Note that C23 will include a variant of incbin spelled #embed: Semantically, the preprocessor will insert a list of integers which you can use to initialize an array.
Also, for clarity, it is fully expected that the compiler will use the as-if rule to optimize it. Most likely by having a dedicated token/ast node that only decomposes to comma separated values if if actually needs to, with common usage in initalizers being handled by simply copying the data directly into a static data segment without ever creating an integer list at all.