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

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)

On an entirely unrelated note, does your webmail work?

I wonder, where did the trope of "new team member replaces old team member, who died a mysterious horrific death" come from? The Boys did a very similar thing.

I don’t think they ever knew John-a-Dreams died, did they? They assumed it but it’s not ever explained beyond what King Mob remembers. I’m not sure it’s a trope per se, is it?

I must make time to read this thread properly - just scrolling past the scanned covers is giving me a huge nostalgia rush! I would've been 17/18 when I was reading them as they came out.

The vol 1 era was definitely my favourite.

Welcome aboard chap, good to see you!

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)

Good point - I definitely wouldn't have minded a few more, of course!

Thanks for these again.

13!

I see what you mean about pronouns - I don't know if it's notable that this is I think the first time we've seen Hilde/drag-less Fanny (other than when disguised as someone else), and King Mob not only doesn't gender her but doesn't call her by a name at all. I mean "I will refer to you by name when it's just the two of us in conversation" is a terrible comic book trope of course...

But yeah, am I picking you up right that you're reading the "let her deal with it" as meaning that Hilde doesn't think of herself as a her?

I like that even without the scare from Fanny, it's clear which of the kids is a bit more into it - "It's disgusting, ent it?"

Anarchy for the Masses has some notes on the various styles that Jill Thompson is pastiching - Rob Liefeld (incredibly difficult according to her because you're going against all your training), Sin City for Brodie and Kirby, Watchmen for King Mob & Edith (I guess so) and Love & Rockets for the scenes in Brazil (really not seeing it). Oh and the "Teotihuacan is" panel is apparently in the style of Ripley's Beleive It or Not comics!

Also it points out that Lewis Brodie is a zipping-up of Lewis Collins, who played William Bodie in the Professionals. I didn't get that because I've never seen it, but I was thinking of him as Bond even before they mentioned it in the next issue - what would a Bond comfortable with the gay scene be like? He'd use people and treat them like shit, just like he does women.

14!

I'm not sure what the page with King Mob and Edith and her keepsakes is pastiching - Toulouse-Lautrec?

The Jack Flint page has strong 60s-70s energy, but on the other hand there were definitely pubs like that in the 90s - today maybe not so much?

I choose to believe that the mystery passenger is all of the conspiracy theories that Morrison wants us to think about being in the mix, but everyone in the comic is too cool to believe in :)

(haha "I choose to believe" - the page opposite the Jack Flint one in the issue is an ad for the first set of X Files trading cards!)

Regarding the third panel in the first Boy & Ragged Robin (which are great, and have I mentioned how much I like Jill Thompson's cartoony work) - there's an interview in Anarchy for the Masses where they ask her "So, you're Ragged Robin" and she basically says "No! No, no, no - well, I mean, Grant asked me to draw a long-face woman with red curly hair, so he knew what he was getting - but I didn't give her the nose!" Sometimes, she gave Robin the nose.

Jill Thompson for reference: https://www.alamy.com/jill-thompson-during-the-chicago-comic-and-entertainment-expo-at-mccormick-place-featuring-jill-thompson-where-chicago-illinois-united-states-when-22-mar-2019-credit-adam-bielawskiwenncom-image244613495.html

15!

I mean yes of course, Mr -Of-Dreams, if you wanted to make clear that you're not here for sex, introducing yourself as 'John' is exactly how I'd do it.

The Sir Miles and Pennington page is another Frank Miller, from The Dark Knight Returns.

If I don't have a lot to say about this issue, it's not because I don't like it - I really love all of Sheman. And Jill Thompson is an amazing action artist!

This was also probably 80% of my framework for anything trans at this time.

16!

I'm not an enormous fan of the art to be honest (partly because I am an enormous fan of Jill Thompson) but I think it does a good job on heightening Jack trying to get his shit together for more than just rage.

I know that the /(...)/ things in the alien section are supposed to be untranslatable, but I like the impression that they're madlibs for whoever poor fucker they've got their hands on - You are the <something> This is <something> Your world is dying but you can lead your people to <something>

Something I didn't catch but Anarchy for the Masses did - Mictlantehcutli in #15: "We Gods are only masks. Who wears us? Find it out!" vs the aliens in #16: "Now we will show you the /(truth)/ Watch the /( )/ Find it out"

I had completely forgotten but the letter column in #15 starts with "Hope no-one's gone blind after last issue" and end with "Next issue: Bad news for Baldy! King Mob is finally in the hands of the Enemy. He's strapped to a chair"... etc. Which is weird because that's not what happens. But #16 starts with er, we ran this month's letter column last month by mistake, here's what should have run, and that's the 'Wank for the Invisibles!' column, including "I think this should hit the stands in November, so lets all try this on the #23rd". I honestly can't remember if #16 came out in time for it, but that is still pretty hilarious. And then "Next issue: Bad news for Baldy!"

