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

been a long time since i read it and it’d be interested to see what the series means to me now because it meant a lot to me half a lifetime ago

Yeah, same.

2-3 issues a week would be my limit, I am also in a chapter-a-day Gormenghast reading group.

All Quimper (even the name 'Quimper') is Quimper porn.

Archon police, threadban this man.

I was never on Barbelith, but I did know a few of them, partly through my ex - I was horrified to realise that I'd tangled with one of them, posting as Tannhauser, in rec.arts.dc.vertigo in the mid 90s.

(we were both arseholes then, we are ... less arseholes now)

Debatable. I was never on Barbelith, though I do own an unofficial guide that I think came off the site affiliated to it?

The Disinformation Guide to the Invisibles or whatever it was called? :) I have that too.

xp Anarchy for the Masses?

xposts Oh geez, who didn't tangle with Haus? He'd probably seem completely innocuous were I to encounter him today.

I could get into this reading group/old folks reminiscence of the old 'Lith days.

I was on Barbelith, but only for a little while. And I'd be up with joining the reread.

I have Anarchy for the Masses and the much better (read: actually useful) reading guide, Our Sentence is Up.

Tho I have reread it maybe 5-10 years ago, and I didn't find as incredible as I did as youngster, it's not even among my top 3 Morrison series anymore... Am I still allowed to join? 😅

Revisitation of the things that pry open your brain is never going to have the same impact as they did when those things first pried your brain open. It's to be expected.

It pried my brain open so hard that my ability to properly conjugate a sentence spilled out onto the sidewalk. Alas.

Yeah anyone is welcome Tuomas!

i said john, john ... hiding in plain sight ... that's not playing the game.

and then edith said to call on buddha, but he didn't hear her properly.

and now it's a rescue mission ... they're trying to unhypnotize him out of his prison ...

i'm trying to explain as best i can

I'd have to get my trades out of the storage unit, but I would be game. It is one I would like to re-read again and would fit in with some other things I have re-read in the past couple of years.

I’m thinking of starting the reread this Sunday, to run for a week on the first two issues, and then next Sunday three more. Hopefully, earlnash, you can join in at this pace, and you can always backread and contribute?

Thoughts on pace? I’d like to start this as soon as just so I have to hold myself to doing it, lol.

I definitely understand that impulse, and would be up for that speed. The one thing is that the first story is 4 issues long?

That’s fine though, it’s a reread and going issue by issue forces you to focus on the granular while already being aware of the whole.

That pace sounds fine.

lol, along with seemingly everyone else itt, I will need to dig these out from storage (99% certain the box in question is in the very back and on the very bottom).

So.

When I was little and wanking about twenty times a day Back in the early 90s, I had a best friend, Simon - he's still a good friend, but I'm here now and he's there. Simon was a Mac fan, a graphic designer and a fast talker. And at one point in 1994, he convinced the Dublin branch of Forbidden Planet that they needed a web presence, and that he could provide it in the shape of one page with contact information for their shops, and as many reviews as we could provide from our payment of £25 of free comics per week.

This went on for a while - July 1994-December 1995 at a rough measure - until someone at FP realised that what they were getting for their money was frequently plot-summary level stuff of the comics we liked and full excoriations of the ones we didn't. Neither of these were a good return on investment for them, so they pulled the plug.

I've found the remains of the site on archive.org, but annoyingly I can't find the only editorial-type thing I wrote, which was about how the world was holding its breath - Grant Morrison was going to have a new ongoing series coming out soon. Zenith and Doom Patrol had finished in 1992, there'd just been Sebastian O and The Mystery Play since then, and now something was going to come which Grant, in full hype-man radiance, had declared was going to be his magnum opus, and my body was READY!

It's not a co-incidence that this was also the first time since I'd started reading comics weekly (as opposed to borrowing them by the careful bagful from Simon) that any of my favourite creators had started a new thing.

Anyway, there's the link to the rest of it - I cannot emphasise enough that I'll deny writing any of it if pressed.

It's sad on the one hand that Barbelith collapsed in on itself but on the other hand it's nice to have gotten most of my more embarrassing youthful online posting out of my system on a platform that's basically disappeared.

I hadn't read much Morrison when the series started but I started picking it up from issue 1. And that first issue is probably the most battered comic in my collection (from my own overuse and from passing it around). Pretty much just a sheaf of disconnected pages at this point iirc.

OL - does your webmail work? I sent you one the other day, it’s rtyi.

i'm into this, so bookmarking. i can actually see the trades from my desk.

