Into the Supercontext part 13: The Invisibles Vol. 1 No. 13

(Image stolen from ComicVine.)

The Invisibles Vol. 1 No. 12

"Best Man Fall"

Written by Grant Morrison.  Art by Steve Parkhouse.  Colors by Daniel Vozzo.  Cover by Sean Phillips.

A Vertigo comic book published by DC Comics in 1995.  

This comic man.  This comic.
This comic is a soul crusher.

This issue is another of the stand alone comics and there is really no indication that it has anything to do with The Invisibles right up until the end when you find out it is connected to King Mob's group in the worst possible way.

This comic is a slice of life story that takes slices from one man's entire life.  The comic is about a man named Bobby Murray.  Morrison uses non-linear storytelling to show bits from his whole life and to move them around like jig saw pieces only to reveal the full image at the end.  And by non-linear, I don't just mean that he has moved scenes around, I mean that the narrative changes time and place in some cases from panel to panel.  Parkhouse's art is perfect for this thing.  His style is realistic and understated but the main character's face has exaggerated features (more like an Archie comic than a Vertigo comic) making it easier for that good ol' reader-onto-character projection that the good comics do so well.  They use some brilliant panel arrangements including black and blank panels for pacing.  It is one of Morrison's most powerful single pieces of storytelling.

The story is about the life of Bobby Murray.  He's from a working class English family.  We see him playing soldier as a boy.  We see him fighting as a real solider as a young man.  We see him as a sick young boy.  We see him as a wounded soldier.  Fireworks as a boy.  Bombs as a solider.  Bullied by his brother as a boy.  Shunned by his brother as an adult. Cared for by his mother as a baby.  At his mother's funeral.  We see him as a boy frightened by a gas mask.  We see him comforted by his teddy bear.  We see him fall in love.  Get married.  Have a child.  The child is ill with cerebral palsy.  There are good times with his wife and bad times with his wife.  And the bad times leave bruises.  It's the best of times and worst of times from panel to panel.

I've always thought that storytelling is at its most powerful when the story is told the same way we remember our lives.  That is how this comic works.  Thought inspires thought and they are all juxtaposed on the canvas of our memory in the theater of our mind's eye.  Morrison gives us the whole of this guy's life in little slices.  And you feel for him.  Or at least I do.  This guy is a good guy.  He's trying his best.  He has played by the rules.  Served his country, worked hard etc.  And life is still a mess.  Life is hard.  It's... well frankly, it is damned depressing.  I personally can see so many of my own life's disappointments in this thing that it's hard to read.  But they are every one's disappointments.  We all live, we all fall, we all die.

If this story were told in a linear order, it would end like this;  Our man Bobby is out of the army.  He's desperate.  His marriage is in rough shape.  He has a daughter that needs a lot of care.  He needs a job.  It seems like a great opportunity when he gets a job as a security guard.  Things might just get better.   But unfortunately, his security job is at Harmony House from the first story arc of The Invisibles.  And unfortunately, his fear of the gas mask image is realized when he crosses the path of King Mob in his crazy gas mask headdress.  And we see that poor Bobby turns out to be one of the guards King Mob kills in that first story.

Not a bad guy.  Just a guy trying to get by.

But this is not a linear story so we end not with a dead soldier or dead security guard.  We end with Bobby as a young boy playing soldier and playing at getting shot down.

"It's only a game."

Annotations at The Bomb.

So there we have issue 12 of volume one completing a year's worth of The Invisibles.  We've established the world.  The good guys.  The bad guys.  Next we look closer at some of the characters.  But first, letters in Invisible Ink.

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Here endeth the first year of THE INVISIBLES, with the magnificent artwork of Steve Parkhouse to play us out and into the coming Apocalypse.  And now, a Public Service announcement:

Best Man Fall, for those of you unfamiliar with the game, is played by children in Scotland and possibly elsewhere.  The rules are savage and simple- one person takes the part of a soldier and the other players represent his opponents.  The soldier is allowed to choose the imaginary  weapons used against him.  He then runs wildly at his opponents and is cut down mercilessly by gunfire or shrapnel or whatever.  The object of the game is to "die" in as spectacular, theatrical or brutally realistic a manner as possible.  When the original "soldier" has been killed, one of his opponents takes over, while the soldier gets to join the team of killers and the process repeats itself.  When everyone has had the opportunity to be killed by his peers, the winner is judged on the basis of his performance.  The winner is the player who "died" most convincingly.  Herein lies wisdom.
As usual, there were so many good letters that it seems criminal not to be able to print them all.  Rest assured that, even if you don't get a reply, every letter is read, reread, lovingly sealed in Mylar and buried in lead containers, to be read and enjoyed again at a later date by the hair-raising inhabitants of a nightmarish future world.  Meanwhile, here's this month's madcap selection.

(The first letter is a series of words.  Some of them in all caps.  Few of them are sentences.)

I'm so glad I'm not the only one, Jesse.  Yes, it is White, isn't it?

(The next is from a lady named Nina who claims THE INVISIBLES is the first proper comic she's read.  And she liked it.  Let's just take a moment t acknowledge that a lot of the letters that came into THE INVISIBLES were from women.  Whatever that means.)

Do I deserve such kindness?  Answers on a postman, please...

(Next we have a guy from Victoria University of Wellington's Dept. of Psychology.  Because of course.)

I thought I could be a real smart arse if I started off this reply by saying"thank you" in Maori, James, but my Lonely Planet guidebook to New Zealand has betrayed me and doesn't have "thank you" in its lists of useful words and phrases.  I can, however, now say "mangarakau" which means "plenty of sticks,"  apparently.  Join me now as we try to envisage the cavalcade of situations wherein that particular phrase would be more useful than a simple and courteous, "thank you"...

(The next letter asks Morrison if it is the crack or the heroin and if what they say about Peter Milligan is true.)

It has to be the crack.  All the way from ceiling to floor.  
P.S.  Generally, yes.

(The next letter is from another lady and talks about I Ching and stuff.)

You weren't the only one who noticed the incorrect hexagram, Nerissa.  I'm sure this embarrassing slip couldn't possibly have been my fault, so we'll lay the blame squarely on the doorstep of design wizard Rian Hughes, with his cavalier disregard for the purity and sanctity of ancient tradition.

(And finally a long one from London talking at length about the madness of issue number 9 and Ken Kesey, Terrence McKenna and... Oasis?)