Week 8: Vol 1, issue 17, Entropy in the U. K., Part One of Three - 18 tbc tomorrow

My God, I am so bad at this! And to add insult to injury, imgur has totally fucked their interface, meaning I now have to register an account with my phone number to upload images for this thread? Nah, you're graaaaaand, lads, so on we go with postimg & whatever that's like.

https://i.postimg.cc/85tcnwZv/9184.jpg

We open with the Gideon Stargrave scenes! Part Bond, part St Trinian's, part just pure Morrison.

"Type O - common as muck." I think about this line perhaps more than I should?

Think this scene - visuals and the interrogation under mind-altering substances, was part of the Matrix inspiration that so annoyed Morrison. But I have to say I prefer this one (it goes harder too).
https://i.postimg.cc/mD2CDPqQ/kingmobchair.png

The eyeball technique Sir Miles describes is very similar to one used in the first series of Utopia iirc?

I cannot tell you how much I like the detail that even in King Mob's fantasy stories, he saves a cat.
https://i.postimg.cc/FKcNLGtv/gideon-cat.png

Elfayed is back! I love that guy so much. "As above, so below."

Fanny is in custody, and, contrary to what Sir Miles just said to KM, is unharmed. Fanny ignores Sir Miles trying to bounce her and keeps asking for water. We know why, and they do too, as they won't help.

Lol @ Fanny asking for Leichner powder right after though, and fuck Sir Miles so much here! Honestly, he is such a complicated character with such an interesting history, but I always despise him for this scene.

Fanny, though, won't let that be the last word:
https://i.postimg.cc/GtbyNHPB/sirmilesfanny.png

Miss Dwyer is back and she's still fucking terrifying. I really enjoy the possibility, however faint, that Sir Miles leaves open for Gideon Stargrave to be the reality. She brings the King-of-all-Tears through and Sir Miles is furious, because he's not ready for what the Archons do to environments they're in.

Boy and Robin are waiting for Fanny and King Mob, and Robin is telling a highly relevant (to this arc) story about a man who bonds with his cancer cells so they stop killing them. But they soon realise something's up.

This is one of these things that makes no sense on a first read but is absolutely great on rereads:
https://i.postimg.cc/4x2jxcmg/dejavu.png

George Harper from Division X! Getting the band back together!

Sir Miles is starting to buckle under the strain of invading KM's preliminary defences and he hasn't even hit the jackpot yet. Frankland gets him a paper tissue to wipe up the blood dribbling onto his chin.

https://i.postimg.cc/1z5Cw3VK/stargrave2.png
I'm watching The Crown right now and imagining alternate universe Anderson-Thatcher croaking the line about the wicker man and I'll be honest, it's hilarious.

"I'm cultural imperialism coming home to roost."

I need to update the playlist but I'll do that tomorrow!

In Sir Mile's projection, King Mob is being chased by the ball from The Prisoner.

King Mob is Polish!

We end on a dark note, and I have to finish this week tomorrow, and then Sunday's too, it takes a little longer but that's ok, I have time this week that I didn't the last two.

Week 8: Vol 1, issue 18, Entropy in The U. K., Part Two: Messiah

After my complaining yesterday, imgur is now working ok so...well then.

https://i.imgur.com/g9BGxnm.jpg

We open with yet another Gideon Stargrave story, this time on a bus hurtling around a dangerous mountain pass being pursued by a madman in a biplane. When you see King Mob in India later in the series, you understand how he pulls threads from his own life seamlessly into his fiction. Like the dangerous state bus journeys lol.
https://i.imgur.com/jlPTFiQ.png

"Zen-crazed aerial madman" has always been very funny to me.

Back in reality, with Sir Miles and Frankland and it's room 101, the worst place in the world. They show King Mob a bucketof his fingers they've cut off him, except not really, because he's been doped out of his mind on Key 17, which he doesn't understand yet.

https://i.imgur.com/umAvht6.png
Really enjoy the tools of destruction here (yes, all of them).

https://i.imgur.com/GZA1Wym.png
I think about this all the time, not just because Mary reappears in ...worse circumstances later, but the fact that she's been asked to come in, to serve these two mem torturing someone, the way she doesn't even blink at the scene when she asks if "the young man" wants anything, Frankland going from wanting to get to work on KM with his instruments to asking for a Fruit Club with his tea. How many of these scenes has Mary witnessed and filed away in her mind? Is that why they chose her, and the King-of-All-Tears found her such easy prey? Because this detail. Christ! What a scene! It tells you everything about them.

Sir Miles is starting to sweat, and threatens Frankland because he knows Miss Dwyer will go through him with no effort and even less remorse. Damn.

We're in Brixton with Boy, spying on the police searching "Kirk Morrison's flat. King Mob has done well enough from his writing to be a millionaire!

The unimpressed copper reading KM's stuff and going "it's quite good, this" is always amusing to me. Boy is loitering outside the door but she's found by a cop she hadn't seen. We go straight to Uluru, in King Mob's memory.

King Mob is with Joey and Gerry, Aborigine men who are connections of his. KM wants to go into the Rock. Yet another example of KM's grandiose myth-making being swiftly punctured by someone else (perhaps this is why his writing is so successful lol):
https://i.imgur.com/NQPAsrZ.png

Sir Miles is rummaging through all these memories of magic and myth like he's ransacking a drawer, and suddenly KM hits him back:
https://i.imgur.com/QQ63IKU.png
These are all little traps destined to enrage Sir Miles so he won't miss the big trap waiting. Nevertheless, Sir Miles is shook, and you realise he probably has got a bit lazy in his old age, isn't using his skills on interrogations as much as he should be.

