Spoilering it just to err on the side of caution.
For all the digital ink that’s been spilled comparing Invincible and The Boys (subject matter, gore, characters etc.) I think there’s a key difference that the most recent episode highlighted.
We see humans in a universe of supes and we see a lot more of the human side of supes, especially Robot and Dupli-kate. They are both grappling with their own humanity in separate ways, with Robot >!learning about life in a new body!<, and dupli kate elaborating on what having multiple bodies feels like. Whereas in The Boys, you don’t have much of an “am I still human?” Question from a typical supe who learned about what compound v was, though kimiko does have something of an identity crisis in s3. Even supervillains like the mauler twins get that ship of theseus question as part of their identity.
In essence, there’s a human factor in Invincible that differentiates it from The Boys.
Invincible is TRULY the closest depiction of Superheroes in real life, much closer than The Boys.
Like don’t get me wrong, I love the show, but a lot of people claim it’s the most realistic depiction of people with powers and what they’d really be like. I mean like yeah, the physical consequences are fairly realistic to an extent, but they forget that Vought is the reason so many of the Supes are downright awful.
Every Supe is raised in a specific, toxic culture that spoils them and by the time they graduate college and enter Vought professions, it barley takes anything to corrupt them. Invincible on the other hand keeps the tradition of people getting powers through various means and coming into the hero life their own way. It’s much more realistic and honest.
I disagree. I think what makes The Boys tv show better than the comics is, unfortunately, this is how super powered beings would probably act and be treated in real life: They’d basically replace athletes and celebrities. Their public images are built up to make us think they’re amazing physically meaning they’re also morally superior. When in actuality, they use all of that for personal gains in ways we would never believe until it’s exposed…if you think that’s being too cynical, let me remind you of how Tiger Woods was covered before his private life got exposed compared to what we found out after he crashed his car while his wife chased him down the driveway. And obviously, not ALL of them are secretly freaks or assholes behind closed doors (Starlight). But I think it’s an interesting way to see how they would be in the real world; even something like assigning certain heroes to cities due to polling of demographics and such. Invincible is more of a Marvel superhero told in more modern times as opposed to being thought up in the 1960’s - a hero that isn’t perfect, has real life problems that conflict with his dual identity, and identifies more with being Mark than his superhero identity.