Should be no problem, I've been moving back my comics after I got them sorted at home. I got an idea where the box-o-Morrison is located.

I re-read the Illuminatus Trilogy last year, then Valis/Radio Free Albemuth earlier this year; so re-read of the Invisibles should fit well in this current days/daze.

I’m definitely up for this. I bought the first four issues from Comic Showcase in Covent Garden, liked but didn’t love them despite being a GM superfan (I had cut up the Animal Man panels from UK reprint “DC ACTION!” and blue-tacked them over my bedroom wall) and then quit comics until Seaguy came out a decade later. I read Invisibles in the mid-2000s after interviewing, er, Cameron Stewart.

2-3 issues a week sounds doable!

Excellent. I’ll do the first post tomorrow, those two issues are the ones we’ll discuss for the week, then do three following week and alternate to let people catch up.

Cool. Just spent an hour this afternoon digging these out of storage. It better be worth my while, Morrison!

Here's how I'll do this: I'll make a post like this with some basic framing and then we can discuss the issues in question. You ex-Barbelith types will no doubt find some of my insights very amateurish but it is what it is.

And so we return and begin again.

Week 1: Vol 1, issue 1, Dead Beatles and issue 2, Down and Out In Heaven & Hell.

https://i.imgur.com/URwsv6n.jpg

People always say the series starts slow but I have never thought this. The first time I read this, it hit with a bang - all these disparate ideas and images and characters colliding and you don't quite know what's happening yet but you like it. First line is spoken by El Fayed, who I've always loved, and
our first "nice and smooth". Flashes of King Mob graffiti as though dreamed. Yeah, I knew instantly this series was for me.

The teaching in this in 2020 is darkly funny - imagine the absolute dogshit coverage you'd get nowadays teaching kids about communism and anarchism as ideas. Three of my favourites right from the start in this issue - Edith and Mister Six.

I really like how Yeowell drew Lennon's face as he lit the cigarette, all long nose and hollows and angles. The invocation of Lennon is classic, and Revolution 9 is a really great song for this issue: all cacophony, reversals and time skips. Side note: I am making a playlist for this as we go, feel Revolution 9 and David Watts are nailed on for this issue, but let me know if I missed any others.

"It was Kropotkin. And you'll never fucking understand me." combined with Dane's bared teeth is a frame that haunts me.

Miss Dwyer and Mr Gelt. Monsters with holes for eyes and glasses that reflect the blankness. Harmony House is a horror.

Dane hears The-King-In-Chains breathing through Gelt's door, the scene that follows is disturbing but also in a very mundane way?

King Mob showing up to rescue Dane from the brain room, like a god into the machine. "Goodbye Mr Chips," makes me giggle every time. The first time you read this, you don't care about the guards, the second and subsequent times, you see Bobby. Dane alone in London ends the issue.

https://i.imgur.com/CDYt2UB.jpg

This is actually one of my favourite issues, I love Tom and the initiation in some ways is very standard origin story but it's the details that stick with me.

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. There is a lot about this series that comes from you, the reader, and your perceptions at time of reading, but reality changes all the time. Tories then, Tories now. We return and begin again.

Tom in the underground declaiming poetry. Nobody looks at this homeless person, not even other homeless people.

"And see, the rain's off too. That's me that did that." Keep thinking about how Freddie becomes one of the greatest magicians in the history of their species, after Edith had finished burning him in the fire. She was right on that.

Tom pissing on the Churchill monument! Couldn't do that these days.

Fanny is our second Invisible to give Jack money.

How Sir Miles and his mob go unremarked in tearing through the streets in full hunting gear was probably pretty dead on in 1994, but it feels outright painful in 2020.

Luan-Dun, city of the moon. This immediately read as Irish to me, Morrison being Scottish is probably pulling from Gaelic? Or not, because we have another reference to Irish in this part of the story, next issue maybe. Although looking it up, the word luan, is old Irish though the original word survives in Dé Luain (Monday). It is a very glancing reference, I know, but it hooked me and drew me in further, whereas before it had just been a good story.

First meeting with Barbelith. Traffic lights and wet paint under the ground. Cities have their own magic.

Issue ends with Dane being abandoned again - the next part of it is on. The hunters' look is deliberately referencing Harmony House. Onward!

That is some excellent framing!

Yeah, for all that me at 19 was "Oh they say it'll explode your mind but actually they just explode some heads", there's a lot of genuinely weird stuff in the first one - along with the adventures of a supercool bald mod spy.