You can tell how much he hates having to ask Miss Dwyer for help, he's sweating bullets. The way Miss Dwyer keeps needling Sir Miles about his class...you can see exactly why she was such a good candidate for modification, why she has done the things she has.

We're back in Brixton and Boy is putting her training to use by escaping from the cops with little hassle. Love this fella, one of the most memorable one-off characters:
https://i.imgur.com/vgsw7cG.png

King Mob is inside Uluru and sees the most indescribable fish-vessel. He starts speaking the memory through bruised and broken lips, in the real world.

There's a struggle as King Mob's pulse and vital signs flicker, and Sir Miles decides he needs to force entry before it's too late. And then he's in with Edith first.
He doesn't recognise her, slightly strange given his relationship to Beryl.

I absolutely love the detail here, and the intimacy of it without nudity or it being obscene or lewd in any way:
https://i.imgur.com/4xz37n7.png

Then we see a crack, and King Mob's connection to Dane is laid bare for just a second. It's out of time and context but it's enough for Sir Miles.

Boy is running back to meet Robin, and telling her that they have big problems and then we get this great Robin face:
https://i.imgur.com/9pIcoDH.png

Jim Crow's back, and things are just about to get fucked up.

Week 8: Vol 1, issue 19, Entropy in The U.K., Part Three: Assassin and issue 20, How I Became Invisible

https://i.imgur.com/5akAiUO.jpg

Sir Miles is in King Mob's mind, wearing his fucked-up aristo on his summer holidays outfit. He sees some flashes of memory, but he's further in than he realises, because he starts speaking to Frankland in the real world, who hasn't said anything. Sir Miles is bleeding from the nose, and asks Frankland for a tissue as he's misplaced his hanky. He tries to persuade King Mob to cooperate, again, while in a nearby room:

Fanny's reflection in the soldier's visor is distorted and slightly inhuman, as if a hint to her powers.
https://i.imgur.com/0W0JxxK.png

It's revealed that she somehow has Sir Mile's missing hanky and has twisted it into a humanoid shape.

Sir Miles is still shiting on to King Mob, and sounding like a centrist dad.
https://i.imgur.com/Rx8I2QM.png

As if to prove my point, he then starts talking about Orwell. "Political pornography drooled over by those who talk of freedom, yet thrill to depictions of absolute control."

He then talks a little about Key 17, and about imprisoning people through language. I am reminded again of Tom's talk with Dane earlier in the series along the same lines, with different intent.

More memories come while Sir Miles is breaking the last door down. He's so far into it, he stops talking about "he", and instead says "we"...is this a sign that King Mob's actual power over his mind is stronger than he's allowing Sir Miles to believe?

Back in London proper, Robin, Boy, and Jim are coming to the rescue. Boy doesn't appreciate Jim's car being a hearse, and in that light, his reference to the train station is unfortunate. Echoes of Eazy E in the next issue? ("Hey Martin, maybe I can catch a train.")

https://i.imgur.com/xqYqnZ5.png

Boy's muttered response to Robin going HEY GUISE SMART DRINKS really amuses me.
https://i.imgur.com/YUXKsC1.png

Fanny twists the hanky-figure's head and, in the adjacent room, Sir Miles is abruptly halted in his interrogation. Inside King Mob's mind, the wall is finally falling, but it's not due to Sir Miles.

This sting in the tail is King Mob tearing off Sir Miles's aura as taught to him by Zaraguin (no wonder he wants to be paid!)
https://i.imgur.com/gun6bKD.png

This was great:
https://i.imgur.com/Tyi3htv.png

This reminded me of Fanny's grandmother, the witch powerful enough to abort a baby by stepping hard on its mother's shadow. Is Fanny even more powerful?
https://i.imgur.com/4dAKq9g.png

Ah, the nostalgia of your classic London A to Z there! Useful for sights, tips, and tracing your fellow Invisibles.
https://i.imgur.com/rwzksrq.png

Back in the interrogation room with King Mob, where it's all gone horribly right. KM takes out Frankland with a scalpel hit directly to the temples - bye, you Nazi fuck - and King Mob tells Sir Miles "at least I'll die free." He reunites with Fanny in the corridor.

This such a touching and funny interaction between them:
https://i.imgur.com/9F2tsXx.png

More Gideon Stargrave! This reminds me of King Mob and Mr Six drinking champagne together towards the very end. Nice and smooth.

In the other other room Miss Dwyer knows that something's wrong. The descriptions that follow are dreadful, but I'm not sure I've ever been more chilled than my the words "Miss Dwyer dressed for the hunt" in this series.

And my God, the imagery.

One last issue tomorrow - had no intention of doing them all spread out like this, but have been preoccupied and they take me longer to write up now! Still, we're then up to date until Sunday.