Curiously enough, Anthony, my thoughts on heroic mythology, drugs, evolution and Spandex costumes are explored at length in the ever-upcoming Flex Mentallo series, which attempts to create a post-post-post-modern theory and practice of Transcendental Superheroics.  THE INVISIBLES will also continue to deal with the forward surge of the Evolutionary Current in all of its multicolored manifestations, of course, so I can guarantee plenty more shite where the first load came from.
As for the stuffed dog, I'm afraid that's a sensitive subject with me; my work on stuffed dogs has been callously overlooked in the past and it hurts to pick at those old wounds.  Where were the awards for the heartwarming portrayal of Sheba, the stuffed German Shepherd in DOOM PATROL #45, for instance?  And no one even got to see my stuffed dog magnum opus GORILLAS A-GO-GO, in which Rex the Wonder Dog, trundled obliviously through a story of treachery, psychedelia and lost love.
Oasis?  They're The Rutles of the 90s, arent' they?  Which is fine by me.  
-Grant.


*********

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

p.s. Say you want a leader but you can't seem to make up your mind. I think you'd better close it and let me guide you to my twitter feed.

p.p.s. Let's pretend we went to high school together on facebook.

p.p.p.s. Google + is another place you can read the same thing I posted here.

p.p.p.p.s. I'll tumblr for ya.

Into the Supercontext part 12: The Invisibles Vol. 1 No. 11

(Image stolen from ComicVine.)

The Invisibles Vol. 1 No. 11

"Royal Monsters"

Written by Grant Morrison.  Art by John Ridgway.  Colors by Daniel Vozzo.  Cover by Sean Phillips.

A Vertigo comic book published by DC Comics in 1995.  

Another of the one-shot stand alone run of stories.  This one focuses on the behind the scenes of the bad guys.  The Outer Church.  We get in deep with one of the series' primary baddies, Sir Miles and he is as despicable as they come.  This comic is a horror comic complete with a monster and haunted castle.

We start off in Glamis Castle.  "Ancestral home of the Earls of Strathmore for over 600 years. Glamis is a living, breathing monument to Scottish hospitality; a place of enjoyment, reflection, laughter and wonder for all. The castle has witnessed more than 600 years of history and we take great delight in sharing the many stories, secrets and intriguing tales that surround it."  In 1995 I'm reading this comic and I don't have teh inronets so as far as I'm concerned Glamis Castle may as well be the castle in a Disney movie.  All the same to me.  But yeah, real place and probably important to people that care about that sort of thing.  But according to this comic book (and teh intronets), that place is bad biscuits.  And who am I to argue?  I'm just going to assume that this comic book about a place I'm probably never going to go to is 100% factual.

In the castle a butler rolls a cart of meat (human meat) into a room and places it in front of a giant mirror.  The butler does some secret hand gestures, the mirror does some crazy water ripple magic mirror stuff and out walks a cloaked monster.  The monster is part man, part Swamp Thing, part Ood from Doctor Who.  A super creepy mute thing that dissolves and consumes the huge carcass.

(Image stolen from Comic Vine.  Good resource that Comic Vine.)

The butler has been at this job for years.  He's one of the only people willing to feed this monster.  He's beginning to think the that the monster likes him.

Then we get some nice happy fox hunting with our pal Sir Miles Delacourt.  Only Miles is not our pal and the foxes are people.  Sir Miles will be a major player in The Invisibles as the series progresses but for now all that is important is that he's nobility, he's rich, he's white, he's Secret Intelligence Service, he's a Freemason, he was behind trying to recruit/enslave/use Dane/Jack Frost back in Harmony House in the first story arch and he wants nothing more in life (at this point in the story) than some alone time with King Mob and a blow torch.

So, in America.  Bored rich white dudes buy sports franchises and watch people from minorities and the lower classes beat the brains out of each other in huge venues the public paid for and broadcast it for the world to see.  In the UK, rich white dudes are more low key.  They dress up for a fox hunt, hop on some horses and go hunt and murder people.  Sir Miles sees this as doing his part to bring down the poverty rates.

Latter, Miles and some other rich dudes are hanging about he castle.  The talk about how disappointed the are in Diana, the Princess of Wales.  (Who was still alive  at the time but would be getting divorced from Charles about a year after this comic came out.)  They are angry that Di has failed to produce for them a "Moonchild".  Some sort of super being that was to take over the throne.  Oh, well.  You can't have it all.  But, the baddies still have a backup plan.  They have another Moonchild.  (Foreshadowing alert!)

Back to the butler, Jeremy, he's feeding the monster again and we learn that our man is a secret Invisible planted in the castle to kill the monster!  But he can't do it.  He has too much empathy for the monster.

In some basement area, another servant is reading a horror book by a "Kirk Morrison".  Our man Jeremy hears some yelling from the homeless people imprisoned there.  He sees a pink haired girl.  The same pink haired girl that was with Dane back in the first arc.  The girl is his daughter Kate!  Oh nooos!

At our next fox people hunt, Sir Miles has let the monster out to have some fun of its own.  It is revealed that the monster is the Moonchild.  The monster is royalty.  This monster will be king!  Well, dang, it was right there in the title all along wasn't it?

Jeremy's daughter Kate is on the run as part of the hunt.  Jeremy tries to save her and show her away to escape but the Moonchild is in the way.  He tries to explain that the Moonchild likes him and the are safe but too late.  Sir miles and the gang show up.  He knew Jeremy was an Invisible all along.  And even worse, Kate was in on it and set her dad up.  Screw you dad!  But, Miles has the girl killed anyway (thanks for you help kid) and Jeremy ends up on the dinner cart for the Moonchild. Served alive.  But Jeremy is not scared.  He still thinks the monster likes him.

And there ends a fantastic episode of the Twilight Zone where we learn that the British royals are breeding space monsters that live in mirrors.  Years later, Grant Morrison would be awarded the MBE.   And speaking of creepy Royal shenanigans, the Queen did have hidden family.

Annotations at The Bomb.

This issue's Invisible Ink column shows us a much more downbeat Morrison than normal.  Probably in part because of the death of a cat.  It happens.  Or maybe because at this point in the series and in the 90s in general, the letter writers have caught onto this idea that it's cool to write some bat shit crazy stuff and send it to a Vertigo comic.  In other words, it has totally gone off the rails.  There was literally a rivalry between the letter writers of Sandman, Preacher and The Invisibles to see who could be more bat shit crazy.  This is a pre-internet thing that happened. 