The world wasn't short of Beatles fans in the 90s, but it's interesting to think about the idea of this total immersion in the time of twitter and tumblr fandoms. That said, I'm glad that I don't know Morrison's views on it - one thing that I like (er, unless I'm wrong) is that he seems to have retired from any attempt at being current - he's happy being DeSade at the disco.

I stared at the phrase 'video card' (as in "Mum, give us the video card, will you?") for a bit until memories of Xtra-vision returned with a thump!

You've inspired me to re-read along with you online. Tbh, I barely remember the details of this series compared to Morrison's other works. So I'm welcoming all your exposition explaining what the heck is going on!

Interesting that Gaiman's Neverwhere series shares some of the "spooky magical hidden London" vibe, which was probably made around the same time or soon after. It's all alien to me, I've never been to Europe. (Also recently watched the original House of Cards so I suppose a lot of this is in reaction to post-Thatcher UK society?

It is yeah but because there’s gaps of time in between issues there’s also some anti-Blair stuff... mainly as you say though. Original HoC is incredible, btw.

I memorised the membership number on our family video card (I think it was 9713!) because I’d always forget to bring it with me. Inevitably there’d always be some tough-ass clerk who wouldn’t let you rent Tremors on a Saturday night if you didn’t bring the plastic.

The opening arc is fantastic. The first time around, I quit after a couple of issues of the second arc, which iirc was disappointingly Gaiman-y (i.e. long captions written in hard-to-read joined-up handwriting).

Now that I think about it the original Books of Magic also trafficks in this vibe, and that was around 1990; guessing something occulty was in-fashion at the time in London.

xp gyac yeah HoC was great, the ending of the first series is so entertaining. (2nd and 3rd series probably unnecessary but still fun.) I heard the US Netflix version slows everything down and takes a few years to go to that point lol

...not a fan of big pages filled with scrawled cursive, but let's see how it goes...

Some Iain Sinclair / Peter Ackroyd influence in the air too, perhaps, mid 90s onwards.

And V for Vendetta too, obvs.

People always say the series starts slow but I have never thought this.

This was definitely the case for me when I first read this in the '90s, in fact reading the first issue almost put me off of reading the rest of the series. By the time I got to the Inivisibles, the first couple of trades had come out. I was an anarchist/activist, into techno and drum'n'bass and rap, and I was under the impression this series would be exactly for someone like me, but then the first issue has... John Lennon and several pages of some psychedelic bullshit prose accompanied by similarly hippie imagery. I was like, fuck that boomer shit, but thankfully I did continue reading it, and issue 2 was already much better. But judging by the first issue it definitely didn't feel like the sort of zeitgeisty "this is '90s" comic that it had the reputation of being.

Issue ends with Dane being abandoned again - the next part of it is on.

This interesting, because a later storyline involving Boy has a very obvious criticism of V for Vendetta's idea of forcing someone to have an anarchist enlightenment through cruel manipulation, as Morrison (quite accurately) understands that forcibly pushing someone into anarchism goes against the very idea of it. Yet here the Invisibles cell is doing almost the same to Dane... Did Morrison's own ideas regarding this change between this and the later story, or are we to think the Invisibles are wrong to treat Dane like this?

The series ultimately (and fairly explicitly) lands on option b. Forces of control inhabit each end of the spectrum.

Also, the very first page of the very first issue seems to imply this is sort of a circular story, where in the end we return to the beginning, so I was waiting for the series to end like that. But as far as I can tell, the actual ending has little to do with the beginning, the line of the story is continously rising and not a circle that returns to itself... Unless we accept the interpretation that the entire story is the virtual reality video game King Mob developed in the final issue, and the ending of that issue is the ending of the first playthrough, after which you can return to the beginning and play it again on a harder difficulty?

(xpost)

About Barbelith: Morrison has admitted that some parts of Doom Patrol bled into this series, with Ragged Robin being an alternate version of Crazy Jane... So with that in mind, Barbelith also seems to be a variation of the similar shape Rebis sees in Doom Patrol when they have their final enlightenment. But what that is supposed to tell us about the connections between the two series, I have no idea.

