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

There's more than a passing similarity (specifically, the focus on am underground "magipunk" world hidden beneath real London) between the first storyline and Gaiman's Neverwhere, which was a BBC drama first. Maybe the BBC commissioned Gaiman to do something similar to Invisibles, but more feasible for TV?

Otm, Dane going back to Liverpool and Boy leaving are both fairly explicitly about this in their separate ways. I don’t think that Fanny’s recruitment (while she’s recovering from assault and bleeding) is portrayed neutrally either. John-a-Dreams recruiting her at her lowest point has always sat uneasily

The problem here is that Mister Six is supposed to have been enlightened beyond the Invisibles/Archons dichotomy, yet he seems to be a part of the plan for Dane, or at least does nothing to stop it? This is one of the reasons why I feel Morrison changed his mind about the Invisibles and their moral justification at some point.

There's more than a passing similarity (specifically, the focus on an underground "magipunk" world hidden beneath real London) between the first storyline and Gaiman's Neverwhere, which was a BBC drama first. Maybe the BBC commissioned Gaiman to do something similar to Invisibles, but more feasible for TV?

Sorry, I didn't notice Nhex already mentioned this connection upthread.

Plus the thing where we never escaped/must constantly relive 2012

well, yeah

promethea also goes full 2012 apocalypse at the end iirc, it was def in the air for comics' two magick uncles

Didn't they both get the 2012 date from the Mayan calendar entering a new cycle in that year? IIRC that was explicitly referenced in the Invisibles?

yeah, the mayan calendar ended on 21/12/2012, as did our reality

sorry to break it to you like this but we've been living in hell ever since

Mods please ban Tuomas

?

I will be posting my thoughts on the first two issues of The Invisibles early this week!

Can’t wait to catch up on the thread and see what people are saying about those first two issues of The Invisibles

I’m going to *not* do a dump of some random thoughts from here on our and, delving into both the guides published for the series and my own thoughts, avoid plot summary as well. But for today..

#1/#2 of the first series of The Invisibles

The Invisibles starts off with a bang. Well, multiple acts of violence. There’s the feeling that, given the need for a punchy intro issue Grant Morrison front-loaded the confrontation into the beginning,

This gets dialed back, and put into retrospect (to great effect) later. But the ideas are unsubtle at the start. Morrison’s strength is in his cultivation of ideas. Interviewed, he’s claimed that he has a story he’s returned to, all the way from cheap licensed properties he wrote at the beginning of his career. Alluded to in this thread, he reiterates and builds. There are a lot of pieces in the beginning here, that seem like one-offs, that he returns to later in the series. The best reader of Grant Morrison is Grant Morrison, and it’s not as much a Chekhov’s gun situation as it is an intentional building on prior work.

The Dead Beetles title is literal and figurative. I feel that Lennon-as-godhead is part of a thought cloud of ideas riffing on the title. The scarab pushing the orb comes first: The scarab being the titular beetle, the introduction of Dane as Liverpudlian follows as a character origin. It takes Morrison until the next issue to give Dane a voice of reason friend on the street who’s from Glasgow — author insert? King Mob/GM fusion isn’t evident yet. Morrison loves conceptual zeitgeist/rock figures as embodiments of orgone energy or cosmic fulcrum. Lennon is.. the dead be(e/a)tle!

When I first read the series, I was irritated by Dane at this point. He’s the kid with completely justifiable impulses to lash out, with a sympathetic teacher he can’t hear, and a judge who says all the right things within a system he’ll never listen to — with reason — because it’s never done shit for him. Ironically, the first words of the Harmony House administrator, who we then see is serving evil, are right. He’s the square peg they’ll shape into fitting in that round spot, but it’s the Invisibles who will be doing it. But with kindness (really?), as in the second issue we get to..

