I loved Invincible season 1, but season 2 has meant something really special to me so far and I’d like to explain why.

Recently in my life some really bad things about my dad came to light and after a few months of chaos and pain he left my and my family’s lives. A lot of the experiences I went through, and what my family went through are uncanny to the feelings and emotions of Mark and Debbie in response to the whole Omni Man incident.

Mark was left with a lot of feelings, such as anger, confusion, sadness and grief for a whole variety of reasons, same as me. But the one fear he has above all others is that he might turn out like his father. He’s spent every moment actively working on not turning out like his dad. These are fears I’ve been struggling with too for the last year. People will tell me/Mark ‘you’re nothing like him, you won’t turn out like him’ but that doesn’t cure the fear in our heads. We feel the need to prove to the world that we are different, and if we slip up then maybe we ARE going to turn out like him. It’s a fear that keeps you awake at night, and it’s consumed both me and Mark for months.

Other things in Mark’s life, struggling to make time for different things, losing motivation for various things, a feeling of general numbness going about the day to day, coming home to a broken and scarred family home, I’ve felt them all myself the last few months.

Not only that, Debbie’s experiences seem to mirror my own Mom’s experiences too. People either pity her too much, almost to the point of infantalization, or they’ll go the other direction and imply some of the blame is on her (not as blatant as the ‘You should have known about him’ dickhead from the newest episode).

This is the first time I’ve felt so intimately connected to a TV show and it’s characters, I can almost predict how characters are feeling because I have been there too and it’s the same feelings I had. It also helps that my name is also Mark

TLDR I am Mark Grayson except without the superpowers or girlfriend and with a significantly lamer dad