MTV's Original Invincible Animated Series Is Impossible To Watch Today

"Invincible" is currently one of the biggest superhero shows, with the season 3 finale becoming one of the highest-rated episodes of television ever on IMDb. This is especially surprising considering that — as much as the narrative and the characters were praised from the beginning — the animation for the first season was heavily criticized as being stiff, wonky, and overall a huge letdown.

Still, the praise is deserved. The Wind Sun Sky Entertainment and Skybound Animation show is an adaptation of the Robert Kirkman, Cory Walker, and Ryan Ottley comic of the same name, and is unlike any superhero story in either TV or film. It follows teenager Mark Grayson as he grows into a proper superhero named Invincible and learns the consequences of being superstrong and powerful while he discovers the threat of an alien empire hellbent on conquering Earth. In many ways, the show is a "Spider-Man" cartoon — down to characters being riffs on Spider-Man foes — but with actual stakes and consequences. Punches delivered with super strength not only break bones but blow victims in half.

At the center of it is just a very effective coming-of-age story of a teenage boy finding his way in the world and trying to decide who he's going to be. As successful as the show is today, this is not the first time someone has tried to adapt "Invincible" to the screen. Famously, there's a live-action movie that's been in the works since 2017. But before even that, there already was an "Invincible" adaptation on TV. Specifically, MTV tried to do an adaptation way back in 2008, one that disappeared off the face of the Earth.

In 2008, MTV and Robert Kirkman made a motion comic (remember when those were all the rage?) that was going to be released in 36 parts. It featured a voice cast, sound effects, a score, the whole shebang. The cast included Patrick Cavanaugh as Mark aka Invincible, Pete Sepenuk as Nolan aka Omni-Man, Wendy Allyn as Atom Eve, Tom Ohmer as Cecil, among others.

Unfortunately, despite trailers still being available online (via The New York Times), the show is virtually unavailable. Or at least it was until netizens on the subreddit r/LostMedia got on the case and not only found evidence of the show's existence — it was once available to watch on iTunes, Xbox Live, and even Amazon's video player before Prime Video — they also just started posting entire full episodes of the motion comic on TikTok.

The 2008 "Invincible" is about what you'd expect. It's a motion comic, after all, meaning it is incredibly faithful as it is just panels from the comics accompanied by effects. If anything, it makes the new show look better because the writers knew to ignore the more problematic and dated parts of the comic — Mark's homophobia, for instance. Still, it's a cool bit of trivia and a time capsule for a time when motion comics were a big thing.