The most striking thing to me about these three is how much I'm not into it - if you'd asked me I'd have said oh yeah, the buildup is great but once we get to King Mob in captivity that's when things really take off. But I'm not as into it - unless I misremember there's great heights to come though.

A lot of that is just how really badly the Gideon Stargrave stuff has aged - I know Morrison frames it as "this is the kind of trash that you'd build up as a baffle for psychic interrogation" but he's also his own proud mum putting it on the fridge - and getting Phil Jimenez to illustrate it! I probably wouldn't mind so much if it was cartoonier, but the high-rez panties of a dying orgasming 15-year-old - blech. To say nothing of the tourism. Of course, some of the reason that I'm bored with some of the metaphysics here is because I _was_ really excited about them 25 years ago...

(I mean also fuck a Michael Moorcock, as far as I can tell from the negative space of everyone talking about him but without me actually reading any)

Anyway, now that I've gotten over that the rest is still good - I like the gimmick that this is an origin story of someone that Morrison has no idea of providing an origin story of, so to an extent our protagonist is Sir Miles.

The eyeball technique Sir Miles describes is very similar to one used in the first series of Utopia iirc?

He's quoting an actual handbook - I also like that the lighting for his first appearance makes his face look like a mask.

I'm choosing to believe that it's a deliberate two fingers to the modish fop Stargreaves that Sean Philips has drawn him as Liam Gallagher on the cover of the second issue.

The scene with Mary Brown is amazing alright - it reminds me a little of the stenographers in the film Brazil, and I think you could argue it serves as a critique of the idea of just being kind to everyone as a way of life.

I can't think of Miss Dwyer without picturing Priti Patel, no lie.

Week 8: Vol 1, issue 20, How I Became Invisible

I really have no excuse to be as bad at this as I am, particularly as I've been off work all week, but you've shamed me once again AF. Oh well!

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

So: I really like the art for this one! But I don't think Tommy Lee Edwards returns during the run, so guessing Grant Morrison didn't agree, or they didn't work well for the series maybe? But regardless, I like the lineless sort of style and it works really well for this story.

Also, I will take a few weeks before I start Volume 2, so if people want to catch up then's probably a good time.

So previously we've had Dane's story, some of King Mob's story and Fanny's story, and now Boy gets an issue to herself. I like Boy, for the most part, but I think her role in the series is pretty thankless and I was pleased she ends up happy towards the end. If it's not become apparent by now, I misplaced my Invisibles reading guide somewhere in the house so I'm winging these posts, but I need to track it down before her V2 storyline cos...yeah.

Anyway.

Boy is canonically good-looking, but despite my liking the art style, it does her no favours.

Her writing is like her and tells us a bit about her - compared to the others she's a pretty "normal" person who doesn't like thinking about how she got into the Invisibles.

Boy is anosmic! She and Oscar have a nice rapport; it's nice to see a light sort of interaction to start this issue. But unlike some other members of the crew, Boy seems to get on with everyone, she's not abrasive like Dane can be or fiery like Robin (thinking specifically of Jolly Roger). Maybe that's part of how she's invisible.

"That was when the scenery cracked and I saw the ropes and pulleys and wires in back of everything."

The Feds move in and clear the decks; Boy and Oscar leave them to it but Lucille is thinking.

I really like this panel of Boy's face in half-profile, with the guy in the background.
https://i.imgur.com/oE0Qb3n.png

The guy on the street rambling is telling the truth in his way, but Lucille doesn't hear it. But there's a reason his words have stuck with her six years later.

Lucille's father is a bully, and she idolises her big brother Martin in part because Martin stopped their dad hurting them.

Enter Eezy D. Immediately you can see Lucille and Martin opposed to him, they're very literally on different sides and the siblings can't stop themselves goading each other, even on their mother's birthday.

"Shit! Maybe I can catch a train, huh, Martin?" This line burns at me, lads.

"I guess I never really knew him. I never really knew anything."

Oscar is talking about a conspiracy theorist who's been talking about black people rounded up on trains. Rex 84 of course was a real thing, I suppose it seems almost adorably naive to read their conversation about this in These Times.

Eezy confronts Lucille when she's out one night. Briefly want to talk about these panels.https://i.imgur.com/FqtjiLo.png

On the left: Eezy appears with people crying out from the train behind him - they don't look like revellers. He's wearing a red shirt, and in the right panel, Lucille's dress is the same colour for this one panel only (her dress is shown in every other frame to be lilac). Is this because when Eezy mentions the train, which she's uneasy about, she knows he's telling the truth and for a brief visual they are on the same page? I like also how we don't see her face as he says this, but instead we see the smiling, oblivious faces of the white people she's turned towards.

"The beast's staring you right in the face and he's counting on the fact that you don't even believe that he exists."

Oscar vanishes, and Lucille starts to come around to Eezy's side. Even more so when she finds the calendar with train times in Oscar's desk.

She hides and watches her beloved Martin, exactly as Eezy had said, complicit in the train running. Like his namesake the mouse Marty, he has been lost to her a long time. When they try to put him on the train, Lucille intervenes, and Martin begs her to shoot him, but she can't do it.

https://i.imgur.com/xSGTF1N.png
The soldier's features shadowed through the visor look like a skull.