Or actually I do have sort of a universal theory of how every one of Morrison major DC works are connected to each other, dunno if I've shared it here?

morrison was explicitly trying to make the dc universe literally a self-aware magickal entity in his superhero run iirc but i'd be interested to hear your theory for sure

i still haven't started my invisibles re-read but my current theory is that morrison's chaos magick 'every reader must have a wank to save the series' ritual did indeed save the series but unfortunately it created qanon as a side-effect

Okay, I posted this a long time ago on TVTropes.org, so I'm just gonna copy-paste it from there... I'll put it in spoiler tags, cos it has spoilers for All-Star Superman, Seven Soldiers, and DC One Million:

Almost all of Morrison's DC works are tied to each other, as well to the real world, forming a big "Morrisonverse". Here's how it goes: In All-Star Superman Superman creates the infant universe Qwewq. In JLA we see the heroes discover (a version of) Qwewq. Both in ASS and in JLA: Confidential we see that Qwewq actually contains "our" Earth, i.e. a realistic Earth with no superheroes. The final Morrison-penned issues of Doom Patrol and Animal Man take place in a realistic world with no superheroes (and they both share the same colour scheme, meaning it's the same world in both), which is presumably Qwewq, i.e. "our" world.

In Seven Soldiers we find out the ultimate fate of Qwewq (or at least one version of it). Final Crisis (which takes place in the same universe as JLA) refers to Bleed (the "sea" that separates different universes in the DC multiverse) as "ultramenstruum", and the same term is used is The Invisibles, implying that the Invisibles universe is a part of the larger DC multiverse. If we accept that Qwewq is "our" universe, this means our universe exists inside a larger universe populated by superheroes. Both Flex Mentallo and The Filth feature the "real" world to which superheroes from outside this world burst in; thus, the real world in both these comics could be (a version of) Qwewq. Lastly it also seems that DC One Million takes place in the future of All Star Superman as Solaris and Kal Kent appear and happens to be the story of how Superman ended up having to fix the sun.

Or to sum up just the Invisibles connection: in Final Crisis Morrison calls the Bleed (the space between alternate universes created by Warren Ellis) "ultramenstruum", which is the same term Invisibles uses about the weird floating mirror substance we see several times, which would imply the Invisibles universe is one of the alternate universes in the DC multiverse.

Whoop's I messed up the spoiler tags there...

The first few issues still give me "CBBC 5.05pm drama, but with much more swearing and violence" vibes. There was talk of a BBC Scotland adaptation, if I remember right?

The series ultimately (and fairly explicitly) lands on option b. Forces of control inhabit each end of the spectrum.

i still haven't started my invisibles re-read but my current theory is that morrison's chaos magick 'every reader must have a wank to save the series' ritual did indeed save the series but unfortunately it created qanon as a side-effect

― you are like a scampicane, there's calm in your fries (bizarro gazzara), Monday, September 21, 2020 8:09 AM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4__NWrfejTg&t=194

The first few issues still give me "CBBC 5.05pm drama, but with much more swearing and violence" vibes.

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.

And here's me thinking I might catch up. Nice one on getting it back on schedule!

Everyone looks glam on this cover, ngl.

Yeah, but denim and a nipple ring?

KM on this cover reminds me of the interview with Steve Yeowell in Anarchy for the Masses for issue 4, where they were asking him "how do you feel about others drawing your designs?" and he basically said well that's the job, but also he was a little disappointed that King Mob lost the slight East-Asian caste that he'd given him - but that maybe that hadn't actually come across in the art.

The Mary Brown scene is pretty grim - rereading I realise that I'm not sure that when it says 'before SHE hatches with them' whether it means Mary or Miss Dwyer? I don't think the second one makes sense with the second 'SHE'?

You can get pretty far with voodoo, but you can get further with voodoo and the secret voodoo boot!

There's a figure that keep recurring in the just-outside backgrounds - page 12 panel 4, page 6 panel 3 maybe page 7 panel 1 - and I can't tell if it's supposed to be meaningful, or Steve Yeowell just likes drawing people with short hair.

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.

Yeah, but it also reminds me of a framed photo - whatever about her (very justifiably!) freaking out just before, this is the bit that he'll carry with him.

I'm fond of the massively distorted moustache of Mister Six in Page 23 panel 2.

The letter column starts 'GRANT MORRISON IS DEAD' because it's by Mark Millar, roped in to do it because Grant Morrison is very unwell, with a punctured lung, pneumonia, and a fungal parasite. He (Millar) has a lot of fun with it: a letter that just reads 'Grant, you are just fucking brilliant' gets a response that reads 'I wish I got letters like this', and one that provides a multiple choice question on who Gideon Stargrave is gets 'Gideon Stargrave is Grant Morrison with a girlfriend, cool clothes and no stammer'. I have a lot of time for this-period Mark Millar - he was writing the second best run of Swamp Thing at the same time.

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.

I mean, show Michael Gove a button marked 'memory hole this immediately"... But yeah, it was a tenuous link.

