Invincible War

Billed by its architect as Humanity's Fresh Start, the Invincible War pits every superpowered defender and armed force on Earth against a horde of malevolent Invincible variants drawn from parallel realities. The whole assault is orchestrated by Angstrom Levy, who survives an earlier defeat and dedicates himself to ruining Mark's heroic legacy. Over roughly three days the fighting engulfs cities on every continent, leaving devastation that dwarfs Chicago's destruction and the Flaxan invasions combined.

Angstrom's grudge traces back to a failed scheme that left him crippled and stranded in a wasteland. Barely alive, he opens a portal to the enigmatic Technicians, who rebuild him and enable a new campaign of revenge. For months he spies on the Graysons through orbital drones, one of which Mark catches only to see it self-destruct. Unable to trace the culprit, Mark wrongly suspects Cecil, while Angstrom quietly gathers at least eighteen vicious counterparts of Invincible, most lured by promises of new worlds to conquer.

On the first day, Angstrom opens his portals and looses the variants worldwide to spread as much terror as possible. Movincihawk levels Peyton Penitentiary, Stripevincible crushes British Knight outside Buckingham Palace, Prisonincible strikes Moscow, Viltrumincible battles Wolf-Man in New York, Capevincible clashes with Best Tiger in Hong Kong, and Mustachible duels Tech Jacket in the upper atmosphere. The true Invincible reaches Peyton and beats Movincihawk, only to be attacked by Knockout, Kid Thor, and Bolt, who mistake him for an enemy. At the Pentagon, ReAnimen tear apart Flaxancible while Cecil, injured and short on countermeasures, orders every available hero into the field.

The second day widens the carnage as Brit funnels reinforcements through transporters. Kid Omni-Man tangles with Capvincible and gets help from Throwbolt and Bug-Eye. Mark and Eve fight Hoodvincible and Omnivincible together until Omnivincible shatters Eve's leg, and Cecil's ReAnimen buy them an escape; from then on Mark refuses to leave her side. In Egypt, Nogogglesible crashes into Ka-Hor's tomb and battles The Immortal. At the Guardians' headquarters, that same variant decapitates The Immortal and butchers Dupli-Kate's clones, until Darkwing II sacrifices himself by dragging Nogogglesible into the Shadow-Verse, and neither returns. Movincihawk comes to murder Debbie but finds her gone. At the Teen Team base, Gogglesvincible overpowers the young heroes; Rex Splode, cornered and wounded, detonates his own charged skeleton to kill the variant at the cost of his life.

By the third day the survivors, including Capevincible, Viltrumincible, Movincihawk, Nomaskible, Stripevincible, Prisonincible, Omnivincible, and Maskvincible, gather over the Grayson house for Angstrom's Phase 2. When they demand he honor his bargains and turn on him, Angstrom banishes the lot to the desolate Wasteland dimension. Cecil then teleports Mark in for a direct fight. Invincible dodges the drone swarm, closes on his foe, and grabs him just as a final drone distracts him, so that a snapping portal shears off Angstrom's arm instead of capturing him. Fleeing to the Technicians for treatment, Angstrom is refused and enslaved, told his broken world has no worth to them, which ends the war.

Major cities from Los Angeles and New York to Paris, Moscow, Tokyo, and Sydney lie in ruins, with casualties reaching into the hundreds of thousands. British Knight, Rex Splode, The Hunk, and Shrapnel are among the dead, while Atom Eve, Dupli-Kate, The Immortal, and others are gravely hurt. Darkwing II is listed missing after trapping himself in the Shadow-Verse. Feeling the fights have grown beyond them, The Immortal and Dupli-Kate marry and retire from heroics. Mark is crushed by guilt, aware that sparing Angstrom the first time invited the slaughter, and Powerplex openly blames him.

Cecil offers to make Invincible the new leader of the Guardians of the Globe, but Mark refuses, still distrustful of the director. His brief respite ends when Conquest arrives to gauge Earth's conquest, launching their brutal duel. After that fight, the heroes bury Rex Splode, honored as one of the few to have killed an evil Invincible, and Robot renames himself Rex Conners in tribute. In the months that follow, Invincible Inc. shifts to around-the-clock service with all earnings given to charity, while Mark works relentlessly to atone. The disaster also inspires the sociopathic scientist Dinosaurus to pick up where the variants left off in his own crusade to remake the world.