Invincible creator Robert Kirkman has revealed that turning male comic character Zack Thompson into a girl named Zoe for the Prime Video animated series was a deliberate act of self-correction — an acknowledgment that the comic book he and co-creator Cory Walker launched in 2002, when both were barely out of their teens, defaulted too heavily toward white male heroes.
Kirkman put it plainly: “One of the downsides of Invincible is Cory Walker and I were like 23 and 21 when we started that book, and your default when you’re not really paying attention is yourself. Every time we introduce another character, ‘Oh look! It’s another white male! Who knew?’ It’s just a shortcoming that we hadn’t quite noticed and done our due diligence to correct.”
The swap was not purely philosophical. In the comics, Zack Thompson is a high school student who bonds with an alien battle suit and becomes the Iron Man-esque superhero Tech Jacket — a character who actually predates Invincible himself, appearing in his own comic series a year before Mark Grayson’s 2003 debut. When it came time to fold the character into the animated show’s Viltrumite War arc, Kirkman found Zack narratively redundant. The character would have been too similar to Oliver and Mark — already occupying overlapping space in the story — leaving little for a male Tech Jacket to add.
Season 4 introduces Zoe, voiced by Zoey Deutch, with co-showrunner Simon Racioppa saying of casting her: “She came in and knew the character. She’s so professional and fun to work with, and she has a great sense of humor, because the character is fun. We could not be more delighted.” Kirkman himself credited Deutch with transforming the role: “The vibrancy of that character and the energy that she brings is so much more affecting coming from Zoey Deutch. She’s just a really, really cool character that we’re having a ton of fun with.”
LeVar Burton voices the AI inside Zoe’s suit, while Bobby Moynihan plays her father — a relationship Kirkman drew on from personal experience. “I tell my daughter not to curse, and it doesn’t work,” he laughed, pointing to a parallel moment in the show.
The gender swap is part of a broader pattern in the series. Green Ghost and Shrinking Rae are both male in the source material but female in the show, and both Mark and his mother Debbie carry Korean heritage to reflect actors Steven Yeun and Sandra Oh. Season 5 has already been renewed, with Kirkman hinting that Zoe’s story holds “exciting things” ahead — including a potential bond forming with Oliver.
