How the Invincible Animated Series Will Debut the X-Men (or Maybe the Fantastic Four) to the MCU. Finally!

It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for.

The collective fandom decided weeks ago that the X-Men or the Fantastic Four have been cast by Kevin Feige already and have secretly recorded their cameos to be the huge revelation of one of Disney+’s television series.

After being expertly played by the cast of WandaVision and ignored by the cast of Falcon and the Winter Soldier (which is just further proof that they’re up to something, am I right?), many fans gave up hope.

Oh, no, don’t do that. This website has learned exclusively what Kevin Feige’s plans are to introduce the X-Men to the MCU, by playing a bank shot off another series on another streaming service in a completely different format.

Marvel Studios doesn’t kid around. When Marvel wants to surprise you, they go all out.

That’s why it’s so clear that the animated Invincible series that debuts on Amazon Prime this week will be the series to keep an eye out this spring for the debut of the all-new, all-different X-Men of the MCU.

Yup, that’s right. Let’s look at all the evidence that makes this revelation so obvious in hindsight that it’s shocking the rest of modern comics journalism hasn’t beaten this one man operation to it.

But, first! To keep up with the standards of modern comic book journalism, here’s an ad:

If you don’t see an ad above, congratulations! Your ad blocker is fully functional, but you’re killing quality independent journalism. Did I mention I have a Patreon?

Kevin Feige and Robert Kirkman: Master Long Game Players

I know what you’re thinking. “Augie, that makes no sense.”

Exactly! That’s what Kevin Feige wants you to think.

The truth can now be told: Feige concocted the Kirkman Manifesto years ago to set this up. Hell, he directed that video, which is why you’ve never seen him direct anything since, even though some would argue he’d have done a better job with “Age of Ultron.”

But it was all a long con, meant to lead you to believe that Kirkman and Marvel hated each other, just so Feige could have something in his back pocket to sneak in a decade or more later. The Walking Dead wasn’t super heroic enough to pull off such a trick. It had to be Invincible!

As a bonus, making it animated means production secrecy. Have you seen any pictures of big name Hollywood stars wearing long robes in the heat of the California summer to hide their new costumes? What more proof do you need?

These cameos were all recorded from the palatial estates of the stars, themselves.

It’s such a good operation that I don’t know who the actors and actresses are. We may not even get their names until the credits scroll shortly after the final blood bath of the series.

Just remember, when all seems lost and Invincible’s father is throwing the body parts of his enemies around, wait for the X-Men to show up to save the day. They’re just as colorful a cast of characters as those Kirkman, Cory Walker, and Ryan Ottley ever imagined.

And, c’mon, Atom Eve is just Jean Grey without the evil Phoenix powers, anyway. Professor X might be locked up in the basement of the FBI, helping out Cecil Stedman. Wolverine is just as bloodthirsty as Battle Beast. There’s a battle in the sewers we all want to see!

It’s the perfect fit, and nobody saw it coming.

Until now.

You couldn’t slip this one past us, Feige!

This is also a backdoor audition for Phase Four of the MCU. Every actor in the cast of the Invincible series has been on Feige’s wishlist for some time. A few of them are already in the MCU, and no doubt were added to the voice cast of the Invincible animated series to recruit their fellow actors.

I’d be surprised if that entire killer Invincible cast doesn’t all have three movie commitments to the MCU already.

Feige is so brilliant!

It kind of makes you wonder what else he has hidden under that baseball cap now, doesn’t it?

Oh, wait! He does have something!

The Big Reveal: The MCU’s Fifth Phase

I buried the lede.

Sources close to the situation — I think it’s Kevin Feige’s gardener — tell this site that negotiations between Kirkman and Feige are just wrapping up now for Phase Five.

We at PipelineComics.com — even though there’s only one of us, so it’s the Royal “We” — can exclusively reveal that Phase Five of the Marvel Universe will center on Marvel Zombies. (This news will remain an exclusive until every other comics website reports that I’m reporting it, several of which won’t even link back, the cads!)

