The blank badge and everything that surrounds it: an Invisibles reread

oh no, i don't mean because it's batman; i mean because it fucking sucks!

my first look was "looks like the inker fucked up gulacy's work there" but nope

lol well, there's only so much an inker can do

Gulacy's generally fine; those look horribly rushed

I'm not certain that a lack of time is really the problem with Lady Perineum

Issue 4 then!

This is largely a victory lap? It's lovely to see and to read, but it's about death and death here is just change, it's life that's the difficult bit. Jack's visit to Barbelith makes more (any) sense later.

It's still great to see Dane as happy as he is at the start of the issue, though.

The collection does better with the blue mold joke - there's a page turn between "I don't really feel out of it at all" and "machinery under the fucking street clang clang clang"

But what the collection doesn't have, is the Vertigo trading card stuck bound between the cover and the paper! This one is Charles Vess, for the Books of Magic: Death and Destiny and Titania and Oberon.

Following the success of THE SANDMAN trading card set, SkyBox International is releasing a new series of DC VERTIGO trading cards featuring the strange, surreal and startlingly subversive stories and characters from titles such as Hellblazer, Books of Magic, The Sandman and Swamp Thing.

This premium, oversized card set will feature 42 unforgettable DC VERTIGO covers with story synopses, as well as 47 original fully-painted character portraits by top artists such as Jon J Muth, Duncan Fegredo and Jill THompson.

Adding to the DC VERTIGO trading card set's desirability is a series of 6 randomly inserted bonus cards. These special, foil-enhanced cards feature fully-painted portraits of John Constantine, Tim Hunter, The Sandman, Shade the Changing Man, Swamp Thing, and The Golden Age of Sandman.

And finally, there will be a very limited Death™ SkyDisk™, fourth in a series of SkyDiscs. Death isn't usually a bonus, but this one is. So look Death in the face when she arrives in December of 1994...

Somehow I missed this gyac thread. I've never read it, but will need to look into it.

I’m so sorry, i will post my summary of 4&5, and then 6&7 on Tuesday and then back to normal next Sunday!

Would you be open to bribery to keep it to just 4&5 this week? Is there a specific target of (counts on fingers) end of February for this?

There is not, but what do other people think?

Week 2: Vol 1, issue 3, Down and Out in Heaven and Hell, Part 2; issue 4, Down And Out In Heaven And Hell Part 3; issue 5, Arcadia, pt 1: Bloody Poetry...contd

Again, I'm really sorry for the delay in posting this. Work has been hectic all week. I will post 6-7 Tuesday, unless people are happy to delay as per Andrew's request above?

https://i.imgur.com/s3RFlFy.jpg

Dane is too full of joy to hear what Tom's telling him. It's so lovely to see him full of life and energy, and you know that this has been done to free him, that he needs to be at full strength.

"I see my life as one shape. I can see its edges and boundaries. So small it seems." Another line that sticks with me.

Going to hidetext the next bit, as it slides a bit into personal territory and is also rambling and self-indulgent:
https://i.imgur.com/CuC2G1p.png
When I first read this, back in late 2007, I was at a very bad time in my life - depressed, unemployed, living at home, sleeping most of the day. I felt like a shell of a person and that I had forgotten how to feel much of anything. I started reading this some night when I was up at 4am, unable to sleep, and this frame took the breath out of me. First, that I had grown so used to how bad I felt that I had started thinking there was nothing else, and second, for the truth about Irish. I hated learning Irish in school, where the language is taught as a dead thing, all structures and declensions, where there is no music or life or a sense of connection. To learn another language, as Morrison returns to later again and again, is to learn new ways of thinking as much as communicating. Reading this, a Scottish man talking about Irish as I had never considered it, floored me, and the observation of emotion being something upon us rather than something we are hit me too. I remember crying reading this, for the simple truth of it, and...I think I've gone on enough!

"Our language hypnotizes us and keeps us in little labelled boxes" - a recurring idea in the series. Of course Dane takes in none of this, being more preoccupied with crisps. Tom's right about smoky bacon btw.

The frame where Dane's joyous face is in the foreground, lit by the burning car, with Tom in the back intoning unheard is really special. "No more guns and bombs and struggle" - makes me think of his earlier cell. Is Tom watching Dane and thinking of them?

"I don't really feel out of it" - cut to Dane google-eyed and rambling, always hilarious, especially with Tom's deadpan followup. Like I said, he's funny.

Dane falling, falling, falling through space to meet and touch Barbelith for the first time is one of the trippiest sequences. I'm never quite clear on where any of this takes place, but I'm not sure the physical location is that important anyway?

Anyway, we're back to physical London, and the abandoned classroom. There is something sinister about this, I think, especially when you consider the Outer Church's desire to capture and use delinquent teenagers.

Robin is here! Now, a question regarding her makeup: I thought early reading this that the makeup was metaphorical (??) but then later when she does her face to look like Quimper, Fanny comments on it. But why does nobody we see her interact with ever comment on it???

Fanny looks very pop art in the frame where she's introducing herself.

"It's a man's life in the Invisible army. Think you can hack it?" - yeah this is just a straight reference to the army ads, isn't it? I don't think anyone is being implied to be trans...

Orlando is one of the biggest freaks in this series and the frame where he's offering the children ice cream is too gruesome for me to look at for very long.

The PM is obvs not Blair as I had thought, the grisly cabinet ritual described is...well, let's not wander into libel here.

King Mob trying to convince Dane to come with them - "your old life as a slave", "this door only opens once" - is obvious inspiration for the blue pill/red pill scene of The Matrix. Dane takes a lot less time to be convinced, though.

I thought Tom's words as he disappears into the tunnel were lyrics, but apparently not.

The soldier is about to say that "it's always Orwell" before he sees the grenade with its pin pulled. Smile!

Splitting this into two parts, brb...

Week 2: Vol 1, issue 5, Arcadia, pt 1: Bloody Poetry...end

https://i.imgur.com/nIY8b30.jpg

King Mob is watching Indonesian puppetry, wayang. "There is no war, only the dalang." This sets the scene for a character who will be introduced in this arc.

We start with Shelley and Byron, riding horses in the sunset as Shelley's poems are torn away by the wind.

I....don't actually know enough about either Byron or Shelley to comment on this, but Byron's brutal realism is extremely funny to me. "My verse sells to half-witted women and 'Byronic' young bloods, yours sells not at all."