Invisibles Live

This is what it’s like living in Windsor. You go for a walk in the morning and find grown men parading down the high street in fancy dress pic.twitter.com/zBt0Up35XJ

— Chris Morris (@thatqueerchris) December 14, 2020

Anyway, on to the last two regular issues, and I'm delighted but not surprised that they're as good as I remember - the only real criticism is that for a "bringing the whole team back together" story, Robin and Boy don't actually do anything? The same page that Robin turns on her nanomachine bracelet, Jim lets her know that he doesn't need it. They're exposition sponges mostly - but on the plus side I do love hearing GM's exposition gabble.

The framing device in 2012 Liverpool has an establishing shot of the Liver Building - I can confirm that it and its imaginary birds, Bertie and Bella, survived until at least then.

"It's like something out of a film, like a computer simulation, you look at it and it's just so unreal you have to accept it" - this has a resonance for me that it didn't have at the time. Just over 3 years ago now, me and Jen came back to mine, turned the electric blanket on to warm it up, and five minutes later it caught fire. We were in a different room, so it was only when the smoke alarm went that I went to open the bedroom door, and at the corner of the bed where the lead from the socket was, there were three tall narrow flames, straight up. They looked completely unreal - but it turns out it doesn't matter, you still react as you would to 'real' fire.

Completely otm on the link between Crystal being the outlet for Dane's love and the second issue.

I fucking love 'I knew the third word on page fourteen of "The Cat in the Hat" and I knew that it was "fear"'

That's Fanny on the cover triptych twice (though the er sun seems a lot brighter on the last one?)

The line on how the resealed abscess would result in "an anomaly, a haunting, a cold spot" reminds me a lot of Sapphire and Steel.

"Nobody knows what I am" stuck with me a lot.

blows dust off this thing

Hello! Never meant to go so long until updates, but well, life.

Today I'm finishing off volume 1 & will resume with Vol 2's first two issues tomorrow.

Week 11, vol 1, issue 25: 6 and a Half Dozen of the Others

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

Division X, Division X, Division X! I love the Division X lads A LOT, and none more so than Six.

https://i.imgur.com/LWCGeEm.png
we open with some fairly arresting imagery. The fly on the roulette wheel, which foreshadows the reveal about this woman later (the roulette ball, whuch is moved by someone outside the wheel, is watched over by the disgusting figure of the fly). And yet, we need flies, don't we? They perform an important role in processing waste and all manner of detritus.

Jack is trying to sort out his TV's reception while he talks to George about Father Ted, and how it reminds him of The Third Policeman. George doesn't know either O'Brien or Father Ted, but he does have an anecdote about shooting a one-armed IRA bloke. I really enjoy the rapport between the Division X crew.

Pretty amused by George crediting his youthful looks to Eva Fraser's facial workouts. That concession to modernity aside, our lads have attitudes as embedded in the past as their clothes (and the characters from various 70s police drama they were lifted from).

"I swear by it, I'm shagging birds half my age."
"You always were, you dirty sod."

They chat about Six for a bit, he gets called the third policeman (which I love even more, having read it since the last time I read this series), and just like always happens, Six corrects Flint with one hell of a technicolour entrance.

"The third policeman, eh? Bloody Six..."
"That's 'Mister' to you, Jack."
https://i.imgur.com/NIBFQsG.jpg

George has been throwing darts, but not at a board, and he finishes what he's doing as Six opens some champagne to toast the return of Division X. George "joins the dots", by marking the words formed by his darts. The message is simple: CROWN IT.

Jack curses the evident royal connection that the message seems to imply while George drives, glass of champagne in hand.

They meet their boss, Paddy Crowley ("rhymes with foully") in the joke shop where everything's gone down with Miss Dwyer and the King-of-All-Tears. The normal specislists can't hack it, so Division X have been taken out of storage.

The joke shop looks even more sinister in the light of day; grotesque pig masks, tarantula figures and what looks like a Ku Klux Klan hood in the background.

Crowley has a mysterious jar that has been appropriated from the Prime Minister. The substance in the jar scans and imitates thoughts. Six sees a naked woman, Crowley sees rabbits. Magic or Watership Down?

Cut to a glass-lampshaded room and a group of old women huddled over a ouija board.

The planchette starts moving, to the horror of the scam magician running it, and spells out "you're nicked, my son." As Six says, style never goes out of fashion.

In the bathroom, Flint is engaging in an old-school water-based interrogation. First the shower, then the toilet. The toilet works; Flint starts to get answers. Benny has been asked to help with a shoggoth, and starts gasping out "tekeli-li!" between dunks. Satisfied, Flint leaves after learning the identity of the van driver, but not before telling the old women at the ouija board "Gerald says will you stop bothering him, you grasping old cow. He spent the money on drugs."

