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

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

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

xp I never read the character that way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

xp Boris?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gulacy's generally fine; those look horribly rushed

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

Issue 4 then!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is not, but what do other people think?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Splitting this into two parts, brb...

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wiki also tells me:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm still into this!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We're back in the room.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What's up with the title glyph and 23?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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