Shelley is right about their words outliving them through the ages, though. Wonder how he'd feel if he knew how often Ozymandias has been invoked against every horror, real and imagined, in the past decade? And The Masque of Anarchy of course has been used time and time again, most recently and memorably by Corbyn in 2017.

Wiki also tells me:

It was recited by students at the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and by protesters in Tahrir Square during the Egyptian revolution of 2011.The phrase "like lions after slumber, in unvanquishable number" from the poem is used as a motto/slogan by the International Socialist Organization in their organ. The line "Ye are many-they are few" inspired the campaign slogan "We are many, they are few" used by protesters during the Poll tax riots of 1989–90 in the United Kingdom, and also inspired the title of the 2014 documentary film We Are Many, which focused on the global 15 February 2003 anti-war protests.

"Our words must draw the map of this new world, so that others may find their way there."

Back to modern Indonesia with King Mob, who's making a dedication to Ganesh. I'm so curious about King Mob's shortcuts!

Boy is training Dane to fight, and he's not enjoying it. Dane's tshirt is absolutely classic 90s!

Back in the past. Byron is bringing the HARSH REALITY of an asylum to crash into what he describes as Shelley's "airy ship of dreams". Of course later we'll meet yet another Invisible in an asylum in the past. Not sure anyone could have accused de Sade of being blind to reality.

Back in the present, Dane and Boy are talking music. He's trying to talk about gangsta rap but she prefers European techno. Dane says "I'm a fucking great dancer," which we later see is true (and how!).

Dane is still being homophobic about Fanny, sigh, but he grows up about this. 1994!

Boy being sanguine about the purpose of the Invisibles is a hint towards her motives and her difference from the other three. There's an allusion towards John-a-Dreams here too.

Ah, King Mob's shortcut is through the sun-bleached post-apocalyptic future, stupid of me to forget. So much horror only hinted at but as usual King Mob's being deadpan about it all. "I hear Berlin's nice now that they've rebuilt the wall."

The girl and the baby are, well I can't say anything here. Are they real?

Ah, this park scene is really horrible. I...don't like to look at it, sorry.

Invisibles dinner scene! Lol, I literally have read all this before and I only just got the humour of them choosing an Indonesian place when King Mob's just come from there. Also extremely here for King Mob just turning up for dinner in full nipple-ring crop top, belly-baring leather trousers glory. 1994!

I always find this great, ha:
https://i.imgur.com/OKFt5QZ.png

Back to the past with Byron and Shelley. I'm going to be honest, I have no idea what's going on here.

And now our Invisibles are in the past too, checking out the ever-fashionable guillotine! Til next time...

I loved that Tom bit in issue 3 about Irish Sadness as well.

just made it through the first 4, the whole journey with Old Tom had strong echoes of Jodorowsky's various vision quest comics like The Incal or Metabarons, although a bit less silly. Wondering if that will continue through the rest of the run or if we are now shifting gears with the introduction of The Invisibles proper. I'm finding the plot to be intriguing, but I'm more on the fence about the artwork, with the line work being a bit drab and ugly. The psychedelic flourishes are predictably my favorite parts.

The soldier is about to say that "it's always Orwell" before he sees the grenade with its pin pulled. Smile!

Hah, I think I'd assumed it's always a minute too late, but yours works great!

This is the first letter-column - the first entry is an anarchist being delighted about the idea of a comic book taking on Order, and quoting "an authoritarian by the name of Charles J Sperling" from the letter column of that - the second is from Charles J Sperling, who as far as I can tell just read everything and wrote letters in to them all. There's a plug from Morrison at the end of the column for a book 'inspired by the work of H.P. Lovecraft' which features Burroughs, Ballard, Morrison - and Alan Moore. Also, some of the copies of issue #1 that the writers are replying to are possibly sent out by the editorial team? There's one that starts "Dear Stuart and Julie,", and another that's just "Dear Mr. Moore,"!

Moodles, the artists change throughout the series, think Phil Jiminez and Jill Thompson come on soon & I much prefer their art.

#5 - Jill Thompson's on now! - I really like her art, one of the things is being able to go down to something cartoony without losing the essence - Dane at the end of page 17 for a start.

Dane's a joy to watch this episode as well - he's a newborn, sucking up all the knowledge he can from everywhere.

This issue had five different 'dehanced' covers, printed on what felt like brown paper, with different bits of the usual design missing and different slogans - I've got the "twentieth century" / "crash the bus" pictured above . This is kind of typical Morrison taking the piss out of the trading card mentality while also delivering something that might sell more issues. In fact, the sales fell off the fucking cliff - the market for superspies and mental magic in the present day outweighing that for the history of ideas.

On the inside cover, there's a "previously in Invisibles" bit which mentions Ragged Robin as "a witch whose abilities are fueled by disbelief" which... I don't think I knew until I read that just now? On the one hand it explains King Mob in #1 saying that her thinking the tarot is bullshit is why he asked her to read it, but on the other hand, she should know that?

Page 23 - I'm pretty sure that what we're supposed to take away from this is that the pope is Batman. Also the title page of this issue is a loose page!

Week 3: Vol 1, issue 6, Arcadia part II and issue 7, Arcadia part III

Sorry, sorry! Nobody actually said they minded me skipping a week so I guess it happened anyway. Issues 8-10 are this Sunday, and I should have posted these two Sunday just gone. One day I'll post without apologising for lateness (a quality I despise irl, ffs).

Anyway.

https://i.imgur.com/9b1E0xM.jpg
King Mob's comment about the past always kills me, especially when juxtaposed with Jack's shellshocked face. Also his comment about their contact's books - I have a bit to say on the one I did read later, but King Mob otm basically.

Anyway, our gang show up and scare the shit out of a local magician. We're back with Mary Shelley and the mysterious stranger is with us too. He offers Mary an apple, apple for the teacher, snake tempting Eve. Past is present and future.

I love Etienne. "Shit! Half the time I don't even know which side I started out on."

Jack is sick and King Mob gets distracted by a glimpsed cypherman in the eaves.

Ah back in 1995 London. Orlando's rampage is really grotesque and sadistic stuff.

Back in Les Innocents, our guys have realised they're in the shit too.

De Sade's first appearance, he's basically crude and unshockable, as you'd expect.

I have to admit the brief scenes with Mary Shelley and the mysterious stranger are my favourites in this issue though. The stranger says he's older than he looks, of course he's been in and out of this story and others so many times. He leaves Mary with a warning and without his name.