Next, the gang confront the van's driver, a National Front psychic who's taken a Masonic oath. A little pressure applied from Flint and Eddie the Wigan Wanker opens up like a face smashed into a wall. Eddie leads them to Quimper, which is where the issue starts. But why, Division X wonder, is there such secrecy around the mirror he was paid to drive down from Scotland?

While waiting for Quimper, they talk about the Invisibles. Again, Six has the best line:
https://i.imgur.com/7zuSgJe.png

George is approached by the woman (Denise) from the start of the issue, who quickly tells him that "they're making the girls do it with aliens...Tracy from in here was half-mad when they found her..." but before she can say much more she's interrupted by Flint and Six returning from questioning Quimper. However, George has a tape Denise has slipped him.
https://i.imgur.com/wjrQJMW.png

Soon, however, they're held at gunpoint for the tape and Flint hands it over, to George's horror. Some quick work by Flint and Six gets them out of there alive, but without the tape.

Back at Division X HQ, Jack reveals he slipped them his Father Ted tape, and he's still got George's.

The tape shows a vampy-looking woman with sharp fingernails having sex with a woman "got up to look like Princess Di," however, the truth is soon revealed, and the woman is revealed as a shoggoth. This loops in to later strands of plot, mainly volume 3.

They return to the club, but Quimper has physically left the premises, leaving only Denise for him to speak through.
https://i.imgur.com/kwUWmTd.png

The envelope reveals the name of Sir Miles Delacourt, our old friend.

"Christ, we've had it. He's untouchable. This goes right to the top," Flint says, with dismay.
"Then, gentlemen, so must we. So must we," Six replies.

On first reading, you're like, how do these guys fit in with everyone else? But on later rereads there's lots revealed earlier than you think or left to simmer for vol 3.

Resuming with vol 2 tomorrow, will reply to previous posts as well!

Thanks for this!

I... don't love the Division X lads? I don't know if it's being male or just a half-generation older, I feel that generation of TV shows as a more solid and malign presence.

That said, while I draw the lines at their social attitudes, I do like a bit of police brutality if it's funny. And I love the idea that a big lad who's into all of the drama of the masons and the NF would also be into other drama in ways unacceptable to that lot.

I love Mark Buckingham, but I swear I saw one of the faces at the séance in Miracleman as well.

the woman is revealed as a shoggoth - I've been reading this as the twist is that she is Diana, and this is the attempt mentioned in #11 to breed a 'better' moon-child.

Two nice catches from Anarchy for the Masses - Quimper is dressed like John-A-Dreams, and the jar with the mysterious green substance appears to be similar to the ones in Harmony House. Also the statue of Churchill that they careen past in their commitment to drunk driving looks like Quimper in profile.

Lads, I'm so fucking bad at this and I can only apologise. The only thing that makes me feel less bad about it is the fact that, with the exception of Andrew F, you are too.

Volume 2!

Week 12, vol 2, issue 1: Black Science, Part One: Bangin' and issue 2: Kickin' (Black Science Part Two)

https://i.imgur.com/s2v9BQC.jpg

This full page reminder of what it's all about is overwhelingly text-heavy to the point I look at it with my 2021, stuck-inside-all-the-time eyes and think "Dr Bronner".
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I love that the volume opens with Jolly Roger in midair firing both guns. I love Roger a LOT and I will talk more about this as the volume goes on. Volume 2 is the patchiest of the three, but it's got some of my favourite parts, and Roger is a big part of that.

We go to the live context: Roger is fighting for her life in Dulce, New Mexico. If you're a conspiracy type that place already has meaning to you: it's the site of a conspiracy theory about the US government holding aliens and conducting top secret - it's Roswell in the desert basically.

As Boy says later this volume "She's good, that Jolly Roger." And she is. She's carving through the base's soldiers without sweating.

But like all hard women, Roger has a vulnerability and it's her cell, who get shot and captured right in front of her. We see Roger fight through to gaze at something as yet unidentified and murmur "It's real. It's fucking real."

Here's the title, and King Mob's dive seems to sync with Roger's leap at the beginning - not a coincidence. We see he's training, but there's fun in it too; he shoots a single balloon as he splashes into a pool. Robin asks him about "Nice and Smooth" as King Mob climbs out dripping. Robin's wearing a tshirt, knickers and a pair of boots and there's this easy intimacy between them that underlines, along with the guns, exactly how different this volume's going to be. Big budget bangs, guns, sex, glamour!

