungry for this stuff; it actually benefits projects. So aside from being the right thing to do, it actually helps projects these days, which is a really great thing."

As noted above, making changes for the sake of inclusivity is quite common in our current era. Still, it's nice to hear that Kirkman didn't approach it from a cynical or regressive point of view. Furthermore, as he suggested, there will be countless people of Asian origin who will see themselves in Debbie and Mark Grayson, and that is something that will only help the show continue to succeed.

"I think representation matters — not to get on a soapbox or anything — especially in the world of superheroes," Kirkman went on. "There's not a lot of these characters, to this day, that are different races." Though this is slowly changing, it's pretty easy to see where Kirkman is coming from here. Still, considering how inclusive his other TV projects like "The Walking Dead" and "Fear the Walking Dead" have been, it's probably safe to say that the "Invincible" creator will likely continue to make these changes and that more people than ever will feel seen as a result.