"Shoot me!"
"Any day of the week, motherfucker!"

Eeezy appears; of course he's there, spying on Martin. He hits Martin (in the arm?) but then the police fill him up and Lucille howls.

"It was like somebody turned the volume down on the whole world." And at that moment, Lucille's anosmia breaks and she is painfully aware of the scent of Eezy's death and the train.

While Lucille holds Eezy as he dies, Martin is hustled onto the train. Lucille snaps out of it and fights, but her life is saved by Oscar.

https://i.imgur.com/Q6JscUn.png
"Fucking traffic," is weirdly, darkly funny to me. Oscar became invisible and he tips Lucille off about King Mob, who finds Lucille two days later. She walks out of her old life and disappears like everyone else.

Lucille is very clear-eyed about her motivation; when you think of King Mob waxing lyrical compared with Lucille's bluntness here, it's pretty startling. The end of the issue makes it clear by the lingering on the chimney smoke that the camps are not just prison camps, they're death camps.

Andrew, I will respond to you later!

The most striking thing to me about these three is how much I'm not into it - if you'd asked me I'd have said oh yeah, the buildup is great but once we get to King Mob in captivity that's when things really take off.

That's interesting - for me, the series takes off when we get Fanny's backstory and picks up speed here. I really enjoy the capture-rescue storyline and the wide cast of characters drawn into it, and it's got some of my favourite scenes.

A lot of that is just how really badly the Gideon Stargrave stuff has aged - I know Morrison frames it as "this is the kind of trash that you'd build up as a baffle for psychic interrogation" but he's also his own proud mum putting it on the fridge - and getting Phil Jimenez to illustrate it!

Yeah, there's a lot going on here & irl lol at "putting it on the fridge" - great way to put it. Basically it's GM's id in some ways, y/n?

He's quoting an actual handbook - I also like that the lighting for his first appearance makes his face look like a mask.

The scene with Mary Brown is amazing alright - it reminds me a little of the stenographers in the film Brazil, and I think you could argue it serves as a critique of the idea of just being kind to everyone as a way of life.

Which factors back into Audrey Murray. I've never seen Brazil but I should, it seems like it ticks off a lot of interests for me.

I can't think of Miss Dwyer without picturing Priti Patel, no lie.

Week 9, vol 1, issue 21: Liverpool and issue 22: House of Fun

Well now.

https://i.imgur.com/hoTG8UX.jpg

Jack turns up at his mate Billy's house carrying Tom's bag and after having cut his hair with kitchen scissors or something.

Billy's weird twisted half-pose looks like he's doing the time travel moves. I agree with Dane, it's annoying as fuck when people won't sit down.

"When did I stop?" When he was with Tom, I think?

The way Dane brags about Boy to Billy compared with how he actually acts around her in reality...sad lol. But he's still sharp enough to notice Billy's suspiciously nice lighter.

We travel back to Dane's time with Tom, and all the things Tom left him with which will come to the forefront of Dane's consciousness in this and the next few issues. We see Dane and Tom both plummet, but Dane falls through space into Barbelith, which breaks his fall. Barbelith calls Dane a "lost one."

Billy has a new stereo too and tons of CDs, including Jim Crow's band Root Doctaz. Dane is naturally suspicious of this, but Billy, doing the near-identical nervous twist, tells him it's fine. Dane has flashes of memory from his time with Barbelith; the Invisible Academy, illuminated in green, then back in the present he starts talking about the things he's done before waving a gun at Billy.

Dane trails off into sullen silence as Billy gets the door but something - his natural suspicion, something Tom taught him? - makes it click just in time.
https://i.imgur.com/Bv3B9bf.png

The cops burst in just in time to see Dane racing away from the flat having shinned down the drainpipe.

Mr Six! In a newsagent! Is he too deep in the role of Mr Malcolm to not be caught totally flatfooted, cos Dane gets away from him luightning quick!

Dane's with his mother.

"Doctor Who shite about space aliens and fucking time machines and fuck knows what else."

The masks in the background remind me of the Harlequinade.
https://i.imgur.com/tiJ2zWJ.png
Dane is trying to explain things to his mother but she doesn't understand and gets angry with him.

"Oh Jesus Christ, love. What's been happening to you?"

This is the first time Dane's seen his mother since Tom stripped away the layers he built onto himself to prevent himself feeling anything. His mother doesn't understand, because she's still got hers, but Dane reaching out to her manages to touch her anyway (she is his mother after all).

Dane is back with Barbelith, which tells him that he created it. There follows some extremely Catholic imagery - he is trying to prise the nails from Christ on the cross. In the present, he cuddles up to his mother and cries like he's never learned to forget how. All his mother can do is pet his hair, as though he's her baby again, and try to listen.

https://i.imgur.com/o0Jfcxk.png
I really like this panel of the two of them, Dane clinging and soft, but his mother's eyes fixed on the door are hard and her mouth is set. Dane (wrongly) thinks she's sold him out too, but it's just Mr Six come to save Dane, although Dane doesn't yet understand this either.