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Many thanks to the stalwart John Ridgway for his fine, classical work on this, the very first issue of THE INVISIBLES without any swearing!
Me, I just got back from Australia, with the redred dust of the antipodean desert still clinging to my Caterpillars.  After a couple of weeks of beautiful sunsets, loveable lizards and the magnificent stars of the Southern Sky, I'm home to no money in the bank, the sad death of Princess - much-beloved cat - and no entirely convincing reason not to end it all with a stiff fistful of vitamins.
But then again... There's always the letters!

(The first letter is mostly praise.  The guy thinks the comic is fun!  Just like Superman and tells Morrison to "Stay outtasight!")

Cranky?  Me?  Nope.  I'm just too depressed to reply this month, John.

(The next letter stars off "Hello, fellow fuckers," and is all downhill from there.)

Just say No, readers.

(The next letter starts talking about the Cathars about half way through and that is the exact moment I stopped reading that letter.)

Who am I?  I'm the writer you created to produce a comic book so uncannily faithful to our own thoughts and experiences that it would serve as a zenlike trigger, bootstrapping you into an illuminated state where you suddenly became  even more aware of the overwhelming number of coincidences and synchronicities that hold the world together, this awareness leasing to a growing understanding that the Universe is nothing more than a construction, a simulation, a laboratory in which souls, for want of a better word, are tested, etc... etc...
And you're one of the readers I created for the same reason...

(Next, "The Consumer Queen" writes in to let the letter reading people of the 90s know that she is a "letter-column virgin" and is bored and wants people to writer her.  See, they used to totally put full street addresses in these letters columns back in the 90s.  I'm positive that this lady has since been murdered.)

Please write to Consumer Queen.

(Then we have a letter that is at least ten million words long.  This guy thinks he has it all figured out and explains it in detail.)

I don't think there's much I can add to that, Simon.  Um... Yes.  Yes!  Everything is connected on every scale, and there is no such thing as coincidence except for the Adrian Henri line which is, unless maybe I remember it from my Chelsea-booted Mersey days...
This is the best letters column in comics, really...

Next Issue:  In the vast and never-ending cosmic struggle of Good vs Evil what makes anyone want to be a bad guy?  And are bad guys born or made?  One man's life may hold the key in the last of our three one-off stories as Steve Parkhouse brings his artistic wizardry to "Best Man Fall" in a month's time.
-Grant

*********

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

p.s. Say you want a leader but you can't seem to make up your mind. I think you'd better close it and let me guide you to my twitter feed.

p.p.s. Let's pretend we went to high school together on facebook.

p.p.p.s. Google + is another place you can read the same thing I posted here.

p.p.p.p.s. I'll tumblr for ya.

Into the Supercontext part 11: The Invisibles Vol. 1 No. 10

(Image stolen from ComicVine.)

The Invisibles Vol. 1 No. 10

"Season of Ghouls"

Written by Grant Morrison.  Art by Chris Weston.  Colors by Daniel Vozzo.  Cover by Sean Phillips.

A Vertigo comic book published by DC Comics in 1995.  

(Image stolen from OC Weekly.)

And now one of the more memorable and a personal favorites of the entire run of The Invisibles.  The Jim Crow issue.  Or the Voodoo issue.  (Most all I know about Voodoo is from comic books and that one episode of The Incredible Hulk where David Banner had to fight an evil Voodoo priest but, from Morrison's notes in the letters column and a glance at wikipedia, I'm guessing he's blending West African and Haitian Voodoo references in this thing.)  This issue is a stand alone one-shot that really stands on its own.  It focuses on the Jim Crow character who is more than interesting enough to carry his own comic.  There are only a couple of references to The Invsibles at all.  It is explained that Crow is an Invisible but this story is all his.  And it is great.

This is basically a sorcerer versus zombies horror comic but with a lot of crazy 90s twists.  The zombie twist is that they are people that have been killed by a special blend of crack cocaine which allows the evil white dudes that created the crack to control the zombies' bodies and use them for horrible things like murder and rape. Because evil rich white dudes love the murder and rape.

The sorcerer, Jim Crow, is twisted in all kinds of amazing ways.  He's a bit like Brother Voodoo.  If you've never had a chance to read any Brother Voodoo I highly recommend any of the issues Gene Colan drew.  Brother Voodoo was the black voodoo version of Doctor Strange and he fought zombies.  And it was terrific.  Jim Crow is part Doctor Strange, part Jimi Hendrix, part Michael Jackson, part Ice Cube and part Willy Wonka.  And he fights zombies too.  But really, he's fighting rich white dudes.  Like a lot of Morrison's work, this comic has a lot to say about class.  Jim Crow's name itself is a reference to segregation and when Crow takes down the baddies the turns the tables and paints them up like a minstrel show.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  The story happens in Chicago and is the first issue of The Invisibles without anyone from the UK in the cast.  We start off with a young woman being murdered and raped by some young men with some very zombie like personalities.  One with a scorpion on his tongue!  Then next we get Chicago cops investigating the scene.  Through the magic of police investigation exposition we find out that the rapist was the girl's brother and, stranger than that, we find that the attackers were dead before the event happened.  Dead of crack overdoses.

Next we have a naked old lady performing Voodoo rituals (including a video tape of Jimi Hendrix) to summon up "Papa Guedhe".  (Probably a version of Guede.)  The lady is a grandmother to the dead kids.  I'm guessing "Papa Guedhe" is some sort of Voodoo spirit or god that can help her.  What she gets is Jim Crow in a crazy tuxedo jacket, a top hat, high top tennis shoes, skull codpiece and a talking crow on his shoulder.  Jim Crow tells her that he will take care of it.

(Sidenote:  Today is Jimi Hendrix's birthday.  No coincidences.  Magic!  He would have been 70.  Hendrix had African, Irish and Cherokee ancestry.  Hendrix's great grandmother was a slave named Fanny.)

In Jim Crow's regular life, he is a voodoo rap star.  (Part of the group the "Root Doctaz".  Sidenote:  This comic features and ad for a new CD from the group The Roots.  Sometimes magic just happens people!)  He uses a television showing his own images as a rapper to enter a crazy voodoo world where he shoots magic mirror liquid out of all his orifices.  Then he picks up a puddle of magic mirror like it was a stick-on hole in a Road Runner cartoon and enters the hole.

In the hole world he encounters giant caterpillars and good and bad UFOs.  He feeds of the teat of a good UFO and sucks it dry like a limp balloon.  Yum.  Crow then enters the Scorpion Palace to get to the bottom of all the bad business.  He transforms his face into a horrible spider thing and faces off against the god of that realm, a giant scorpion named Baron Zaraguin.

