Robert Kirkman is an expert in seeing his creations take on new life. First with “The Walking Dead,” and now with the second season of his animated series “Invincible.” Based on his comic series, he developed and produced the television series that follows Mark Grayson (voiced by Steven Yeun), who, at 17 years old, discovers that his father, Omni-Man (J.K. Simmons), is the most powerful superhero on the planet. The series made quick work of establishing itself as a brutally violent story, playing with darker imagery than we’ve come to expect in the standard superhero show. Season one ended on a major cliffhanger that put Mark on a new path. 
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We spoke to Robert Kirkman about the challenges of bringing the show to life, casting Peter Cullen (known for voicing Optimus Prime in most of the “Transformers” franchise) in a major role (the founder and leader of the Coalition), and the necessity to keep things strange. 
Is there a storyline in season two that you’re most excited to explore?
I guess the overarching Angstrom Levy (Sterling K. Brown) story that encompasses the whole second season is probably the most exciting thing for me because it’s the first time Mark has his own villain and threat that’s unique to him. He’s not just living in Omni-Man’s shadow in that aspect of the story. I think that’s an important benchmark for the show by showing that he’s on his own now and has his own threats and his own world. 
You’ve mentioned before that the thematic core of season two is Mark not wanting to become his father. Is that something you could expand on?
There’s a never-ending barrage of conflicts and threats that are being thrown at him in season two. There’s a moment in the opening scene of the season where we see him kind of go to this place of rage, and it’s something that he recognizes in himself, and it’s something that absolutely horrifies him, the idea that he could be following in his father’s footsteps and falling into that trap of allowing his Viltrumites nature to come out if it actually exists. He has this thing in him that’s a complete unknown. I think that’s the terror that’s hanging over his head. 
Between seasons were there lessons you learned from season one that you brought into play in season two? Is it a gradual learning curve?
I think the main thing is that we took some risks and did some off-the-wall and oddball things in season one and didn’t really know if they would work. Season one was very well received, which made us push ourselves that much further in season two. So that’s why you’ll see things like weird title gags and odd after-credit sequences, and weird structure to the episodes. It’s just an anything-goes type of thing and we’ll see if people respond positively to that, and maybe we’ll get even weirder going forward. We’ll just have to see. 
That’s part of the core success of the series, the balancing of that darkness with the peculiarities of the story and the humor. In Episode 1 even the opening is wicked dark, so bleak, and yet Steven Yeun’s performance is so funny. Is it hard balancing those tones, or is it second nature to you?
I would quantify the show as a tonal oddity. It’s just like you said it can be depressing one minute and funny the next. I think that it’s something that’s present in a lot of my comic work and, to me, a reflection of life. On any given day, our lives can be a comedy movie or a really depressing drama, and it’s just something that we experience. People tend to try and keep to one tone with narrative fiction, and I think it’s kind of fun not to do that. It is a weird balance, and it makes almost no sense to other people. So it’s tough working on the show sometimes when a board artist will be like, “I added this funny moment because it’s a funny scene,” and I have to be like, “actually, no, it’s not a funny scene it’s got this funny joke but the whole scene is dark,” and then people are looking at me like I’m a crazy person. 
It is a really odd thing to try and accomplish. So far, it seems to be going ok. 
Aside from keeping that offbeat energy, were there any other major challenges in season two? I always think about the length of the episodes, which differs from other animated series that are typically 30 minutes at the most. 
The actual production of the show is an ongoing struggle because we are pushing the machinery to its breaking point very often, not just with our hour-long episodes but with the scope and scale of the hour-long episodes and the depth of our cast. We’re kind of pushing our overseas studios to their limit. That’s something that has contributed to the delays on the show. It’s something that’s definitely an ongoing struggle for every minute of the production. Our supervising director and art director are really working overtime to hold things together, but it’s really a Herculean effort to get this show across the finish line, and that doesn’t seem to change. 
Did you have any expectations following season one? How was the experience of fans finding the story for the first time versus long-time fans of the comic watching the show?
It came at a weird time, so I haven’t been to as many conventions and haven’t interacted with fans as much as I did previously because the show launched in the pandemic and it’s been slow in ramping things back up. There’s a funny thing where I see people who haven’t read the comic but have only watched the show and go, “I don’t know how you top the first season,” and “I don’t know where it goes from here” and having worked on the series for 16 years and done all the different things in the comics that’s kind of funny to me because it’s like “oh buddy you’ve got no clue what’s coming.” 
And that’s reassuring, too, because I love seeing an audience go, “Well, I don’t know how they can top the smallest thing they did in this series,” which is pretty neat. We didn’t know that the show would land. We didn’t know that a wider audience would appreciate the show. So just the simple fact that people seem to and are very excited about the second season — we expected a massive dip in engagement between seasons one and two because of that gap, and that hasn’t occurred. People have been asking constantly about season two, people keep talking about it, and new people continue to find it on Prime Video, so it’s been kind of amazing to see the response and see people respond to this oddball, crazy show we’re doing. 
Can you talk about casting season two, specifically Peter Cullen’s casting?
The casting process has always been crazy, and an every day is Christmas type of situation. I come in with our like, pie in the sky. I really want Peter Cullen to play Thaedus ideas, and sometimes those are impossible and sometimes they somehow work out. The Peter Cullen of it all was a shock that we were able to get him. Actually, working with him and watching the voice acting be done — just hearing his voice as Thaedus for the first time was such a moving, emotional moment for me. I’m so glad we’re doing it over Zoom and that the camera’s off so people can’t see me wiping tears out of my eyes and trying to act tough. It’s been an amazing journey, and I think because of Steven Yeun’s involvement and everyone wanting to work with him, that has led to our cast ballooning into the crazy proportions it’s gotten to now, and season two continues that growth. 
When it comes to Angstrom Levy I think Sterling K. Brown was the only actor that could’ve personified every aspect of that character. The multiverse aspect means we need somebody who can play many different versions of the character. But even just considering the one main version of Angstrom Levy we have, he goes from being one character to a complete character, and it’s a very sympathetic journey even though he’s so sinister and terrifying. There’s an infinite range of how we need him to portray that character and Sterling is exceptional. We feel really fortunate with who we’ve gotten. I’m of the opinion that it’s the best cast that any show has ever had, so it’s definitely exciting. 
You started working on the comic in your 20s; how is it getting to reinterpret something that you created a while ago and in a different format?
I look at it like it’s a second draft or a revision. I also didn’t have the hindsight of knowing exactly where the story was going when I wrote the comics, and now we get to come in and go oh, “well, I did this in issue 23, and I didn’t know I was also going to do this in issue 123 so now I know that I was building to that so I can build to that in different ways.” There haven’t been any major changes that have come from that, but there have been little things with lines of dialogue and things that I’ve been able to throw in that harken to our eventual ending place that I think is enhancing the story. 
I don’t really come in and go this, “Dumb 23-year-old wrote this, and it needs to be fixed.” Most of the time, I’m coming in and going, “I’m not this good anymore, what happened to me?” But it’s good being able to get in there to tweak and improve things and, in some cases, modernize things. I look back at the comic and see tube TVs and old cell phones and am like, “How old am I, my god.” It’s a terrifying experience all around. 
“Invincible” season two is available on Prime Video now, and the final episode airs Friday, November 24.