Tom. Tom’s much more sympathetic with every reading, (And so we return, to begin again) as the character most in tune with the world as it is. He introduces us to magic as it exists, the will to understand the world as it can be and accept that what happened was the results of your incantations. Abandoned tube stations as sanctuary, constructed totems, mold as cosmic hallucinogen. Is it really magic, or is it Dane accepting that scrapings from a dusky wall is a drug to take him beyond? It’s both, I’d say.

The magic of monarchy and ancient ritual are both accepted and ridiculed throughout the series and the faux-fox hunt, with the as-yet-unnamed introduction of Sir Miles are a bit cliche and heavy-handed as they escape a literal hunt of the homeless.

The ending with the hinted-at but unintroduced Invisibles posing as the hunters at the end is another incident of parallelism between the purported villains and our yet-to-be-introduced team. We’re the good guys, and we’re doing this as a hazing ritual! We’re not the good guys. The series will draw nuance later, but at this point the differences between the Invisibles and their not-yet-named adversaries are vague. We’re fucking with you, but.. for good!

"And so we return and begin again" was semi-nicked 20 years later for The Wicked and the Divine, which is actually the only time since then that I can (probably faultily) remember a creator doing the "I've written stuff before and I'll write stuff again but this is The Big Work"

The first time I read this, in early 2007, I had never been to London. The first time I went was a few months later, after reading this, and until after I'd moved over here a couple of years later, I had never seen homeless people with the regularity that you do in this issue.

I can't honestly remember whether I went to New York or London first but when I'd been to both I was struck by the fact that the homeless population in NY had a much larger percentage of people with (obvious) mental issues - this is no longer the case, and not because NY's gotten any better :/

The first cover is by Rian Hughes, who presumably designed the font for the creator names that continues into cover 2, which is I think the first time I saw Sean Phillips' painted work? It's fucking beautiful. Hughes will also have done the Invisibles / Streisand logo?

I remember hearing the theory that Tom was a time-shifted Dane, at the time.

"Urizen, deadly black in chains bound" is from Blake of course, and reminds me of the giants of London bit in Heaven, the last track in Alan Moore's piece about Blake.

There's no letters for the letters page yet of course (when did the practice of sending out samples early to get some kind words in?), so in the first two issues we get two-and-a-half doses of Morrison as the kid's version of a Very Exciting, Grown-Up, taking drugs and chances in Tahiti and Kathmandu and New Zealand - the half is because he got to share the On The Ledge column with J M DeMatteis (before he was using his comics as telephone boxes to stick up his guru's card in).

(I'd forgotten that he was pulling the Brett Anderson "heterosexual (with possible latent homosexual tendencies)" line here)

On the other hand:

THE INVISIBLES is what I'm going to be concentrating on for the foreseeable future, and I think I've at last found a concept wide-ranging enough to accommodate all the ideas I've had which would otherwise be spread through a succession of one-shot books and specials. Although we have a core group of characters, anyone can belong to or oppose the Invisibles, giving me the opportunity to tell stories ranging across time and genre, stories that will eventually come together and be revealed as one large-scale, shimmeringly holographic tapestry. Generally, the longer stories will feature the activities of our five principal players, while one shots will explore the lives of various ordinary and extraordinary folk drawn into a web of conspiracy that extends from the back streets of your home town to the dark blue-green planet circling Alpha Centauri and beyond, out past the horizon of the spacetime supersphere itself. This is the comic I've wanted to write all my life--a comic about everything: action, philosophy, paranoia, sex, magic, biography, travel, drugs, religion, UFOs... you can make your own list. And when it reaches its conclusion, somewhere down the line, I promise to reveal who runs the world, why our lives are the way they are and exactly what happens to us when we die.

very very sign me up

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

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

"Even your life doesn't belong to you." That's what King Mob says as the rest of the cell disappears into the dark, and it's true, isn't it? The only way to be free is to fight against the outer Church and everything, but you can't do it alone and that comes with obligations.

"Nobody's got a good word for the younger generation nowadays but all they need's the threat of death to get them going." Whether it's the past or the future, Freddie/Tom has always been funny.