He finds out that Zaraguin had given the evil rich white dues the magic for the zombie crack.  (We also learn that King Mob owes a debt of some sort to Baron Zaraguin.  Foreshadowing alert!)  Crow cuts him a deal to free the souls of the young people that had been murdered in exchange for more powerful souls.

He is of course talking about the evil rich white dudes who are about to use their zombie surrogate bodies to murderape the old lady.  Jim Crow appears and ehFs those dudes up real bad.  He blows holes through them with his super cool bone gun.  (Which turns sexual thoughts into death.  Fun!)

Back in the evil rich white dudes' board room, there is confusion as some of them begin to die.  Then Crow appears to wipe them out.  When the police arrive the evil white dudes are dressed and painted up in minstrel garb and are feeding on the guts of their evil white dude leader, zombie buffet style.

This comic has so much great stuff in it.  Jim Crow is an amazing character that I really can't do any justice to in this post.  Every word that comes out of his mouth is amazing.  The story has zombies, voodoo, police procedural stuff, crazy Doctor Strange alternate realities complete with giant talking scorpion, talking crows... just everything a good wholesome American comic book can contain.

Chris Weston's art is perfect for this issue.  It is so slimy and gooey and bubbly and gross that it is beautiful.  In a lot of ways, this comic is a one issue American version of the story Weston and Morrison would tell again years later in The Filth.  As a stand alone horror comic book, this thing is just perfect.

Annotations at The Bomb.

As we enter into this issue's Invisible Ink column I am mindful of all the hubbub on teh intronets about Grant Morrison versus Alan Moore and vice versa.  I'll probably talk about it more this weekend in my Other Comics News Parade-O-Links but for now I'll just say this;  I've been reading Grant Morrison comics for decades now.  If Grant Morrison steals then tells you who he stole from.  The man seems to be obsessed with knowledge and the sharing of knowledge.  If someone thinks Morrison is not giving credit where credit is due, then they just have not been paying attention.  Case in point...

*********

For elements of this month's story I am indebted to Divine Horsemen - Maya Deren;  Voodoo and Hoodoo - Jim Haskins;  Mama Lola - Karen McCarthy Brown;  The Voudoun Gnostic Workbook - Michael Bertiaux;  and personal researches in the creepy world of les Mysteres.

And now, because you demanded it...

(The first letter is about Morrison's previous mention of Wilhelm Reich.)

I'm afraid I can't promise to explain the true nature of the conspiracy until the very last issue of this title, Sky, but the second year of story lines will examine a number of different interpretations of the forces behind the conspiracy.
My Reichian therapy is still ongoing and I'm finding it fascinating and productive.  Reich's ideas seem to me to be eminently sane and thoroughly practical, and I believe that 21st-century medicine will accord him the respect and renown he deserves.

(The next letter is full of praise and talks a bit about Lord Fanny.)

Tragically, this month's letters were sent to me by fax and the photograph of Mason appears as no more than a black oblong on the page, otherwise I'd have stuck him up there along with Cat of the Month "Silver" on my Cat's Protection League calendar.
Much more on Lord Fanny in the upcoming "Sheman" story arc which begins in issue #13, Cody.

(The last letter is full of praise and rambles on about Doom Patrol and asks about Flex Mentallo.)

The Flex Mentallo series shouldn't be too long in coming, Sven.  The first issue has already been drawn by Scottish artist Frank Quitely.  Very possibly the most beautiful artwork to grace one of my scripts.

NEXT ISSUE: Remember those vicious homeless-huntin' hombres from #2?  Well, they're back!  In the second of our one-off stories we discover why Diana split from Charles, meet the Thing that haunts Glamis Castle and find out what happens when you mate with ultraterrestrials.  One man's nightmares become 23 pages of fun in "Royal Monsters" next month!
-Grant

*********

Next time the baddies go a huntin' humans. 

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

p.s. Say you want a leader but you can't seem to make up your mind. I think you'd better close it and let me guide you to my twitter feed.

p.p.s. Let's pretend we went to high school together on facebook.

p.p.p.s. Google + is another place you can read the same thing I posted here.

p.p.p.p.s. I'll tumblr for ya.

Into the Supercontext part 10: The Invisibles Vol. 1 No. 9

(Image stolen from Comic Vine.)

The Invisibles Vol. 1 No. 9

"23: Things Fall Apart"

Written by Grant Morrison.  Pencils by Jill Thompson.  Inks by Dennis Cramer.  Colors by Daniel Vozzo.  Cover by Sean Phillips.

A Vertigo comic book published by DC Comics in 1995.  

Let's talk about this comic as it existed in its original print form for a bit.  First of all, the cover.  Another strong cover by Sean Phillips.  Looking at it again I'm noticing for the 1st time the weird texture in the red border of the comic.  Like a Bible cover?  I'm also noticing that border on the left side of the cover which appears to be on all of the first volume covers, most of the volume two covers and a few of the volume three covers.  Were all Vertigo books like that in the 90s and why am I just noticing that Marvel stole that design with it's Ultimates line?  But back to the cover itself.  We see a hand missing a finger tip just like Jack's hand  and Mob is in a cool pose shooting at us but he does not look confident and sexy like normal.  He looks scared.

Inside the comic we notice that the series is now being printed on a nicer paper stock.  It is whiter than the first 8 issues.  The colors are brighter.  The printing is clearer.  The paper stock is thicker.  I'm a proponent of using the cheapest materials possible but this comic looks good.  And it better because DC jacked up the cover price from $1.95 to $2.50 between issues 8 and 9.  This comic has an advertisement for new music from Mike Watt and Chris Duarte Group.  There is an ad for "DC Comics Online" on America Online.  "If you have a computer and a modem, order your free DC Comics Online starter kit..."  1995 everybody.  There is also and ad for Grant Morrison's great Kill Your Boyfriend.

This comic is the first of a short run of what are basically stand alone comics.  Evey issue of The Invisibles has hints and details that build the overall universe but these next four issues are not a part of any one story arc like the previous eight issues.  But we are still going to read them with both eyeballs.  This first issue of that run wraps up some lose ends form "Arcadia" and gives us a flash back to flesh out the world.

