Invincible has become one of the most popular animated series of the 2020s. The comic is the brainchild of comic book creator Robert Kirkman. Although Kirkman has worked for Marvel comics on titles like Ultimate X-Men, Ant-Man and Marvel Zombies, Kirkman is best known for the indie titles he has created over at Image Comics: The Walking Dead and Invincible. After Invincibles’ success, Kirkman is hoping to recreate that success with other comic book titles.
At a recent panel at ComicsPro 2026, Kirkman noted that Manga has overtaken American comic books in terms of market share for overall comic books sold for a long time. The most popular American comic book of 2025, Deadpool/Batman # 1, sold 500,000 copies, which is up from the usual 100,000 copies sold by the big two. However, issues of Batman and Superman sold 900,000 issues in 1966, with the American comic book industry far down from its past heights.
Meanwhile, manga has become a much stronger player in the market, with selling 1 million copies in 2025, and that was a weekly publication. Kirkman stated he believes a big part of that success is the “manga-to-anime pipeline’’, where manga creators have their works adapted into anime series, and these series make the manga more popular. Kirkman said the following at ComicsPro 2026:
“What I’m seeing with Invincible, and the way that the animated series is fueling the sales on the trades in the direct market is something that to me is signalling that there’s a potential to build something really exciting in this industry that will sustain us for years and years and years. Everybody talks about manga and how successful manga is, and the thing that makes manga so successful is the manga to anime pipeline. And with Invincible, we’re seeing that you can with American comics basically do the exact same thing.”
Kirkman notes that the success of the Invincible animated series has resulted in an increase in sales for the Invincible trade paperbacks:
“Invincible is an animated series that adapts the comic book very closely, and it is doing really well, and all of the streaming services are so excited about adult animation that they are rolling out entire divisions trying to do that. And I think that as more comic books are adapted in this way, because having done Invincible, comics being adapted into animation really is the most seamless transition, and I feel like the two mediums are just made for each other. And so I think that there is a future where we can have a comics to animation pipeline that will fuel this entire industry in a completely unprecedented way. And we’re already seeing the beginnings of it now.”
Unlike Marvel and DC Comics, Image Comics allows its creators to retain the rights to the characters they created. This allowed Kirkman to sell properties like Invincible and The Walking Dead to media companies on his own, without a middleman. Kirkman notes that the Invincible animated series is a pretty faithful adaptation of the comic series, with the changes to the source material being approved of by Kirkman.
Kirkman is not the only indie creator who has succeeded in turning his comic books into animated series. Brian Michael Bendis recently announced in March 2026 that his indie comic book series Powers is being made into an animated series at Netflix. This annoucement comes a decade after the live-action Powers series ended. It is easier to have a faithful adaptation of comics like Invincible and Powers, which are not several decades long and are not subject to constant retcons. The indie comic scene is the closest thing America has to the manga creators of Japan. An increase in adult animation in the streaming era could see a boom in these types of indie comic adaptations.
All 4 seasons of Invincible are currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