The rest of the cell has been apart from them for a year, and they are soon to reunite. In the meantime, "I think I've lost one of my fillings," is a fucking hilarious thing to say during a sex scene. Robin's wordless speech bubble suggests she thought it was worth it. Also, KM's head in her lap echoes the mannequin's head deja vu back in vol 1.

Here's our host/benefactor/patron??? Mason Lang. Big Bruce Wayne vibe off him.
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Mason gives us the backstory: he experienced an alien abduction as a child and has since been obsessed with the secrets of things. Luckily unlike the rest of us he's a billionaire, and can pursue his passions.

The liquid software reminds me of the Matrix downloading knowledge to people. Or vice versa, rather.

And then Roger shows up! And King Mob knows her! Now he gives us the backstory: she trained with him in North Africa and she leads a leabian cell called the Poison Pussies. I don't think our cell has a name, does it?

Robin is looking at a polaroid of a big fluffy cloud, but won't explain it. I appreciated this bit of sauciness:

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

Out in the garden, KM and Roger are practicing shooting and catching up. They have this great exchange about Jack.

Roger: This the kid everyone's talking about? Some people are starting to say he's the Maitreya, the future Buddha.
King Mob: I suppose if the Buddha grew up poor in Liverpool and swore a lot, he might be a bit like Jack.

The year is for the cell to rest and recuperate from the trauma at the hands of Sir Miles. Yet as KM admits earlier in the issue, the single day has scarred him.

Everyone else arrives! While Jack is flopping on Mason's chaise and talking about wanting to live on top of the Chyrysler building, Boy instantly picks up on the changed vibe between Robin and King Mob.
https://i.imgur.com/we6HkiO.png
Fanny, as usual, gets the best line.

Roger and Fanny eye each other suspiciously and the temperature drops about fifty degrees. Celsius.

Roger tells them then about the botched base invasion we saw at the beginning of the issue - and that the enemy has a cure for Aids. She then says that the virus itself was engineered. This is where I went off to Wikipedia and found this highly depressing fact about Aids conspiracy theories:

According to Phil Wilson, executive director of the Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles, conspiracy theories are becoming a barrier to the prevention of AIDS since people start to believe that no matter what measures they take, they can still be prone to contracting this disease. This makes them less careful when engaging in practices that put them at risk because they believe there is no point. "Nearly half of the 500 African Americans surveyed said that HIV is man-made. More than one-quarter said they believed that AIDS was produced in a government laboratory, and 12 percent believed it was created and spread by the CIA... At the same time, 75 percent said they believe medical and public health agencies are working to stop the spread of AIDS in black communities."

Horrible.

Back in Dulce, Colobel Friday enters the picture, talking about fucking with remote viewers who project into the base looking for aliens. And we have Quimper! Who quickly reveals he has a mole in the Invisibles' camp. Well.

Back with the crew, Mason is talking about one of his favourite things - film theories. Speed is about evolution, he says. Everyone listens hsalf-interested but they're really more interested in the food - particularly Jack, who tears through a whole portion of tortillas for sharing. And King Mob is upset by the gussied-up bowl of cornflakes he's served.

While Mason goes on about Invisibles coding in films, Fanny goes to the bathroom. The men's bathroom. Where she upsets a local hick.

The guy follows Fanny back to their table for a fight but underestimates King Mob, who's in no mood for this shit and he hasn't even had his breakfast dammit. I'd be cranky too.

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

After Fanny tells the guy he does have a lovely dick, he's had it, but KM knocks him on his arse without too much fuss and then they get the fuck out of town. Alas this happy ending has a stinger - Quimper is controlling Roger somehow. Great!

Issue 2 later this week, and hopefully 2 more on Sunday. AF, I will reply to you this week!

Lads, I'm so fucking bad at this and I can only apologise. The only thing that makes me feel less bad about it is the fact that, with the exception of Andrew F, you are too.

I'm still reading and enjoying Gyac, but haven't made the time for a reread myself, so don't have much to contribute! But keep it up...

I do remember finding the first arc of Vol 2 completely thrilling.

There's a pandemic on, neither of you should beat yourself up.

As promised (for once), here's issue 2.

https://i.imgur.com/6F3l8Zy.jpg

Kickin' (Black Science Part Two)

Where were we? Oh yes, on the big shiny enamel train to getting fucked, thanks to Quimper.