 The comic starts in the past of 1992 with King Mob and the John-a-Dreams character (Remember?  The one we were told Dane/Jack was replacing?) in a Philadelphia church.  Mob has fuzzy hair.  They are looking for the Hand of Glory but they find these gross plant monster things.  John says that they are just vehicles.    That "they build them from Earth plane matter to allow themselves some kind of physical presence here".  Who are they?  Then John opens a door never to be seen again.  (Well, never say never in a James Bond movie or in comics.)

Then we are back in the time travel windmill.  Jack is still ranting about his finger and quiting but no one takes him seriously.  Mob is worried and has a sense that something is wrong.  Mob is worried about there being a traitor that has revealed their time travel codes.  Could it have been John-a-Dreams or someone in the group?  (Subplot alert!)   Fanny and Ragged Robin lament the ruination of Fanny's dress at the hands of Orlando.  But Mob was right, something is wrong.  Ragged Robin's psychic powers confirm that there are Myrmidons outside planning an attack.

The attack sequences here are really neat and unconventional.  On one side, we see the Myrmidons planning their attack and they are not standard action movie dudes.  They actually seem amateurish and clumsy.  And Morrison shows Mob's team in a different light as well.  Normally in action movies or comics, you don't see how the good guys are going to turn the tide until they do it and it makes them look like gods.  Here, Morrison shows Mob's cell try to figure out what to do.  They are actually on the brink of panic and Thompson gets to draw some really funny faces as the gang stresses out.  It makes Mob's team seem like amateurs but more importantly it makes them seem real. Like real people that signed up for this crazy war for the future of mankind.  And like real people, they can freak out when the threat of getting dead shows up.

In the chaos, Jack steals Mob's car and takes off.  The bad news for Jack is that Mob has booby trapped his car and it will blow up in a few minutes.  Mob and his crew get the upper hand on the Myrmidons by playing dead and Mob pretending to be Orlando.  By the time they get through the baddies and find Mob's car it has exploded.  When Mob instructs the gang to look for Jack, Fanny says "What are we looking for darling?  A little lump of smoldering charcoal that says 'fuck' every five minutes?"  Don't be silly Fanny, Jack says fuck every five seconds.

But Fanny has mad skills and finds Jacks trail.  Mob says that they will have to call in The Wolf  Mister Six.  But the baddies have already gotten to Jack and to save himself he is forced to kill a man for the first time.  We end with Jack soaked in tears yelling "AAAAAAAAAA!"  We feel ya bro.  Now Jack is a killer.  Can he leave The Invisibles now?

Annotations at The Bomb.

Next we meet Jim Crow.

But first, letters in another Invisible Ink column.  In this one were are getting into some of the fallout from "Arcadia" including an editorial rebuttal from Stuart Moore.

*********

"SCHOOLGIRLS TORCH TEACH
-- friends laugh as she turns into fireball--"
The Sun - Jan 24, 1995

Quote of the Month courtesy of Britain's liveliest newspaper.  Ahhh - seems like only moments ago I was welcoming Jill Thompson and Dennis Cramer onto the book and now here I stand, waving a snot-stained hankie, as they up sticks and disappear over the horizon for a while, leaving Hotel Invisibles to stand untenanted until the arrival of a guest number four, the Grand Old Duke of Madness, Chris Weston,.  You have have seen Chris' work on the recent "Twilight of the Gods" issue of SWAMP THING and, if you have, you'll understand my own enthralled anticipation.  Meanwhile...
This is The Letters!

(The first letter mentions seeing a The Invisibles poster on the Roseanne show.  In the 90s, Roseanne was like Big Bang Theory but only with quality.)

I made it onto Roseanne!  Subversive or what?  Glad you're enjoying this comic, Brian.  (Couldn't make out your second name, so I've called you "Mercer."  Hope you like it.)  I don't remember putting in any Led Zeppelin reference, so it must have been pretty durn subtle.

(Next a long one with some questions.)

And he's still standing, I'm afraid.   What will you do now...?
King Mob is a master assassin, yes.  Ragged Robin and Lord Fanny are both "witches" for want of a better word.  Boy is a martial arts expert and other-wise quite normal, and Jack Frost is more important than anyone is even aware.  It's true I havent' gone into depth with the characters yet, Jay.  This first year of the book has been set up as a rapid tour around the world of The Invisibles; the opening story arc, for instance, showed the induction of a new member, the second concentrated on an atypical team mission, and the next three one-off issues, will shine spotlights on various other aspects of the Conspiracy, before we return to the trails and tribulations of King Mob's team.  The second year will feature interlinking stories focusing on each of the core cast in turn.  You should know them all fairly intimately by then.

(Then a letter from a dude that really liked Animal Man.)

More of my guts, and everyone else's, I hope, Marc.  Interesting point about ANIMAL MAN.  It occurs to me when I read it that in a team book on breaks one's personality into little pieces - one for each of the main characters - whereas the protagonist of a solo book tends to get a bigger slice of the cake and slightly more depth.

I felt the "cultural walk through" of the "Arcadia" storyline was necessary in order to set up the historical and thematic framework of the series, but I agree with you that it's time to spill some innards - which is why the next major storyline will be pushing our heroes to the physical and emotional limit.
The Shelley/Byron debate surprised me because I started out on Shelley's side but ended up siding with Byron.  Some combination of both would seem to be the sanest response to living and dying in the modern world, whether that's the modern world of 1818 or 1995.

(The next long letter asks about Bluebeard.)

Ah!  Lovable old Gilles de Rais - rapist, child murderer, necrophile, black magician...

(The next letter talks about the "Mature Readers" logo on the cover and what it all means.  He talks about hearing that Vertigo editorial had objected to the Marquis de Sade material in "Arcadia".)

I know how you feel, Alex.  I can't think of any genuinely mature comics published regularly by a mainstream company.  Some of the Vertigo one-shot books have reached beyond the usual strictures but, by and large, comics are still written and drawn for children and young teenagers (which isn't necessarily a bad thing).

And I'm not happy about the changes made to the Marquis de Sade story, but I chose to publish THE INVISIBLES through Vertigo because I like the editorial staff, I like being paid for my work and I like reaching a much wider audience than I would if this were a small press or self-published venture.  The trade-off against that is that I'm bound by the rules and regulations that govern what is and is not acceptable to be a mainstream comics publisher.  I knew that when I went into the deal, and, in the case of INVISIBLES #7, I decided that a little compromise was worth it to get the story out to a mainstream audience.  those of us who have elected to work with big companies as opposed to the small press can only push at the barriers.  I don't think we can be expected to represent the cutting edge of comics.  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.  Having said that, you can now read the word "fuck" in a mainstream comic, and who knows what walls may yet come tumbling down in the future?