De Sade is horrified and curious and horrified by his own curiosity over the corpse with its entrails exposed. King Mob bursts in just in time and scatters the cyphermen with some style ("You heard me, Jiminy Cricket!") and then things go to shit rapidly as they realise Orlando's found them. KM, de Sade, and Boy end up at the setting for the Poussin painting, but Jack gets back and that's when it gets bad, very very fast.

https://i.imgur.com/iSo28uB.jpg
Ah fuck, this really is the 120 Days of Sodom one. I have to say, as someone who has read a lot of fucked up things in her life, that book absolutely horrified me like no other. You don't even get used to the horror or jaded by it, really, de Sade is very keen that you don't tune out so there's always a new atrocity to shock you. I remember reading this on the Tube and being really nervous the whole time in case someone read it over my shoulder - reader, I was 29. Anyway, KM in the previous issue is otm to say that people don't finish de Sade because you have to be really bloody-minded (or a sunk costs person) to persist with it. It does help, in some small way, if you're me and have read all sorts of filth/violence/etc...but not as much as you'd imagine?!

(I went and looked on my Goodreads and I had one status update which was "Shitting, so much shitting and blood.")

Orlando eats Jack's fingertip and Fanny comes to the rescue. You have to hand it to Fanny, she dresses stylishly but she fights to win and that's really what you need when you're up against the fucking fleshless.

Oh, we're back with Byron and Shelley. I have to admit lads, this part doesn't really do it for me this issue, so I'm going to move on.

I think.... that the various things depicted in 120 Days... might run into legal issues/with the censors, so I'm happy with the limited depictions they've kept it to here. Also lol at the Duke saying "I'll spend my fuck in due course." Has the Duke ever posted on ILTMI? But yeah, if you're going to draw sections of this book, you're best off focusing on the fiends' faces, as they do here.

King Mob saying that de Sade is just a dirty old fucker with no higher motivation is hilarious, especially as de Sade then confirms it. Also, KM's eyes cast up in resignation are hilariously drawn.

Robin is in Rennes-le-Chateau with the mystery traveller who's now the chessman, but she doesn't heed his warning.

Now, the judge intoning "guilty, all guilty" here is very interesting because it taps into an interesting argument that always goes on over such works, about whether one can read - or in De Sade's case, create them, without being implicated in deviance themselves. "You wanted it, what did you ever do to stop us?" says the fictional judge, delivering his verdict on you for reading this and you for writing it and the world continuing on. Or so I interpreted it.

Jack fucks up shooting Orlando, for which Fanny gets slashed across the chest.

Back in Rennes-le-Chateau, Robin is confronted by a bunch of cyphermen, who are gloating over the head of John the Baptist.

Story is picking up a bit of speed towards the end of this arc, think it really takes off once Jack goes it alone. I'll come back for 8,9 & 10 on Sunday (even if I'm still the only person reading).

I'm still into this!

I know we're not even done with "Arcadia" but I'm already kinda scratching my head about how this Sodom issue connects to the main arc, or why in general it is happening

1) I imagine they want to let you know what De Sade’s about, and KM/Boy/he need a way of passing time in the story
2) some of the themes of 120 Days are highly relevant to the wider text
3) maybe GM is like de Sade and a dirty fucker, lol

I mean, you could say the same (how does it connect / why is it happening) about Arcadia in general - taking a trip back in time / situating the current conflict in a historical war of ideas was important to Morrison but a big gamble (that he lost).

I think that’s debatable but I want to know more about why you think that.

There's some interviews with Jill Thompson in 'Anarchy for the Masses' - she said that she wanted Orlando's face to be an actual blur but she didn't put in a note for the inker so he just inked the scratched-up effect she was using for shorthand. Also that there was a lot of censorship of the Sodom issue - a lot of clothes had to be drawn on people, which she objected to when they were just being naked-as-in-powerless. Also the 36 "lost souls" rather than kids. She wonders a bit whether a male artist might have had more problems - the decision to not show any penetration was already hers.

I don't love some of the colouring of her work here - maybe just the first Orlando page in #6, which might've been a rush job.

The Byron and Shelley works on one level as an unsubtle reminder that 'regular people' die in the games of the powerful (as with Sodom, as with the Guillotines) but yeah it seems a bit off considering that she's just invented sci-fi.

Also, KM's eyes cast up in resignation are hilariously drawn.

"We just have to get through it. And try to see the funny side, I suppose"

The letters column for #7 has him defending Dane: He's only shallow because he's had to be in order to survive, but surely self-destructive, thoughtless, rude and offensive little yobs are every bit as deserving of information and illumination as anyone else. More so, perhaps. Surely you don't believe that "arcane knowledge" is the sole province of sensitive, well-brought up, middle-class boys with glasses and treasured copies of the Lord of the Rings, which is an odd description of Harry Potter, except this is 1995 and it's actually Tim Hunter.

I usually roll my eyes at "The barcode is a brand, man", but I do like that the brand on the cover of #7 has just imprinted the barcode.

xp which bit do you mean? Losing the gamble is entirely in terms of him hoping to bring as many people as possible from the big flashy spy stuff to the war of ideas - the sales tanked, from 64k to 20k.

Oh really? Obviously I was reading it in 2007 for the first time, so I was well removed from the contemporary context, but I liked it as part of the whole.

I like it too - I didn't make it at all clear above, but when I say that Sodom is as unnecessary to Arcadia as Arcadia is to the main book, I still think they're both good!

Week 4: Vol 1, issue 8, Arcadia part IV; issue 9, Arcadia part III and issue 10,

We're back in the room.

https://i.imgur.com/tqCFDpH.jpg

The head of John the Baptist is too fucking goofy to take seriously, isn't it? I realise Robin has seen a lifetime of mad shit, but seriously, how did she not burst out laughing? You'd turn your nose up at that in a pound shop, like.

The opening at the S&M club is amazing - the sort of ramble that veers into Invisiblism, then the cut to the dominatrix and KM looking on half-interested while de Sade is riveted.
"I have become immortal," he says, walking through the evidence. He strikes me throughout as very much a man out of time - but in the sense he was born into the wrong one and can only now produce work that fleshes out his ideas. That's the whole point of retrieving him from the past, isn't it?

"Thirty three and a third revolutions per minute," the stupid head says, and for some reason I see a royal blie flag studded with yellow stars.

