r/Invincible • u/ManyMention6930 Battle Beast • Apr 02 '24
Is Mark Korean-American in the comics as well? DISCUSSION
I thought his race/ethnicity was something present in the comics but I’ve been reading through them and have found no mention of it so far
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u/incredibleamadeuscho Robot Apr 02 '24
No. Kirkman talked about the change in 2021:
Kirkman: I think representation matters -- not to get on a soapbox or anything -- especially in the world of superheroes. You don't start getting non-white superheroes regularly until the '70s and, even then, through the '80s, '90s and 2000s, they're still somewhat rare. There's not a lot of these characters, to this day, that are different races. Anytime something can be changed to bring more representation into it, I think it's very important because there's a tremendous amount of people out there who don't see themselves in what they consume. But it's also very important because there's an audience hungry for this stuff; it actually benefits projects.
So aside from being the right thing to do, it actually helps projects these days, which is a really great thing. And in the Invincible comic, there is at no point in the comic book series where we say Invincible is white; his race is, more or less, ambiguous. There's nothing about his race that is essential to that character, his race could literally be anything. I think because we were in that position, we decided it'd be a responsible thing to do, and a really cool thing to do, and do something with his race that was interesting in the animated series, and that's why we decided to go down that road.