[ADDITIONAL EDITORIAL NOTE: Just to give a little perspective from the other side of the fence - the "mature readers" label has never been a license for DC to publish absolutely anything.  We have to be confident that we can stand behind the material, especially when it's of a controversial nature and might cause a risk to stores that support us.  In the case of INVISIBLES #7, there were some questions that were settled with, in my view, fairly minor changes.
It's worth noting, Alex, that your letter was written before the issue was published, in response to an article in the fan press.  Why not write us again and let us know what you thought of the story itself?
And, of course, Grant's opinions regarding the relative maturity of today's comics don't necessarily reflect those of the management.  Or the mgt, for that matter.
-Stuart

*********
Ah, so good to see that there through good times and bad, DC comics editorial will always be there to tell the customer that not only are they wrong but their opinion does not deserve to exist.  Gives ya warm feeling right where the heart ought to be.

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

p.s. Say you want a leader but you can't seem to make up your mind. I think you'd better close it and let me guide you to my twitter feed.

p.p.s. Let's pretend we went to high school together on facebook.

p.p.p.s. Google + is another place you can read the same thing I posted here.

p.p.p.p.s. I'll tumblr for ya.

Into the Supercontext part 9: The Invisibles Vol. 1 No. 8

(Image stolen from Comic Vine.)

The Invisibles Vo. 1 No. 8

"Arcadia Part 4: H.E.A.D,"

Written by Grant Morrison.  Pencils by Jill Thompson.  Inks by Dennis Cramer.  Colors by Daniel Vozzo.  Cover by Sean Phillips.

A Vertigo comic book published by DC Comics in 1995.  

"My public persona was punk to the rotten core. Outspoken and mean spirited, I freely expressed contempt for the behind-the-scenes world of comics professionals, which seemed unglamorous and overwhelmingly masculine by comparison to the club and music scenes. My life was rich, and my circle of friends and family was secure enough that I could afford to play a demonic role at work. Reading interviews from the time makes my blood run cold these days, but the trash talk seemed to be working, and I was rapidly making a name for myself. Being young, good-looking, and cocky forgave many sins, a huge hit British superhero strip did the rest and proved I could back up the big talk." Grant Morrison on 80s Grant Morrison.

First of all, I started typing up this post sometime last week.  Then my kids got sick and other things happened and the next thing you know it is today.  Which, as I type this, is November 20th.  Which happens to be Jill Thompson's birthday.  I've probably not said enough about how strong Thompson's art is in this "Arcadia" story arc.  So, yeah, it is great.  Thompson is great.  (And I've never even really read Sandman.)  I've been a big fan for a long time..  And the good news is she did some more stuff in The Invisibles that we will get to later.  (She was nice enough to autograph all of my issues of The Invisibles in which her art appears and it's a pretty good stack of comics.  She's very nice.)

But, back to issue 8 of volume one titled H.E.A.D.  Head stands for "Hedonic Engineering And Development".  So, there's that.  Our Sean Phillips cover has the head of John the Baptist (or is it?) hooked up to some  steampunk gears and junk.  The head appears to be alive.  It is creepy.

Inside the comic, things get more creepy.  The first thing we get is a page of a guy in bondage gear talking directly to us the reader.  Or at least it feels like he's talking to the reader.  He's looking right at us and we don't see anyone else that he is talking to.  He's drunk and he's talking about the world crashing into the "barrier of the 21st century".  He's talking about a bus and wondering who is driving.  The Magic Bus?  The Further bus?  The bus from Speed which came out probably not long before Morrison was writing this comic?  He talks about how guys in the 60s like Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey could see the road ahead and how he fell for all of it and when he woke up and came down it was 1985.  It is drunken rambling but in six panels it pretty much sums up what it was to be looking at the future while standing in 1995.

(Image stolen from flickr.)

The 60s were a big deal in the 90s folks.  It was hip and cool to get into the music and the movies and the fashion but more than that, the cultural leaders of the 60s were mostly all still alive and they had mostly all sobered up and become pop culture philosophers spreading their ministry through VH1 Behind the Music documentaries, movie cameos, reunion tours, Oliver Stone movies, hardcover biographies and the college lecture circuit.  Timothy Leary was still alive when this comic book came out.  He died just a year later.  Leary spoke at my college around the time this comic book came out.  The 60s were before I was born but it was more like a different country than it was a different time.  It was tangible.  You could meet people from there and hear stories about it.  You could get souvenirs from there.  You could touch it.  It's different now.  It's like that different country is still out there but you can only access it via a very expensive Disney cruise ship.  The souvenirs are harder to come by and all that is left is the cheesy mass produced junk.  Leary is dead.  Half The Beatles are dead.  The Stones  are still going but who can afford to see them?  (A=Rich jerks.)

And this guy in this bondage gear on page one of this comic is telling us about it.  Or at least we think he's talking to us until we turn the page and see him in submission to a dominatrix.  He is in a San Francisco S&M fetish club and he's been talking to our pals King Mob and the Marquis de Sade.  Or at least their astral projections.  (Did Doctor Strange hang out in S&M clubs between panels of his Marvel comics.  I'm going to assume that yes, Doctor Strange hangs out in S&M clubs.)  "He was talking about revolutions, or THE revolution.  I suppose there only is ever one." says King Mob.

The Marquis loves the 90s.  "Look at them!  I was sent to the bloody Bastille for doing in private what these bastards are free to do publicly."  Later, Mob and de Sade are on the golden gate bridge and Mob explains that they need the Marquis to help them create the blueprint  for the future of humanity.  The Marquis says he only wants his own perfect world.  Mob explains that in the future they are building, everyone gets what they want.  "Everyone including the enemy."  (Alan Moore would give us a similar future in Promethea years latter.)  Mob lets a silver balloon free to rise into the night sky.  It looks like a sperm cell swimming among the starts.  (I think this is what the literary types would call foreshadowing.)

After that, Mob, Boy and de Sade get their 90s rave on.  Much talk about smart drinks, the world speeding up and spinning out of control, virtual reality and much dancing.  Mob and Boy have to get back to the rest of the gang but they are going to leave the Marquis in San Francisco.  The Marquis is happy to stay.  "And I'm making so many wonderful friends."