Robin isn't scared of the Cyphermen at all, which tells you a lot more about Robin than it does the Cyphermen.

I love when KM and de Sade are in San Francisco and KM is shiting on about films and de Sade goes "You must forgive me for interrupting this fascinating discourse..." which is great cos I love the many little moments in this series when someone pops the balloon and brings us crashing back to earth.

In the windmill (poor Jolyon), Orlando is too busy toying with Jack to notice Fanny getting up behind him. I really liked the explanation of his face, btw, Andrew, I think the reality works out well cos it gives you the sense of an ever-shifting void.

Fanny being saved by her breastforms is both funny and reminds me of the Apocalipstick flashbacks; Mictlantecuhtli wonders the same as Orlando, but in the end it doesn't matter to either of them what Fanny is, it matters what she can do.

The smart drinks references are so early Invisibles and Of That Time, idgi but Robin's passion for them always amuses me.

This frame here is intriguing; the cypherman is like a devolved version of Mr Gelt from Harmony House; the angles, the words, the message. Robin looks ethereal in the reflection.

https://i.imgur.com/WoAcW8m.png
https://i.imgur.com/7qQ5zx0.png

In the past, Shelley is burying himself in grief and work. Byron comes along to be like "get over it lol" but Shelley says the future is the only thing keeping him going.

Fanny's channeling the old gods is great, and Jack thinking he's helping is fucking hilarious. Orlando fucks off and disappears into Mictlan, but the cut to the girls tripping right after is incredible work here.

King Mob and Boy say ttyl to de Sade, who's pulled despite bdeing an unwashed obese French aristocrat with no corporeal form from the past. Who says this series isn't inspirational?

Robin and the blind chessman are talking about glossolalia (speaking in gibberish, unformed language). "You don't look that old." Robin echoes Mary Shelley unknowingly.

Speaking of, she's casually brutal in her assessment of Shelley's suffering. "There's much to be said for hanging on a cross; Claire, you need not look down at the people weeping below. You can gaze instead at the sky." She's lost a child too, but she can't lose herself in suffering for her art. But Shelley finishes Lines Written among the Euganean Hills and, seeing her, emerges into wind-blown leaves to embrace her.

In the present, King Mob is trying to piece together how things went to shit so fast and Jack is freaking out.

The present, and de Sade is picking up a young man who's thinking, among other things, of lyrics from Blur's Girls and Boys, so that's one for the playlisy when I update it tomorrow.

I spent longer writing this than I thought, so I'l do 9 and 10 tomorrow. Sorry! I know noone cares, but still.

Week 4, Vol 1 contd; issue 9, 23: Things Fall Apart.

https://i.imgur.com/pSMAgVV.jpg
John-a-Dreams! King Mob with hair! I'd forgotten this came so early!

John's comfort with the horrors in the church basement was evidently something that copped KM onto something being not quite right about him, which is why he's disappeared into this 1992 flashback. I'm also interested in the fact that 1992 KM dressed far more simply and he looks almost plain next to John's silver bowlcut, cane, and pearls.

I really like the framing of this panel, like Jack is this silhouetted kid throwing a tantrum in the foreground, and Robin and Fanny are just being sanguine in the background.
https://i.imgur.com/4jfp1GY.png

As usual King Mob chooses the worst possible time to have a revelation. While he's piecing it together, Robin tells them about the squaddies en route. Fanny's comment about strategic withdrawal is great.

Boy's dead-eyed stare at Fanny suggesting they try to give the soldiers lung cancer is amazing.

"What's 'complacent' mean, sir?"

King Mob's reaction here KILLS me :D
https://i.imgur.com/PAiufT6.png

Issue ends with the Invisibles concluding Jack has survived and King Mob saying he needs to call Mister Six. YES!

Issue 10 is really grim and I'm not in the mood to do it tonight. Tomorrow!

What's up with the title glyph and 23?

I assume it's I Ching - though a quick Google suggests that's not actually 23?

could be a nod to the classic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_enigma

there are a handful of actual Illuminatus nods in the series iirc. very apt considering they both have a group attempting to immanetize the eschaton

Thank you for these, gyac (because I'm aware I'm mostly going to be commenting where I'm nitpicking)!

then the cut to the dominatrix and KM looking on half-interested while de Sade is riveted.

KM's probably heard a lot more of this, though - de Sade's more interested in what he can see.

I've only just now thought to look up Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, I knew he must have theoretically existed but I didn't realise he wrote Venus in Furs, as what the Velvet Underground song is named for.

"Thirty three and a third revolutions per minute," the stupid head says, and for some reason I see a royal blue flag studded with yellow stars.

Always glad to see you hewing closer to the Grand Project - it makes me think of the band fronted by Donal Lunny's son:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/59/Marxman_-_33_Revolutions_per_Minute.jpg

That's Donal Lunny's older son, not the one he had with Sinéad O'Connor, who I've only just heard about.

(It also reminds me of the benevolent racism of Jen prompting me to say "Thirty three and a third" whenever someone claims I don't have much of an Irish accent)

Is opening the bone door the first thing that Fanny really does? It's neat that they're generally being introduced as characters rather than powers.

Sade's practice while a ghost is interesting - I know a fair few people who are disabled in some way (mostly CFS) and the incidence of kink in them seems higher than otherwise - at least one has pointed out that it's a way of getting off that can adapt to great or lesser amounts of available effort.

I mean, it may just be that they're more open about admitting kink because they're perforce more open about things - finding it necessary to say "HEY can anyone come over and help me with this" can affect that.

There's not that much else to say about #9, a lot of it is an action scene themed around what the myrmidons would be more or less likely to expect from a scene.

I'm also interested in the fact that 1992 KM dressed far more simply and he looks almost plain next to John's silver bowlcut, cane, and pearls.

Between that and the hair he reminds me a little of Jolly Roger.

There's some direction in the panel where KM's saying "If it's not John then who is it? One of us?" and there's four in a circle and Robin, whose use thus far has been alerting them to attacks and surveillance.

Another great line: 'What are we looking for, darling? A little lump of smouldering charcoal that says "Fuck" every five minutes?' (except 'smoldering' because Vertigo)

I'm obviously curious as to whether 10 is Grim because of
*General insect/arachnid/scorpion phobia
*Depiction of exploitation of black working classes
*Oh God, GM's doing a 'voice'

The letters column of #9 contains both someone mentioning The Invisibles on Roseanne and someone writing in to complain that if it says "mature readers" why are they censoring the de Sade issue? GM basically tells him that it's the tradeoff that puts the comic in front of him - the bleeding edge isn't available in mainstream comics, and

Let's face it, even the best of the mainstream "mature" books are simply glorified super-hero comics. That's okay - I'm very fond of super-heroes and I like to see them done with a little wit and intelligence.