"I'll wipe the fucking floor with him if he starts anything!" And you suspect she would too.

Tom's magic pops up in Dane's conscious mind, just when he needs it most. "Totep." And all the windows go and the building cracks.

Boy shows up just in time to knock down one of the coppers who's not been knocked out - the one with a metal plate in his head.

https://i.imgur.com/3ocyHjw.png
"Except wake up, I guess," always amuses me.

Dane asks Boy why should he care, and then Barbelith, surfacing in his consciousness once more, tells him (and us). As above, so below.

Dane has already decided to go with Boy by the time she's making her case. The issue ends with Dane asking "are we going or aren't we?" So the band is getting back together, finally! It's been like 13 issues!

https://i.imgur.com/ASUqf0z.jpg

Everyone looks glam on this cover, ngl.

Jim Crow and Ragged Robin are outside the creepy joke shop. Maybe all joke shops are creepy by default and that's redundant phrasing? The vibes are bad enough that Robin's vomiting everywhere.

We go straight to the source - the King-of-all-Tears and Miss Dwyer. "Death-prayers and obscene rosaries...The world sickens and begins to change." Ok, he lays it on with a trowel here, but you do feel the dread!

Fanny is trying to get King Mob up, but he's in a dreadful state and is having difficulty. Fanny perceives it first.

"There's something in here with us. Something that shouldn't be in the world."

Fanny has to drag King Mob down the widening corridor because he can't walk.

Outside, Robin has been to the shop. On the list:
https://i.imgur.com/ggqqeP8.png

Now we see the payoff from issue 10 and Jim's debut - we already know how he works with Guedhe and the things he can do.

Robin has to spit the rum into Jim's eyes to help ensure Guedhe comes, and does he?
https://i.imgur.com/6RTASQ2.png

Does he ever.

Fanny is panicking because they're developing little growths on their bodies and they don't know why. At King Mob's request, they go back into the room where Sir Miles is. You get a quick reminder that Frankland is dead - unnecessary but nonetheless welcome.

Our crew quickly realise Sir Miles is immune to whatever's happening to them. Sir Miles clues them in quick, they're getting cancer because of the nanomachines the archons use to reconfigure the environment for themselves.

Weak as he is, King Mob realises what the solution is.

"Who'd have thought we'd end up...blood brothers, Sir Miles?"

Outside, Jim and Robin have finally got their way inside the shop with the help of Guedhe.

Flashback to a few hours ago in Liverpool, where Dane is saying goodbye to his mam for the last time.

https://i.imgur.com/4YG18zZ.png
I've always really liked this panel; the lack of colour and the tiny scale makes it look as unreal and meaningless as the normal world now is to Dane.

Outside the shop, Dane also feels the bad vibes coming off the place, but there's nothing to be done but go in.

Fanny and King Mob are watching their tumours disappear, before Miss Dwyer bursts in and King Mob shoots at her with what are pretty decent reflexes given his condition. I really like the weary resigned look on Sir Miles's face as he says "That was my...superior. That was Miss Dwyer."

Ah no. The Mary Brown scene. I've written about the earlier one a bit upthread, but this one is always a hard reread for me. We are spared from seeing her final fate by the closeup of the dead insect eyes of Miss Dwyer's 4D armour, but it's horrific.

In the next scene, Jim/Guedhe remarks that somebody just "died bad". But Guedhe/Jim is laughing at the skulls and horror paraphernalia all over the place. It doesn't reassure Robin much, because zombies that have hijacked the bodies of soldiers come shambling towards them.

Robin uses her nanobot bracelet!

Back with Sir Miles who is grimly telling Fanny and King Mob they can't hope to win. KM collapses and Fanny goes to him, calling him "Gideon", which is interesting. A reminder of how young Fanny/Hilde still is.

Boy and Mr Six are separated from Jack. They're beside an abscess in reality and Jack is running through God knows where. And suddenly he breaks through to meet the King-of-all-Tears.

https://i.imgur.com/JstRBL6.png

MY THOUGHTS EXACTLY.

I have a very high opinion of Brazil, but I don't think I've seen it since moving to the UK - it's one of those things where I don't think there's anything specifically terrible (some "lol rich women are vain" is all I can think of) but I'd still be a little nervous.

SIGH

This is not the venue for your Tory ws of shame!

The Boy issue is a weird one, partly because in the context of the Invisibles, Boy stands out as the 'normal' one - she has no magic / sufficiently advanced technology - and so neither does her origin story. In the framework from the last few standalones, there's a lot that happens here because it's assumed that everyone already speaks the language of US cop show.

I say there's no magic but there's still the same questions about backstory and twists - how long is "all this time we've been partners", is it just co-incidence that it's the invisibling of his partner that's the upshot of all of this? See also: how long had Mister Six been Big Malkie?

