5 biggest differences between Invincible season 2 and the comics
2. Debbie’s… entire arc
One of the better changes this season is that Mark’s mother Debbie now has an arc. After Omni-Man is revealed to be a villain in the comics, Debbie basically goes on a bender for dozens of issues. She does make a connection with a woman named Claire Bono at this time, who is the wife of a superhero named Superpatriot. However, this friendship is short-lived and Claire only makes a handful of appearances. But the show is improving Debbie’s arc in interesting ways; she is doing a lot more than binge-drinking, although that’s part of how she copes at first.
On the show, Claire has been replaced by Olga, a character we were already familiar with and with whom Debbie already had an established relationship. Another new addition is Olga giving Debbie a card for a support group for the spouses of superheroes, where she means the husband of Green Ghost, one of several superheroed killed by Omni-Man. The scene between the two of worked well. This storyline adds a new layer to Debbie’s isolation in the wake of her husband killing thousands of people, beating their son near to death and then leaving Earth. Even in a place where she should be able to find solace, Omni-Man casts a shadow over her life.
In Episode 4, superhero tailor Art Rosenbaum sets Debbie on a new path of triumph by pointing out that Omni-Man was never really around all that much in the first place. Now that he’s gone for good, he contends that she never needed him at all. Now it’s simply official. He also tells her that Earth would likely be enslaved if she had not raised Mark to be a good person. Had she not given Mark such a stable home life, perhaps he would have joined Omni-Man in the Viltrumite takeover like we see in the alternate dimension at the beginning of the season.
This is all really good stuff and makes Debbie a significant component of the story moving forward. That’s not to say that the comic book version of Debbie was completely uninteresting; the show version just enhances her story and amplifies her importance in not only Mark’s life, but the larger story as a whole.