Robert Kirkman will kick it off by writing the script adapting his own comic series as the first movie in the series. A small fortune will be made by whichever book publisher has licensed the rights to the original comic book series in the wake of the Direct Market’s implosion.

This will allow Marvel Studios to bring back all the original actors, twenty years later, to star in these movies again without needing extra makeup. They’ll all be looking naturally old and zombie-like by then.

This is also when we learn that the exercise programs these superhero actors go through to get ripped every two years have negative long term consequences that no amount of filler or Botox can fix. (If you bought that course from Chris Hemsworth’s trainer on Instagram, I have bad news for you…)

For this honor, Kirkman will be paid with a “Special Thanks” credit as well as a “Guy Who Love Zombies Too Much for His Own Career” credit right after the Gaffer but before the Production Babies. There might even be a mid-credits scene in there somewhere. The rumor I’m starting now has it that Kirkman turned down a cameo in the movie because he hates the make-up chair, but if Feige throws Robert Redford into the movie, all bets are off!

Programming note: This is where you’d usually have to click to go to a new page for the rest of the story so I could serve up even more ads to you. I’ll save you the click, but here’s an ad anyway:

Moving on…

Now, for the Small Print

It goes without saying, but this is the internet, so I have to spell it out:

This entire article is made up. There are no leakers. Nobody pruning Kevin Feige’s hedges is listening in through his home office windows. There is no plan yet for MCU Phase Five.

Or is there?

Mostly, I just wanted to make fun of every website’s desperate clickbait headline in which they know just how it is that the X-Men or the Fantastic Four are going to show up in the next episode of every Marvel television series. It ran rampant during WandaVision based on nothing credible, and continues already with Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

By the time She-Hulk comes around, these news articles will be written by Artificial Intelligence using Mad Libs-style templates.

Now, in order to fit this article into the style of website that you’d expect, I have to copy and paste two paragraphs of keyword-laden filler to (A) make the write-up longer because Google hates articles that are only two hundred words and (B) stuff it with search terms so I can trade Google Juice for Advertising CPM.

Those paragraphs are coming right after this ad break…

…because every advertising-based comics journalism site needs an ad after every third paragraph. I’ve been too generous in this parody so far.

Keyword Bingo

The Marvel Cinematic Universe, produced by Kevin Feige at Marvel Studios for Disney and Disney+ (now serving 100 million subscribers), is a series of more than two dozen movies featuring mostly characters created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. That list includes Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Ant-Man, the Wasp, the Avengers, the Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Nick Fury, SHIELD, the Helicarrier, not Deadpool yet but we do love Ryan Reynolds, Rocket Raccoon, Howard the Duck, and Loki.

“Black Widow,” starring Scarlett Johansson and that guy from Netflix’s “Stranger Things” will be the next movie eventually once the pandemic is over and they stop rescheduling it. It will build on backstory we learned in other movies that starred Robert Downey Jr., Chris Pratt, Chris Evans, that other Chris (Hemsworth), not the fourth Chris (yet), Natalie Portman, Samuel Jackson, Paul Rudd, Mark Ruffalo, Gwyneth Paltrow, Tom Holland (kind of), Brie Larsen, Benedict Cumberbatch, Chadwick Boseman, and Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen’s little sister who is also the best actress in the family.

INVINCIBLE is an adult animated superhero series that revolves around 17-year-old Mark Grayson, who’s just like every other guy his age — except his father is the most powerful superhero on the planet, Omni-Man. But as Mark develops powers of his own, he discovers his father’s legacy may not be as heroic as it seems. It debuts on Amazon Prime on March 26, 2021.

I should conclude this section with an autoplaying video ad around here, too. I can’t bring myself to push the joke that far. I have my limits. There will be another Google ad coming up soon enough…

We Want To Hear From You!

Every article needs to end in a question to promote our community, but mostly to encourage more screen refreshes and additional ad impressions, so:

Who would you cast to play the Fantastic Four, using only the cast of the Invincible series?

I don’t care about the answer. I just want your sweet, sweet hits.

Photo Credit: Kevin Feige photo comes from Gage Skidmore