And then Stuart Moore pops in to defend the de Sade changes and make clear that Grant's views are not the management's :)

lol @ me and my continual failure to get these posts done on time

Week 4: Vol 1, issue 10, Season of Ghouls
So yeah, I've never really liked this issue! Jim Crow even just by himself is a lot, and the whole plot of this is wildly uncomfortable. Which it's meant to be, but it has always been difficult for me to linger on!

https://i.imgur.com/ZqVYSM5.jpg

So! Issue starts gruesomely with the reanimated brutally raping and murdering a girl who knows that they are dead. We see the scorpion emerge on ther tongue of the ringleader, a sigil that the series will return to again and again, but for now it's just an extra bit of grotesque.

The weird new crack going around - this is (I think?) a reference to the fact that the conspiracy theory about the CIA introducing crack into black communities was speculated on at the time, Gary Webb's Dark Alliance stories started publishing the following year. It's pretty on the nose for this though!

Skipping past the fucked up details of the crime and we're in the room with Lamerci,glimpsed with a tear running down her cheek in the scene before, summoning Papa Guedhe to find the killers. The picture of Jimi Hendrix on her tv reminds me of King Mob calling Lennon in the first issue.

Is this the first issue Chris Weston draws? His style is hyperdetailed and sharp, but God, if there was ever an issue where you'd want the art to be a bit more obscure...

So Jim Crow/Guedhe agrees to help, and now we're back with our beleaguered Good Copper Peebles. "These Creole people have traditions..." - haven't they ever seen a film? They're wasting their time being sceptical of the supernatural element!

Dollimore's a real creep and Weston's art is unsparing - he has cold blue eyes, an insincere smile, and he basically looks like the demon he is.

I think this is the first time we see one of Jim Crow's videos? I find it fascinating how both Jim and KM use their magic inventively, like Jim leaving his soul with his onscreen image so it can't be touched.

"I'm not me but I'm more me."

The crow is very interesting to me - it's a familiar, right?

I've always enjoyed the way he peels the puddle off - reminds me of magic mirror.

Dollimore is scum, scum! And I'm angry for Peebles all over again.

This dream city reminds me of the vision of London seen by Tom and Jack early on. The detail really works for it.
https://i.imgur.com/UWcb7TA.png

This whole sequence, especially with the talk of the fallen city and the whole vibe, reminds me a lot of Echo Bazaar/Fallen London, which I've played on and off for over a decade.
Now we see Jim do what we see Fanny and Jack do later - produce magic mirror.

Ugh, the boardroom. Where to even start with this?

"Your wife won't say a thing. I gave her to Stevens there, over six months ago. Surely you've noticed all the weird submissive stuff she's been doing in bed?" This just sort of didn't even sink in the first few times I read this because of the levels of fucked up this issue is, but yeah...

Anyway, the ghouls put their glasses on for a bit of their despicable doings. And we, thankfully, go back to Jim/Guedhe...

Ah, the zozo gun! To charge sex into death, iirc. You see Jim doing his whole thing in this early issue, but you only really learn more about him when he's teaming up with our Invisibles a bit later. A good thing about introducing him so early is his later interventions are all meaningful and pack a punch because you know exactly how powerful he is.

"Patterns in constant kaleidoscope motion."

Zaraguin is here, and again, this is helpful for later parts of the series.

The longer Jim stays there, the faster his horrific disguise fades. Zaraguin tells him King Mob has to pay, and Jim tells Zaraguin he's been tricked by the white men.

Back with Dollimore, Pearson and the rest. Pearson's horror at the feeling of inhabiting a dead body is grotesque (lol are they implying he's a necrophile or is it just the magic?)

They burst in on Lamerci and try to hurt her but thank fuck Jim/Guedhe is here. "Bring out your dead!" - lol this gives me the image of him and King Mob watching Python while off their faces and I love it.

The zozo gun makes short work of the lads, the crow follows, and we have one of my favourite moments of weird levity - "Mmm! I enjoy cake!"

Peebles and Landau are called back, Peebles barges in to see what's going on and, well, he sees.

That Peebles chooses not to shoot is sweet, but they portray his fear and paralysis over the sight - he wasn't going to shoot Dollimore to spare him. Of course, it's great that he's not put off his appetite by Zaraguin's table either.

Agree that the artwork was pretty outstanding for this issue, absolutely horrific. Surprisingly the style doesn't feel as dated as some of the other work in this series (still competent and good but definitely feels of its time)

Week 5: Vol 1, issue 11, Royal Monsters and issue 12, Best Man Fall. Doing 11 in this post & 12 after dinner
We have two standalones (ish???) one after the other, both great in their own way.

https://i.imgur.com/hugsCCd.jpg

The narration of Royal Monsters, well, it's obsequious, isn't it? Your man's a total coward, he knows what's going on, but anything for a quiet life, eh? I suppose you could make a point about the horrific circumstances in which ordinary people find themselves, but Best Man Fall does it better, I think, unflinching though it is.

"I suppose they could be anything" - it's clearly a human torso! He's deep in denial for the crimes he's complicit in.

The way he describes the hairs standing on the back of his neck and the beauty of the mirror as he begins the ritual should clue you in, if you weren't already. He likes being a part of this, and rationalises his own importance to validate what he's doing.

I find it really funny how he says he should "know his place" with his aristocratic employers, but he's imagining that the shoggoth and he have an understanding. Or more likely it's just what's behind his ability to do anything, no questions asked and that's why he's the only servant that will feed it.

Sir Miles! His chinless nephew Tarquin is clearly a family favour before he even tells you that.

We're back to them literally hunting the poor. I wonder how people read this in 1996. I know how I read it now.

When I read this, I had never heard of the Monster of Glamis, but instead I thought of Macbeth, and it's still the first thing I think of. All the dark energy around the castle, and that. I would never visit this place, lol. It's like playing with a ouija board, why do this to yourself?

Next couple of pages are the lads cracking into the port over casual discussion of the Archons infiltrating the monarchy - a tape of which is seen by Division X later - and your chinless wonder Tarquin ruining the carpet. So far, so basic.

