In a nutshell:
Omni-Man reveals the truth to Invincible.
Synopsis:
Omni-Man tells Mark the truth about Viltrum. It’s not a global peacekeeping committee, it’s a world-conquering committee. The Viltrumites go planet-to-planet, conquering by force when necessary. When the empire began to expand, Nolan was allowed to head to one world specifically and weaken it over the course of five hundred years for the empire. While saving the world from daily threats, he met Debbie and started to care for her. When Mark was born, he focused on raising Mark as a human and forgot about his real mission. When Mark started to develop powers, Nolan knew it would only be a matter of time before the truth came to light, so he killed the Guardians of the Globe to begin the process of weakening Earth’s defenses. With everything out in the open, Invincible openly defies his father, refusing to help him take over Earth. Invincible knows this means he’s going to have to fight his father.
Recurring imagery:
The imagery of Nolan giving Mark “the talk” is reused effectively for the reveal.
Allen the Alien’s race, the Unopans, are seen as one of the races being decimated by the Viltrumites.
I think this villain’s name is Gridlock (Kirkman and Ottley mention it in one of the later Ultimate Collections) and his deal is he transforms when he’s like stuck in traffic or something.
Unless I’m mistaken, this is our first Brit cameo as well.
Evil Mark foreshadowing:
Omni-Man mentions that while raising Mark, he considered taking Mark away from Debbie to raise him on his own as a Viltrumite. Though he doesn’t do this, we will eventually see many evil versions of Invincible throughout the series. No doubt some of them turned evil because Nolan followed through on this decision.
Review:
And here we go; the truth about Omni-Man and what the series has in store for us. This kind of shake-up is rare in comics because the characters are rooted in such a long publication history as to be familiar to fans. Peter Parker’s parents came back for a bit in the 90s, but then it turned out they were robots sent to torment him by an enemy. Things like that are what I’m used to, where nothing permanent stands.
This way of shaking up the status quo would come to be a series staple. The status quo is what holds most comics back, where things have to go back to the way they were before. Peter Parker is always unlucky, Batman will always win in the end, it’s that safe sensibility that constrains comics. This series doesn’t do that. Just when you get comfortable with how things are, just when you think this is a normal superhero comic (maybe even a “safe” one), the story changes the status quo. Everything you thought you knew was wrong. This is why the series catapulted, because it promised consequence and change.