Back in the Rennes-le-Chartre Cathedral, Ragged Robin still has to deal with those nasty Cyphermen and the head of John the Baptist. The head sings "You Spin Me Right Round" by Dead or Alive.  It talks about things speeding up also.  But Robin is too smart for all of this.  She knows that the head is just speaking glossolalia.  Speaking in tongues.  You hear what you want to hear.  Robin does not need the head so she leaves.

In the other way back times Percy Shelley is still a mess over the loss of his child. He's talking to Byron but Byron turns out to just be his imagination.  Percy realized that utopia exists only in our minds.  When last we seek Percy, the throws his writing to the wind and runs to the embrace of his wife, Mary Shelley.

Back in the T.A.R.D.I.S. windmill  Lord Fanny and Jack Frost still have to deal with that Orlando creep.  Jack manages to shoot Orlando but it barely hurts him.  Orlando is equally surprised that his slash of Fanny's chest did no harm.  Fanny shows that all he hit was the latex and silicon of his fake breasts.  "I'm not half the woman I used to be.  Thanks to you."  says Fanny.

Fanny summons up the powers of Aztec god, Mictlantecuhtli.  This actually terrifies Orlando.  He is a demon and knows when he's outmatched.  Jack knife's Orlando's hand to a wooden beam.  Orlando explodes and melts into beams of light and is cast into hell.  Don't mess with Lord Fanny.

Mob, Boy and Robin finally make it back to the windmill.  The gang has all made it through this "Arcadia" story arc alive but Jack has had it.  Jack thinks time travel and getting your finger clipped off is bad biscuits and he wants out.  "You can take your fucking Invisibles and shove them up your arse!"   Meanwhile, outside, some unrevealed baddies have the windmill in their sights.

In the last two pages we are under a bridge.  There is a troubled young man (who reminds me a lot of a similar young man from Flex Mentallo) contemplating an offer.  The offer is from the Marquis de Sade.  The Marquis pulls up in Mercedes with a teenage girl chauffeur dressed in black vinyl.  "She smells of fresh rain and sex."  He gets in the car with the Marquis to join his brave new world.  He is offered the blank badge.  "He tells me that I have left the houses of the dead and entered the land of the truly living.  I am to be no particular age, no particular sex.  I am to be fluid, mercurial.  He tells me I must slough my name and my past as a snake sheds it's skin."

"Mercurial".  Just like exactly like Negative Man on the moon back in Doom Patrol in 1992.

And with that we end the "Arcadia" story arc and what I think would be the first The Invisibles trade paperback "Say You Want a Revolution".  It was a hell of a ride.  It literally took a lot out of me.  I think this is at least the fourth time I've read it and it still lays a smackdown on the brain.  It is a challenging work.  The time travel plot with Orlando as the baddie is really just a frame through which to view four comics full of philosophy.  The first story arc introduced us to the world of The Invisibles through Dane's eyes.  Now, in this second arc, Dane is Jack Frost and he is given a horrific education.  This arc was too much for a lot of people.  It was too much for some people at DC Comics as well. We will see the repercussions of that in our next few Invisible Ink columns.

For me, I love it.  It's great fun.  Time travel, demon assassins, 90s rave culture and just crazy ass stuff in general.  But mostly I love it and I return to it because it makes me think and makes me ask questions.  Questions I still don't know the answers to 17 years later.  But I still enjoy asking them.


Annotations at The Bomb.

Next, "Things Fall Apart".  Like they do.

But first, letters in another Invisible Ink column.  In this column, Morrison hands over some of the responding to someone named Magdalena.  Like ya do. 

*********
(The first letter is from a dude that calls Morrison, "Grant, m'luv".  He asks grant to never devote himself to normal serious storytelling.  Congratulations dude writing a letter in 1995!  Mission accomplished!)

Not surprisingly, I suppose, I tend to concur with your comments on "weird stuff," Joshua.  all I can do is write about the things that delight, amuse or scare me senseless.  If those things seem "weird" to people then... umm... funny, I totally agree with you but I can't really seem to think of anything else to say...
[Hi Josh! Magdalena here - Grant's just gone to feed the cats so I'm briefly taking over the helm.  Actually, dahling, you've really put us on the spot -  you're so nice and intelligent and well-read that all we can say is, "You're fab, we like you."  Please write again, but promise to be more contentious next time because Grant likes the bad boys best.  Back to Mr. Sensitivity for the rest of the replies...]

(The next letter is all hugs and kisses and a guy named Mickey writes "Chin-chin". Recreational drug use was pretty rampant in the 90s people.)

My pleasure, Mickey.

(Then a long letter about how some people don't get Morrison's plots but of course the letter witter does because he is super clever.)

I'm no philologist but... I believer that the charming and poignant word "arse" is one of those original, shamelessly earthy Anglo-Saxon words, like "fuck and "c**t" (we still can't say that one), which seem to cause so much distress these days.  "Arse," as far as I can figure it, was streamlined to the harsher Mass by Americans drunk on the heady wine of Revolution.  Like you, Matthew, I don't give a fuck about the overuse of so-called swear words.  IN hsi wonderful book Quantum Psychology, Robert Anton Wilson deals very effectively and amusingly with the inexplicable taboos surrounding "fuck" and its brothers ans sisters in the despised family of "filthy" words.
As for traveling across the globe, it can be done very cheaply and certainly isn't the exclusive province of the rich.  Round-the-World air tickets start at around $1000 but it's possible to cirumnavigate the Earth on a great deal less money if need be.  I also tend to stay in inexpensive hostels or nightmarish, bug-infested hovels, which keeps the costs down and ensures that you meet more interesting people.  In places liek India or Southeast Asia, you'll find that you can live like a bleedin' lord for a few dollars a day.  Cheap holidays in other people's misereeee!  Which is to say, I'd advise anyone to make the effort to travel.
E-mail?  No idea.  I just got a modem at Christmas and it's still in the box.  I can tell you loads of great things to do with boxes, if you like.

(The next letter is from a lady who is not impressed with the drub use in the comic.)

Right on, sister!
The case of John Lennon is an interesting one since (and I think most people would probably agree with me) Lennon's most disciplined, inventive and musically revolutionary work was produced during a period when he was either high on speed, cannabis or LSD (with the real fireworks happening when the and the other Beatles discovered acid around the time of the "Revolver" album).  To portray him as a psychedelic deity seems to me to be a perfectly appropriate tribute to the man who wrote "Tomorrow Never Knows,"  possibly the most psychedelic song ever (and that tow-page sequence was, as I've explained before, largely autobiographical.  That's how Lennon appeared to me during a specifically-designed ritual and that's how I chose to portray him in what is, after all, a work of fiction.)  I certainly don't think that drug use can make a person creative or rebellious, but if that person is already creative, then some drug experiences can provide new ways of looking at things and new inspiration.  It doesn't happen all the time, but to deny that it happens at all is to rewrite the history of art, music and literature.

