In a nutshell:
Invincible and Omni-Man take on the Flaxans and find another teenager with a bomb implant.
Synopsis:
Mark has been Invincible for three months now and his dad praises him, later offering to team up with him on some rescues. Principal Winslow informs students that several of their own have gone missing. Invincible and Omni-Man fight an other-dimensional race called the Flaxans, and then find another teenager placed in a mall with a bomb implanted inside him. Omni-Man throws the teen into the air before he can detonate. Omni-Man is then captured by the Flaxans and taken to the Flaxan dimension.
Firsts:
First appearance of the Flaxans, an alien race from another dimension. They’ll return from time to time to plague the Invincible universe. Here, it’s established that they age rapidly when they enter our dimension, which they will try to counter in their coming apperances.
The Guardians of the Globe get a namedrop, as does Megaforce, who I’m not sure ever appears in the series.
Notes:
Eve shoots Mark down when he calls her attractive. Mark covers it up pretty quickly.
We hear from Mark that Nolan’s Earth job is as a semi-famous novelist.
Mark realizes the teenager turned into the latest bomb is one of the missing students from his school.
When Omni-Man is taken by the Flaxans, Mark shouts “Dad!” Overhearing this, the public will connect him to Omni-Man from now on.
Review:
This issue takes time for some action now that we’ve established the characters. We get a seemingly generic villain in the Flaxans, who will become a repeated threat as the series goes on. I doubt the creators had further plans for the Flaxans at the time, but they provide the obligatory action of the issue. The rest of the issue ties into the lingering “teen bombings” plot that has been building since last issue. I like this plot as a smaller-scale (compared to usual superhero action) threat for Mark to tackle as he comes into this own as a superhero. Something for him to deal with while Omni-Man and the Guardians tackle the big planet-threatening menaces. Between plots, we get some nice bonding between Invincible and Omni-Man, which is appreciated on the level of characterization, as well as setting us up for the eventual revelations to come regarding Omni-Man. I think we even see a hint of it in this issue, as Omni-Man angrily throws the Flaxan tank back into the portal and screams “Get off my planet!” Seems like he got a little more heated in the moment than called for, if you ask me…