"I can hardly remember when I wasn't a servant."

He feels sorry for the monster, but not the faceless torsos he feeds to it, or the poor people hunted by his owners.

The hunt scene has minimal dialogue and some beautiful colours, but not much to say otherwise. Sir Miles striking off the poor kid's head with a sickle is darkly funny.

https://i.imgur.com/lbtcOKK.png
class traitors and the banality of evil

The way Jeremy's face and attitude changes when he sees Kate. It's like the facade melts away and there's a human back there after all. Of course, if a fate like this is wrong for his daughter, it's wrong for anyone's daughter (or son). It is interesting the way he goes "I don't know what I'm doing here", and for a moment I usually wonder if Sir Miles has exerted some sort of control on him.

But no, the next scene puts paid to theory instantly. He really is a coward, and it really exposes the contempt with which the upper class view spineless toadies like him, while he's fooling himself that he's indispensable. Sad! Rare moment where Sir Miles is otm.

The Moonchild's hunt is horrific.

The old homeless man and his dog break my heart cos he looks so much like Tom!

"Hate and hurt corrode, Sutton. They made her ours long before she met us." - this echoes a point I was making in *cough* another thread, that alienation and loneliness and hatred create people that are easy pickings for the worst elements in society. The things people will do for a place to belong.

Despicable a character as I find Sutton, this scene in the woods is utterly horrendous, and Sir Miles absolutely delights in both showing him his place and the things the upper class will, and can, do to keep theirs.

Ending is predictable but you know what's going to happen as soon as you see the dish. He seems to have mostly disassociated, which is maybe a blessing?

Week 5, Volume 1, issue 12: Best Man Fall

https://i.imgur.com/lF2BK4X.jpg

This one cuts me to the bone. After the last issue, like an almost cartoonishly awful narrator, everything here hits and it hurts!

The flashbacks and forward as he dies are immensely powerful. Explosions on the battlefield segue into exploding fireworks, you could really imagine this issue being filmed.

Bobby losing his balloon is so tragic, because you know what comes later, and we should weep for a world that turns such innocence into the things it does. Bobby is sweet, and hopeful, and takes joy in childish things and life, aided immensely by his awful brother Stewie, beats it all out of him.

The segue between Bobby having his face slammed into the wall and Audrey facing us with a black eye hurts. Even though Stewie treated Bobby like shit his whole life, Bobby still loved him, and Stewie takes care to slam his face in the wall once more before expiring.

"Edith says to call him Boody" remains one of my favourite series callbacks, my God. Again, this is quite obvious stuff, the contrast between the innocent loving child and the man he became, but it's a cliché because it works.

The funeral scene is a thousand tragedies; the death of his mother; Audrey's bruises; the hint at him being the only one of the family present.

There is a lot to say and that has been said about the circle of violence and violence as a learned response. Setting that aside for a moment, I was glad when Bobby punched Stewie.

Without getting personal, I recognise the scene of Bobby trying to feign sleep while his parents fight & it's dead on.

https://i.imgur.com/ng2jCin.png
I think about these panels all the time.

The interweaving of memories is really startling at this point - memories of burying his dog, memories of Jess, memories of childhood hope and fear.

Unlike our hero in the previous issue, Bobby has some qualms about his work.
https://i.imgur.com/TK4GXik.png

The Outer Church can't do their work without help, and that extends to bought-in muscle like Bobby, but there is buying into it enthusiastically, as his colleague does, and feeling unease about what is asked of you. Morally this is a very interesting issue; although Bobby has doubts and fears and this horrific upbringing that has shaped him, he has still done violence to Audrey and many, many others, and if the effect is the same, does the conscience matter?

I think it does, but it doesn't wipe the slate clean by a long shot.

Of course Bobby himself is killed early on by KM, in a scene where we're cheering for that outcome, so this one is all about asking you the uncomfortable questions.

In an issue of such ugliness, bleakness, and violence, the beauty of their two pages on holiday always gets me.
https://i.imgur.com/w7cVORl.png

Not much else to say. Surely the strongest standalone issue in the whole series.

Next week: 13 and 14.

Had to go back and re-read it a few times as I was going through to understand who was Bobby and who everyone else was. Gutsy storytelling. Excellent issue (as was the previous one-shot). Glad to hear that you concur it's some of the strongest work in the series

Is opening the bone door the first thing that Fanny really does? It's neat that they're generally being introduced as characters rather than powers.

10!

Is this the first issue Chris Weston draws?

Yep. Chris Weston (whose grave Jim Crow is sitting on in the title page) is the first guest artist. I like him for the details, but for some reason I don't get on with his faces - they all seem a bit identikit - on page 6 the Nordau and Dollimore seem to just be facing different directions (with different hair colours)

one of my favourite moments of weird levity - "Mmm! I enjoy cake!"

It's also to an extent why he's there - she promised him a meal that he can use to recharge - which reminds me a bit of On Stranger Tides, where the voodoo requires replenishing by consuming Rum, Gunpowder and er I think Chocolate?

11!

It is interesting the way he goes "I don't know what I'm doing here", and for a moment I usually wonder if Sir Miles has exerted some sort of control on him.

Yeah, I agree that we're supposed to be faked out a little by this, and the idea that he's coming to his senses. It's also filling in a bit the talk about agents who don't know who's who - he's largely forgotten not the who but the why.

Also I owe Tuomas an apology - when I'd said that Dane barely talks to anyone who's not an Invisible in issue #2. I was forgetting the side that Kate was on.

I'd forgotten that Diana would still have been very alive when this issue came out! I'd also forgotten that the wheels were still coming off - the Annus Horribilis was 1992, but at least Charles and Andrew were still married. "The Royals are finished now" seemed pretty likely at the time, sadlol.

And yeah, a very vivid and pointed underlining of some of what had just been thrust upon Dane previously - control and despair are the goals in themselves. Good thing we're the good guys, then.

12!

God I love this issue, this is up there with The Coyote Gospel in terms of Morrison expanding the available frameworks of what the series deals with. It's not as "here's what the story is about" - except for

(from www.grant-morrison.com except I can't find it there so I'm searching on it on the internet based on reading it in a book)

"I believe THE INVISIBLES to be a work of great emotional depths, but I realise most people tend to concentrate first on the surface glamour of the book, which is fine and pretty much as intended. Go back and read it again, concentrating not on the clothes, but on King Mob’s attempt to get over the loss of his girlfriend and the death of his cats by turning himself into a pop god with a gun. Read it for Edith Manning’s guilt, humour and unstoppable enthusiasm or most importantly, read it for the invisible backstory of Audrey Murray, the book’s central character, and her refusal to let a shitty life turn her into a shitty person."