And "is it just coincidence?" is the eternal question of the conspiracy theorist (or rather "no" is the eternal answer) - one angle hinted at here is that for decades conspiracy theory belief was higher in African Americans than the rest of the population, partly because a lot of conspiracy theory-ish stuff did happen - there was a Black Wall Street, and the government did bomb it. I'm just guessing, but I wouldn't be surprised if the racial pendulum has swung back in the last 4-5 years. There's a passage from Grant Morrison in the letter column of #18 bigging up Paradox Press's Big Book of Conspiracy Theories, which I wish I still had a copy of.

I hadn't intended this to be topical, but I see that the idea of anything to see in Pat Finucane's death is also now a conspiracy theory.

Oh and some stuff from Anarchy for the masses on How I Became Invisible:

Apparently the W.A.S.T.E sign in the background when Oscar and Lucille are in the diner is a reference to Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, which "will influence the the second Boy arc" - does this mean I have to go read some Pynchon? I haven't got on with him since the mandatory first 100 pages of Gravity's Rainbow 30 years ago.

The guy on the street rambling is telling the truth in his way, but Lucille doesn't hear it. But there's a reason his words have stuck with her six years later.

Apparently this fellow bears a resemblance in body and spirit to Philip K Dick - I might need to read Valis at some point (or I might just rewatch a Scanner Darkly and fake it)

That's Mister Six watching the journal burn, on his own way up to Liverpool.

The commentary claims that Eezy D as well as Oscar is an Invisible, but I'm not convinced - as per above, I don't think you need to be incepted into a secret order to see shit if you and yours are at the sharp end of it.

Liverpool!

For some reason I like Paul Johnson's art here more than the previous Dane issue - you get the impression that he's under harsh interrogation-room lighting the whole way, unable to really relax - the cover brings out some of this (and is also just amazing Sean Phillips work, the fact that the same guy did this and the Sheman covers and the next three that we have coming up..!)

It's really rough on him too - one of the problems with any kind of superheroes in that they end up estranged from the people that they're doing it 'for' and this is the episode that he feels the punch of that. He gets a pretty solidly hitting vision as well, one that the others won't have (although, if King Mob is Polish...)

"Except wake up, I guess," always amuses me.

Yeah, me too.

Week 10, vol 1, issue 23: The Last Temptation of Jack, and issue 24: Good-Bye Baby Rabbits

I miiiiiight do 25 later today just to finish the volume off and resume with Volume 2 in the New Year?

https://i.imgur.com/jnA9PvI.jpg
I hadn't noticed before doing this, but the covers of 22-23-24 all fit together, bookended by Fanny. Not sure how I feel about Boy being relegated to the background of 24 though, especially as she's the mirror for Jim Crow on 22? Maybe it foreshadows her Volume 2 role a bit?

Anyway.

We know Jack doesn't die because the issue opens in 2012, with him recounting this story to a homeless man he's got cradled in his arms. This is an old friend of his who calls him Dane.

Mr Six's way of twirling his eyes out of their sockets is terrifying! And to do it with all those horrors rampaging about too.

Mr Six is clearly as powerful as has been hinted at; he tells Boy to stay close to him unless she wants cancer. Boy is freaked but not too freaked out not to snark baxk with "Right. Funny I don't remember that from the 'How To Date Boys' book." Ha!

Fanny is still calling King Mob Gideon. I think Fanny is so far the only character we've seen break code like this, right? Sir Miles is watching Miss Dwyer and taunting that King Mob is dead. It's all going to shit, isn't it?

And then there's Jack.

Tom's Tesco bag contains a box of cigarette ends, which Jack crumbles and scatters around him in a circle. We get this delightful reflection:
https://i.imgur.com/MbhYiGr.png
This magic is no different from ToTEP in issue 21. Jack believed in it, so it was. And so it is here too.

He protects himself from the King-of-all-Tears, but the King can still touch his mind. And so he does.

"Put your money where your fucking mouth is, dickhead." This reminds me of King Mob at the beginning of Vol 2 responding to Roger saying Jack might be the Buddha, "if the Buddha grew up poor in Liverpool and swore a lot, he might be a bit like Jack."

Jim Crow is tickled by the zombies and jokes about Mickey Mouse being scarier, but Robin's not so comfortable. Jim dispatches them with the zozo gun and asks Robin how she's doing. "This is great. It's just like watching a film." One that she wrote, perhaps.

https://i.imgur.com/IaOJ8F7.png
Jack tells us some more about how the Archons work, which we've already seen a bit of with Mary Brown.

Flashback to Dane's youthful love with Crystal Quinn, back in Liverpool. This reminds me of Tom O' Bedlam breaking through the walls built around himself when Dane thinks "You couldn't love your mum and dad. Not really. You couldn't love your mates or you'd just be a poof. The only person you were really allowed to love was your girlfriend." The King-of-all-Tears finds this tale of youthful heartbreak, and within it Dane's ache for love and to be loved, and pulls it out and confronts him with it.

Miss Dwyer is running rampant in the room with Fanny and King Mob.

Back to Dane's memories. As he marks the permanent record of his love on the bus windows, he sees Crystal pass by outside on the arm of an older man. You can hear his heart shatter in real time.

Crystal rubs salt in the wound when she snaps that the other guy "at least knows what to do."