I've always loved London pigeons, diseased and stupid as they are, so Tom telling Jack to leave them alone is one of my small favourite pieces of this issue. :) I used to take photos/videos of unusual or strange looking pigeons when I was in London every day, they are everywhere and nowhere at once. You see them perching on anti-bird spikes and wobbling down bus lanes obliviously. Stupid, endearing birds!

Also, I just realised that park they're in is St James's Park.

"All my teachings are on this level of consciousness and that's why you can't remember where all the time has gone." I had never thought about this line before, it always flickered past me like taxi lights in the dark. How long has passed?

"When you dream, what makes you think it's not real?" - lol, this is one of the most obvious bits ripped off by The Matrix early on.

I get such an ache rereading the scene at St Dunstan's-in-the-East, because the look in Tom's eyes as he sees himself and Edie pass by in the past kills me. Both Toms quote the same part of King Lear.

Lol when Jack says he can't be arsed by any more walking around - in this issue they've gone from St James's Park to Tower Bridge to St Dunstan's in the East to Cleopatra's Needle which is about 2 hours. More or less a straight line down the river in both directions.

Dane's awakening is always very moving to me, water-based rebirths are such a cliche but this one really got to me.

Sorry I'm late doing this today, if I don't post 4&5 today it'll be tomorrow!

The ending with the hinted-at but unintroduced Invisibles posing as the hunters at the end is another incident of parallelism between the purported villains and our yet-to-be-introduced team.

The bizarrely didn’t fix that in the trades or omnibus!

Rereading issues #3 and #4 made me feel even stronger about what I mentioned earlier in this thread: Dane is being gaslighted, almost brainwashed into accepting the Invisibles' agenda. First King Mob's cell abandons him to live on the streets for months, then when he's at his lowest point, Tom comes along to give him a new ideology that makes him feel like he has a purpose and place in the world. The most damning bit here is the Invisibles masquerading as the hunters: what other purpose does it serve than gaslighting?

This honestly feels as bad as the V's manipulation of Evey in V for Vendetta that Morrison criticises later in The Invisibles, yet Dane's conversion here is depicted as a completely positive thing. I honestly feel Morrison changed his mind about the morality of the whole thing later on.

There's a clear colouring error on the last page of issue #2, when we first see the Invisibles-disguised-as-hunters: both Boy and Fanny are coloured to be as white as Robin and King Mob.

This isn't remotely true, though? Boy is clearly darker than Fanny (which has always been the case quite apart from her fondness for makeup) who is clearly darker than Robin - if there's a colouring error then it's on King Mob.

I'm genuinely not sure if you've spotted this, but the gent he tries to sell a Big Issue to in #2 is the only non-Invisible person he talks to all issue. For good or ill, he's not been abandoned.

(he = Dane there, sorry)

Yeah, I know the Invisibles are still keeping an eye on him, but they have let him live as a homeless person for months instead of taking him in because... he needs to suffer to understand their viewpoint, or something? And on top of that they dress up as the hunters and torment him, because he needs to see how the enemy is? Even though it's not the enemy but his supposed comrades? How does that make any sense?

This isn't remotely true, though? Boy is clearly darker than Fanny (which has always been the case quite apart from her fondness for makeup) who is clearly darker than Robin - if there's a colouring error then it's on King Mob.

Coloring error might be in the reprints? There isn't a huge degree of variance in the original issue but it's there.

I am looking, at the original issue.

Sorry, I misread that.

I’m not on board with the overly broad use of “gaslighting” given Dane could only recognize King Mob out of the group and doesn’t seem to, but it’s definitely a sort of indoctrination by force.

For good or ill, he's not been abandoned.