Anyway I love the proposal scene as well, and the callback to the balloon among the fireworks and the (only visible to Bobby?) bubbles when he hears Edith.

I've only ever seen Steve Parkhouse in his cartoonish art for Alan Morre's BoJeffries Saga, and he's fantastic here, partly because of the slight cartoonishness ("What did you say your name was?")

Which has got me thinking - one of the things about these three issues is that to start with, nothing much happens plotwise within #10 - someone dies, Jim Crow is called for, goes to talk to someone, and then triumphs twice. Most of the issue is GM presenting facts or ideas or come see this thing I made by jamming two things together. There's more twists and turns in #11, after some walking through about the cruelty and idiocy of the upper class. And #12 can swoop and dip like it does because it's assuming that everyone knows the territory completely, the fucked Scottish town, Thatcher and the Falklands, people in wreckage and wreckage in people.

It's good to do these three together - Morrison considered them a failed experiment up to a point, he's said he originally wanted to have these runs of shorts between things (I suppose a comparison is Sandman?) but after trying it he wanted to bring everything back to the five main characters and keep the focus on them. (apart from where he heads off again after the end of the next year)

Next week: 13 and 14.

― scampus milne (gyac), Sunday, 25 October 2020 21:02 (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

Week 6: Vol 1, issue 13, She-Man, Part One: Venus As a Boy and issue 14, Sheman, Part Two: Day of Nine Dogs.

https://i.imgur.com/a16NXEW.jpg

So, Fanny's backstory.

A word before we go on: Hilde/Fanny's identity has always been very difficult to define in a word: she dresses and presents as a woman, but sometimes also as a man, but generally prefers to be referred to as she afaict but sometimes is also referred to as he, sometimes in spite or error. I have always called Hilde/Fanny 'she', but that's not quite right as the dressing up scene shows. So I'll try to use the most appropriate pronouns in line with that.

Regarding the plot itself, if you have any thoughts on how I write about it, do share. There is a LOT going on in these issues so I'm bound to fuck up somewhere.

The butterfly imagery through these two issues is with us from the start and is your fairly classic symbolism: transformation, several cultures consider them to represent the soul, and of course they are representative of Hilde/Fanny's patron goddess Tlazōlteōtl.

This is actually the first time we see Fanny as Hilde.

What a line to sign off on.
https://i.imgur.com/I4RJR1z.png

Next we're in a shop called Transformation, and Hilde/Fanny is lookimg for some breast forms to replace the ones Orlando ruined.

Hilde/Fanny instantly clocks what the two homophobes are about, and protects the shopkeeper.

The next scene where Hilde/Fanny is getting ready to go out and her thoughts are all over the place, she thinks "Let her deal with it - wig - she can handle it."

The "her" is obviously Fanny the persona and all that comes with it.

I've always really enjoyed this juxtaposition:
https://i.imgur.com/vXjjtht.png

We meet Brodie talking to Sir Miles about a dream. Sir Miles is impatient and misses the obvious foreshadowing. You love to see it.

Lol at the "they'd lock you up for that nowadays". All the way from 1995!

First mention of Division X!

Now we're in a club. Someone mentions Kirby, who we meet slightly later in worse circumstances. Fanny doesn't feel well and goes to vomit up superfluid in the sink.

Cut to King Mob and Edith, who's unimpressed with King Mob's Harmony House adventure. You have to admit, right after Best Man Fall, that page feels a lot different.

Edith is her usual sharp self when KM asks her for help finding Jack. She accuses him of complacency, which is interesting considering what happens very shortly.

In the bathroom, Fanny is dreaming of Rio and her family. She was not meant to be her family's magical inheritance, but that's just how it turned out.
"I looked. I looked and it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen."

Fanny's mother was killed by a man in a papier-maché dog's mask during carnival - remember that for later. The Morales family is indigenous Mexican at least on the maternal side, Nahua I think as Fanny speaks Nahuatl, so the gods Fanny learns about from her grandmother are the old gods of the Aztecs.

I've always liked how evocative this panel is.
https://i.imgur.com/vDrR5So.png

The pages with Brodie and Kirby are really stark in contrast to the detailing of Teotihuacán on the previous page, it's like a jolt from the past to the future.

It's interesting that Brodie here, and Sir Miles later, both threaten to make their victims ugly.

For the first time, Edith explains a little to us about the structure of Invisibles cells. Earth still strikes me as the worst role, tbh!

Past is present is future as Fanny is chosen by Tlazōlteōtl and we're in London with Brodie entering the bathroom. And things are about to get very bad, very fast. Sidenote: Fanny is only 23!

The shade of Mictlāntēcutli in the mirror here is great, reminding us of Fanny's origins and the debt still to be paid.
https://i.imgur.com/Dlfe8mU.png

Last page is an amazing cliché, the phone ringing in the empty room, but yes! Division X are back!

https://i.imgur.com/LjS3PVd.jpg

An interesting foreshadowing of something a little later here: Tlazōlteōtl refers to the initiation of a sorcerer.

"I knew all the stories. I had known Tezcatlipoca all my life. I truly believed in Tezcatlipoca. I just didn't ever think he was real."

The Florentine Codex says this about Tezcatlipoca:

It was well into the night when the night axe rang out for a great distance. Much did it frighten people. This night axe was Tezcatlipoca making sport and fun of people.

In the present, Brodie is shocked by what Fanny has vomited into the sink. He starts seeing his own past. You get a sense of it when Fanny dispatches Orlando, but this is another hint as to how powerful Fanny is.

In Paris, King Mob is still with Edith, and there's some great detail of her life in the cloud of smoke she's exhaling:
https://i.imgur.com/jZ2jDKu.png
As she says later, her memoirs are extremely readable.

Fanny's memories are coming in flashes now, her meeting with Tezcatlipoca and her later life as a sex worker. She snatches the heart in the chest, and asks for the thing that will be more useful than anything else: to learn the secrets of magic from Mictlāntēcutli. Tezcatlipoca doesn't understand why Fanny isn't afraid.

The stripper Jack Flint is watching has makeup just like Fanny. "You've just been reactivated, my son."