Here the King-of-all-Tears invents a cruel twist in the story out of whole cloth, and that's where it tries to hit Jack hardest. That's where Barbelith comes in.

https://i.imgur.com/SYs1tWw.png
That's Barbelith there on his forehead, like an inoculation scar protecting him from the King-of-all-Tears's attempt to shit on his soul.

"We made it to save us," Jack says, and he means humanity here, rather than himself?

Now we skip forward to the far future, where 70 year old Dane is dying in hospital. I appreciate the casual reference to him being "pre-Jack", which in this context I read as some sort of technological leap forward? Anyway, him dying just as he's struggling to tell the doctors to fuck off is funny and hilariously in character, especially as one of them then remarks, "Good timing, huh? Pub's open in ten minutes."

Next Dane is confronted by the soldier he killed while escaping from the windmill. Shades of Last Man Fall on fast forward.

The next vision is the most convincing, with Boy and Mr Six. I think it's really notable that it's these two - Boy who Jack fancies, who taught him to fight, and Mr Six, who he definitely listened to in school even if he affected otherwise.

Older Dane is the most convincing, mainly because most of what he's saying is true!
https://i.imgur.com/tlj0y5y.png

Outside, Jim's overpowered the ghouls and zombies. And then Jim, who misses nothing, asks Robin about what year she was born. Time traveller confirmed!
https://i.imgur.com/e1wbBUz.png

Dane is seeing the entirety of existence written before him, far from the joke shop and the King-of-all-Tears.

"I even knew what 'Manichaean' meant."

Mr Six loses sight of Dane, but he and Boy have more pressing problems as the abscess continues to grow, spewing giant maggots and other obscenities. Onto the next one!

https://i.imgur.com/rI4soKn.jpg
Again, everyone is very glam on the cover. Robin's half-hidden face foreshadows her Volume 2 storyline.

King Mob's voice comes through the dark - temporary telepathy. Direct line to Fanny's head. And King Mob has an idea. Just in time too, as Miss Dwyer has Fanny bound and at her mercy and Fanny's panicking. And the plan is Key 17.

Robin and Jim are approaching the room where it's all happening and the vibes? Are extremely bad. I really enjoy her sulk here.
https://i.imgur.com/6XopFIP.png

Mr Six knows what he has to do because what you always have to do in these kinds of stories is make a sacrifice to seal the abscess. Boy can't stand it and she collapses, and it's tearing at the very fabric of Mr Six himself. And he battles through the horrors to know what he has to do.

Barbelith brings Jack back from bliss, and he's not happy about it. But there is, after all, still work to do.

"I am not the god of your fathers," it tells Jack sternly, "I am the hidden stone and break all hearts." It tells him the Archons must withdraw if he knows their names and that he must remember.

In the abscess room, Mr Six is battling to stay upright. And we learn how long he's been undercover and how deep as he sacrifices his Brian Malcolm cover identity.
https://i.imgur.com/eQoVWKS.png

In the other room, King Mob asks Fanny to hit Miss Dwyer with a sigil to make her drop her armour, and Sir Miles realises too late (isn't he a telepath?!) what's happening. Fanny hits her hard, and King Mob gets the space he needs to inject her with the Key 17.

Miss Dwyer starts to say an outer church 'prayer' meant to strike them both down with "pure sonic cancer", but King Mob uses the last of his strength to whack her upside with the rifle. And screams desperately for Fanny to write something, anything. And, panicking, Fanny is struck with inspiration.

https://i.imgur.com/wpGRatg.png
Whose mug is that anyway? Frankland's or just one of the random ones you have knocking around office kitchens? I hope the latter.

Jack is with the King-of-all-Tears and he's not afraid to leave the circle, because he knows the truth he needs to win. He knows the King-of-all-Tears's real name. This is a potent power in any manner of fairy tales, from Rumplestiltskin to

Jack's stupefied face reminds me of when they time travel back to revolutionary France and surprise the Invisible there, and King Mob says "somehow it's always a shock when it works, isn't it?"

The King-of-all-Tears withdrawing dismantles the reality he brought with him, and things start to change back. Only one question. "Who is telling this and to whom?"

Jim finds King Mob and Fanny. King Mob is rapidly bleeding out, but Jim only has eyes for Miss Dwyer. "Only one for death today."

Some of this imagery comes back when Colonel Friday takes Quimper to the Outer Church. It's all pretty horrific and this and Miss Dwyer's reconstruction/armour mskes it clear how much the process of modification demands from a person.

Jack comes up to the group in the hall, and his experience with Barbelith has changed him. He knows what to do to save King Mob.

I really enjoy how awed everyone is and then Jack telling them to shut the fuck up, lol.

"Come on! Get off your arse and help us here!" And King Mob lives.

King Mob is gloating about tearing Sir Miles's aura off so much that he doesn't notice Jack going and putting it back. Sir Miles is shocked, and Jack tells him "Nobody knows what I am."

Jim says he'll get them out of the country and their story continues in Vol 2! As for Vol 1, we have Division X next (my faves) and I'll do that one tomorrow I think.

Andrew, I'll respond to you then later.