We open up with Oppenheimer solemnly intoning "I am become death, the shatterer of worlds." Mason's quote is actually slightly wrong, but never mind. Wikipedia says At an assembly at Los Alamos on August 6 (the evening of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima), Oppenheimer took to the stage and clasped his hands together "like a prize-winning boxer" while the crowd cheered. He noted his regret the weapon had not been available in time to use against Nazi Germany. However, he and many of the project staff were very upset about the bombing of Nagasaki, as they did not feel the second bomb was necessary from a military point of view.

Boo fucking hoo, you made your choice, and at least you got to live with it. Mason's arm outstretched towards the sun's rays recalls the flag of Imperial Japan; this and the Oppenheimer quote are our first serious indicators that his morals are a bit...flexible.

The crew is in New Mexico; the men are off their faces on top of a mountain, the women are down below fighting and planning. (Where is Fanny? With neither camp, hmmm.)

Boy and Robin both agree they don't trust Roger.

Back on the mesa, some of the chat when they're tripping is funny the way things are funny when you're off your face:
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The way they descend the hill is how I go down stairs when I've been drinking. Fully validate it.
https://i.imgur.com/IVNyjo3.png

We hear more about the structure of Invisibles cells for the first time since Edith talked to KM about it in Paris way back in volume 1:
https://i.imgur.com/cjWURk0.png

Quimper and Colonel Friday are talking at the base and Quimper demonstrates his "total control" over his puppets, by means of a certain code phrase.

Robin is waiting on the roof of a house for something. She won't tell King Mob (listening to Kula Shaker ffs) and he says he won't pry. He goes and she waits. We see what's drawn her attention: a little girl getting out of a car nearby. We see then that the girl is past Robin, in this universe, and that Robin remembers every word said at this seemingly meaningless encounter. This factors into her writing the story later - she comes across like an author lingering over a favourite line.

Anyway! Turns out Robin drew Air, which makes her the leader and she's got to dress the part. In flashes we see everyone else's draws: Fanny gets Fire and Boy is Spirit. That's important.

Lol @ Fanny:
https://i.imgur.com/u1bIM0m.png

The gang breaking in - King Mob, Robin, Roger, Boy - get in without much trouble, but King Mob is distracted by a cage containing a gleaming, formless substance. At the same time we see the porcelain train gliding by.

The backup team in the hotel room - everyone else - are listening to Mason theorise about Independence Day and then a ghostly form that resembles Quimper appears in the wall and hisses "fuck you all!"

Back in the base, King Mob can't tear his eyes away, Robin and Boy are freaking, and Roger gets hijacked. Shit's fucked basically, Boy otm.
https://i.imgur.com/LR0Keug.png

I've forgotten a lot of Volume 2, I have a vague memory that it's my least favourite, but we'll how that goes.

I definitely wasn't expecting it to get off to so much of a bang - into a Secret Government Base twice in two issues!

her cell, who get shot and captured right in front of her

She mentions later that two of them get out - it might just be Bobby that's gone.

The T-shirt that Robin's wearing is basically painted on - I understand Jill Thompson was pretty pissed off about what happens with Robin's sexiness in this volume.

I think the "small dining room" line is actually nicked from Batman-the-film!

It's an interesting bit of operational security that King Mob just says "A friend" got them over to the US when we know that it's Jim Crow.

King Mob: I suppose if the Buddha grew up poor in Liverpool and swore a lot, he might be a bit like Jack.

Yeah, this reminded me of Fanny's "What are we looking for, darling? A little lump of smouldering charcoal that says 'Fuck' every five minutes?"

It's worth noting that the year-long gap papers over the business of Jack (dressed here more or less as Keith Flint) and the rest of them actually becoming friends and team-mates - he's less of a standoffish figure than at the end of Vol. 1

It'll surprise absolutely no-one that Phil Jimenez was given tapes of Grant and his mates chatting shit while on LSD to write up.

Nothing more late-90s than film-student level enthusiasm for "my theories about films" including something from Tarantino, followed by lampshade-hanging it as like something from Tarantino.

(Except maybe the line "Drag Queens and Dykes hardly ever get along")

I wanted to go along with the re-read but my damn Invisibles trades have vanished. A year later and going through I think pretty much my entire collection and they are just GONE...

Makes you think. ;000

🐦[The Queen will be taking it easy for the rest of the year. https://t.co/lOBm0inhBx🕸
— Glasgow Live (@Glasgow_Live) November 15, 2021🕸]🐦

_Lads, I'm so fucking bad at this and I can only apologise. The only thing that makes me feel less bad about it is the fact that, with the exception of Andrew F, you are too._

I'm still reading and enjoying Gyac, but haven't made the time for a reread myself, so don't have much to contribute! But keep it up...