The Boy and Ragged Robin ministrips are incredible! As is King Mob driving a conspiracy theorist who's just that bit off, as he listens and enjoys the talk.

Does Adult Fanny base her look on the woman glimpsed in the unseen land or is it a spectre of the future?

The dog calls Fanny "boygirl".

"Nothing like a biscuit to bring you back down to earth." - King Mob otm!

https://i.imgur.com/14pmyHh.png
Robin's squint at the card in the third panel is amazing.

Fanny speaks English, Spanish, Portugese and some Nahuatl.

In the past, Fanny is in Mictlan. In the present, King Mob's just missed her leaving with Brodie, and she's saying she's a witch.

"There is only one day. There is only ever one day, and it is today, the day of nine dogs, day of magicians, day of initiations."

We end on a cliffhanger that's more than a bit tasteless. But the story's not over yet.

Week 7: Vol 1, issue 15, Sheman, Part Three: Apocalipstick and issue 16, London.

https://i.imgur.com/APYw8cq.jpg

Present: Brodie has his gun in Fanny's mouth and is reporting in to Sir Miles. Past: Hilde clutches Mictlāntēcutli's leg and watches, saying "Is that me I see? God, I look like a tramp!"

Hilde wants to escape but Mictlāntēcutli says that's not possible. We see the star demons, including Orlando who we've seen before of course, and who scares Hilde, not knowing that Fanny has sent Orlando back there. Now Mictlāntēcutli tells Hilde to pay for Fanny's intervention but Hilde, being a child, has nothing.

Back and forth, back and forth we go. Now the party with the bloodstained men in the animal masks, now on her knees with Brodie. The man in the dog mask is supposed to be the one responsible for the death of Hilde's mother, right?

"High heels. Crap in a fight," Brodie says smugly and fuck it, can I just say?! He's right. Drives me mad when they're so prevalent in comic books. You would never.

Enter King Mob:
https://i.imgur.com/EDTPIM6.png

In the past, Hilde is staggering home after being hurt by the men in the masks. It's Carnival and "there are fireworks bursting overhead, like flowers. The night sky is a garden."

As Hilde crouches in pain on the bathroom floor, butterfly's wings are at the window, and in that moment, rebirth.

And in this moment of rebirth, John-a-Dreams steps out into the world to recruit the soon-to-be Lord Fanny.
https://i.imgur.com/V7H8HjL.png

I think Hilde/Fanny's sense of humour is one of her best characteristics, and it is key to helping her turn shit into gold.

King Mob and Brodie are fighting and it's brutal: broken furniture, King Mob's glasses smashed in his face, and plenty of wounds.

In Mictlan, Hilde has a (deeply tasteless joke) for Mictlāntēcutli. It's tasteless, but I enjoy Mictlāntēcutli's eyes shining in their sockets as he ponders it. The ensuing laugh is enough to leave.

While learning magic through blood, Hilde encounters another butterfly, Ītzpāpālōtl, but this time she's not afraid and then she's seeing Barbelith and images from the past and present sliding over each other. "And so, against the wishes of the others, she blows gently, and the membrane shivers."

Brodie gets a lucky break and shoots King Mob while Fanny is reviving. Fanny promises Brodie in her place, and the debt is paid, but not just yet. First Fanny comes at him with a shard of glass, slashing him right across the crotch, before collapsing. His old cat comes to see him off, and while Brodie almost-jokes about having been neutered, the fact that Darkie is able to spray on him indicates he never had been.

https://i.imgur.com/FrRfL0L.png

Hilde exults in the dawn sun as the butterfly departs and Grandma says "You'll make a fine sorcerer, as good as any woman."

Sir Miles, in the present, walks into the post-fight carnage and he's the only one happy with this scene, which is bad not good. Obviously.

https://i.imgur.com/EYx72uN.jpg
But before we go any further, we have some catching up to do with Jack, who's on the run in London. He's eating a stolen sandwich and he's passed by by Boy and Ragged Robin, who are, hilariously, complaining about the heat in London:
https://i.imgur.com/5tuWhkt.png

The way they walk past him without seeing or even sensing him makes me remember the time Tom hid him in plain sight from the cop, and makes me wonder if he was taught that particular trick. I'm guessing so cos Boy's face shows us that Robin should be looking straight at Jack.

Aw, he's feeding the pigeons!

The newsagent who Jack stole from can't see him on CCTV. Tom's magic is the best. But the shopkeeper clocks that he hasn't got the ordinary police. Except the police don't really know about Jack either.

Jack is walking around London and Tom keeps him company in his memory, as he touches the wet paint of Barbelith on a wall, and remembers that Tom gave him a locker key for when the time is right.

Now we see something of Jack's initiation. It's pretty trippy, as ypu'd expect, and the scene with the magic stone being put in Jack reminds me of Neo and the bug in the early part of the Matrix. Possibly one of the Wachowskis' many Invisibles references?

"Which side are you on?"

Dane is ripped back to reality by Sir Miles, who's trying to persuade him to join them. He fakes out Sir Miles with a handshake and runs. He gets the poshos pretty good, Sir Miles actually vomits.

As Jack runs from them, he's smiling in the way he did in the park with Tom after his rebirth. And he remembers what Tom tells him about not being afraid of who he is, to use it.

https://i.imgur.com/dVB3sNy.png

Needless to see, as per the news story in a previous issue, he wrecks the place. Then he fucks off but Sir Miles gets to him. Sir Miles tries it but you see here exactly how powerful Jack is, even new to his magic as he is:
https://i.imgur.com/M3LbX3F.png

The art in this issue is so visceral: Sir Miles's dead cold eyes, the rage in Jack's, the facial expressions.

"In the end, I've only one true teaching for you, Dane, one simple word: disobedience."

After that, Jack cuts his hair and heads north. I'll pick up Sunday with 17 & 18 and then we're bang up to date. I think I'm pretty much just writing these posts for myself now, but I enjoy doing it.

I think it's just 17 you're short, if it's 2-3-2-3-2-3-2 - thanks a lot for this, it'll give me a kick up the arse to catch up.

Yeah not that you’d guess but it takes me a bit of time to write these posts, so I thought two issues per week would be a more achievable pace for now, I can always do three if I feel like it.

That is a very fair point!

i found my copies of the last volume yesterday, the ones that count down 12 to 1. which is odd because i didn't recognise any of the covers when i looked them up online around the time this thread started.

(didn't find volumes 1 or 2 though, so can't really contribute)