This makes it worse! Dane has absolutely no idea who these people are, and if he did pick up on their repeated presence it’d seem like surveillance, not well-keeping

Morpheus in The Matrix was a lot more soft-handed, lol

It becomes obvious fairly quickly in the third issue that they’re play-acting as the enemy in hunter garb, but it’s still them. Theatrical reproduction of the enemy’s terror, but Dane’s still looking like shit on the streets

A microcosm of the series at large, where even the players aren’t sure if their manipulation is for a greater purpose or if it’s cruelty for the sake of cruelty

As we progress, it’ll be interesting to see how I feel about different characters this go around. I was a lot more sympathetic to Sir Miles on my last reading!

almost hissed out loud there, mh. Sorry, i still need to do 4&5, later I promise!

Dumb question: is Boy trans? Had to wonder in that panel where King Mob challenges Dane about this being a "man's" job.

There are a lot of ethical questions later in the series re: time travel, manipulation, etc. and how much agency some of the characters have and whether they are just playing out preconceived roles (with Morrison as puppet-master). Go back to that tarot reading in the first issue, then make note of any time tarot symbolism pops up :)

xp I never read the character that way.

Dumb question: is Boy trans? Had to wonder in that panel where King Mob challenges Dane about this being a "man's" job.

Btw I’ve never seen it as anything besides the Invisibles seeing Dane as a tool that needs to be strengthened, for his own sake as well as theirs. Roger knows about his abilities in v2, he’s clearly extremely powerful but he’s young and he hasn’t gone through his time in the fire like the rest of them have. Even post-initiation he nearly loses it post-Orlando and after what happened with John-a-Dreams, you can see why they need him to be what he is. Throughout the series you see him being trained by different people - Boy, El Fayed, Tom - because they know what his role should be and are keen to get him there. Whether that’s ethical is really besides the point.

xp also this was 1994 - more than one trans character would be exceptional

(also let's be honest, while Fanny is a great character, she is partly there because Grant Morrison felt he had something interesting to say about transsexuality and Brujería - he'd need another hook for a second character)

gotcha. I can't remember much about where this goes for any of these characters except maybe Dane and a lot of explosions later

"There's a war on, boy. There's a war on and we want you, we want you as a new recruit" isn't the army, though - it's from the Village People's In The Navy.

This makes it worse! Dane has absolutely no idea who these people are, and if he did pick up on their repeated presence it’d seem like surveillance, not well-keeping

Oh yeah, no, I didn't mean it was easier for Dane - this is an initiation ritual, a stripping down. "The Boy's going to have to be put through the mill, poor bastard."

And yeah, breaking up the armour means that the person inside can get out, but also that you can get in if you want, to plant whatever you want - Jesus or scientology or the army. The flat statement that Tom's planted stuff in Dane for later is intentionally unsettling.

A theme in my rereading (the first since they came out) might be "this is well-described and has only got worse" - "it's worst being a little scared of him because he makes you feel tough when there's trouble. He makes you feel hate instead of uncertainty and fear" - that's not Boris, but it might be what comes after.

"There's a war on, boy. There's a war on and we want you, we want you as a new recruit" isn't the army, though - it's from the Village People's In The Navy.

xp Boris?

Oh no I wasn't arguing - just saying there's more than one military reference - I'd half-convinced myself that "we want you as a new recruit" was an actual recruiting slogan.

My wits are drifting a bit in the second comment - I mean that this desire for Daddy seems a larger part of the national psyche than it did. Like Trump in the states, you can imagine that if someone actually competent succeeded Boris, things could get a lot worse - not that they're good now.

"Did you ever hold the hand of the man who reads the news ever night on the telly?" is a great line that I missed.

No letter column this time, they needed the space to advertise Batman versus Predator II: Bloodmatch

Fuck it, have a bit of that: https://www.instagram.com/p/CFvCRw8HxYG/

amazingly that's Gulacy (who looks like he's phoning it in) and Terry Austin?!?!?

Why not Terry Austin? I remember him being heavily involved in the Bat-titles then; even got an autographed picture directly from him of the Azrael in the metal Bat-suit.

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...