(The next is form another lady who is more supportive and talks about agreeing with Morrison's ideas on choosing who one wants to be.)

Definitely.  Why be one person when you can be two, or a hundred?

Seeya in thirty, pilgrims!
-Grant

*********

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

p.s. Say you want a leader but you can't seem to make up your mind. I think you'd better close it and let me guide you to my twitter feed.

p.p.s. Let's pretend we went to high school together on facebook.

p.p.p.s. Google + is another place you can read the same thing I posted here.

p.p.p.p.s. I'll tumblr for ya.

Into the Supercontext part 8: The Invisibles Vol. 1 No. 7

(Image stolen from Comic Vine.)

The Invisibles Vo. 1 No. 7

"Arcadia Part 3: 120 Days of Sod All"

Written by Grant Morrison.  Pencils by Jill Thompson.  Inks by Dennis Cramer.  Colors by Daniel Vozzo.  Cover by Sean Phillips.

A Vertigo comic book published by DC Comics in 1995.  

First, a few random things about this comic book as it exists here in its original print form;  The inside cover ad is for Mat Wagner's Sandman Mystery Theater.  The copy reads "ALL HE WANTS IS HIS POUND OF FLESH".  Nice.  There is an ad for Beavis and Butt-Head VHS tapes.  "Stick it in.  Press play."  There is an add for new CDs by The Stone Roses and Rancid on sale at Musicland and Sam Goody.  The Vertigo subscriptions ad (remember subscriptions?) includes Animal Man, The Books of Magic, Hellblazer, The Invisibles, Sandman, Sandman Mystery Theater, Shade and Swamp Thing.  And the inside back cover ad is for a new ongoing monthly series titled Preacher.  "IT'S THE TIME OF THE PREACHER.  GOD HELP US."  Indeed.

Let's talk about this cover a bit.  First of all, it is lovely.  And creepy.  A gloved hand holds a branding iron.  We'll see a branding iron in the comic.  A woman's hand holds a rose from which petals are falling.  We will see that inside as well.  This is another cover that is more in line with what we could see in the genre section of a book store than the comics racks of the 90s.  Which, again, is part of what turned out to be a winning strategy for Vertigo in appealing to an audience beyond that which was buying four copies of each new issue of Spawn.

Inside the comic... sweet mammity hambone, this one is a doozy.  In our last issue, time travel went wrong and King Mob's team is split up.  In this issue we get four different narratives.  Mob, Boy and the Marquis de Sade are sent one way, Lord Fanny and Jack are sent back to the windmill,  Ragged Robin is sent to... wait, we'll get to that later and we have a fourth story with the our dear friends the Shelley family.

But the opening pages of the comic are a hardcore brain donkey punch.  We start with four characters.  A banker, a judge, a bishop and a duke.  Money, law, religion and the ruling class.  And they inform us that they have locked themselves up in a castle with twelve women, eight men and another sixteen people they call "lost souls". (The "lost souls" are young and make this exponentially more creepy.)  The four men consider themselves gods and plan on doing every evil, nasty, disgusting, forbidden, taboo and just plain awful thing they can think of to the people they have trapped in there with them.

So, um, who the F are these guys and what the F is going on right?
Well, it turns out that when the time travel went wrong that Mob, Boy and the Marquis ended up inside the "Optic Sphere" which has taken its image off the  postcard of "Arcadia" by Poussin from the previous issues.  But it expands from there and they realize they are trapped in one of de Sade's stories.  Mob explains that there is nothing for them to do but play it out and treat it all like a dream until they find the exit.  The Invisibles are all about finding exits.  So, the group has no choice but to enter the castle of de Sade's story and watch how things play out with the banker, the judge, the bishop and the duke.  And it is going to be horrific.  Even de Sade can't believe his eyes.  What we are seeing is a graphic re-enactment of de Sade's "120 Days of Sodom" but I'm reading this for the first time in 1994 or 1995 and I've never read anything by the Marquis de Sade at that time.  And this is hardcore stuff.  People are branded.  People are raped.  One of the four wants to impregnate a boy.  Another wants to smear his feces across the face of the moon.

The Marquis tries to explain that his story was not trying to inspire this kind of thing but that he was condemning the hypocrisy of his age.  But Mob gives him an elbow nudge and ribs him into admitting that he does kind of enjoy it.  After many horrible scenes are shown, hinted at or spoken about, the four archetypal monsters conclude that none of it has been enough.  That they need more.  That they need a fifth.  They need a general.  Then a box appears.  It is some sort of bomb obelisk with one big red button.  A youth is forced to push the button with their tongue and things dissolve/explode to white.  Nothingness.   The four men represent the evils of the age of reason but the reader is also painted as guilty for just for having been a witness.  This is the worst case scenario ending of a world driven by an ideal of reason and the pursuit of knowledge.  Is this a condemnation from Morrison or just things playing out to a logical conclusion?


Mob, Boy and de Sade find themselves outside in melting snow.  The bad dream has ended.  They find a car and Mob tells de Sade that he is going to love San Francisco.

Jack and Lord Fanny are back in the time travel windmill where last issue ended with creepy evil jerk face Orlando cutting off Jack's finger tip.  Orlando eats the finger!  Oh, man that guy is the worst!  But Lord Fanny ain't having none of that and jabs Orlando in the eye with her high heeled shoe.  Jack finds a gun but it won't fire.  Orlando slices Fanny's chest and we leave that part of our cast with Orlando about to attack Jack.

The Shelley's, Percy and Mary are in Venice.  Their child has died.  Percy is devastated but Mary is strong.  While Percy was dreaming, his child was dying.  But Mary is the link to the future here.  She invented the future with Frankenstein.  She can move forward.  On a Venice bridge a flower petals drop from Mary's hand into the water below.

Ragged Robin finds herself at a strange church.  A strange man is playing chess.  (The Blind Chessman.)  He explains that they are Rennes-le-Chateau.  The man explains that the church was restored with particular attention paid to Knights Templar legend.  This is before The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail was plagiarised into The Da Vinci Code.   An inscription on the church reads, "This Place is Terrible".  But Robin enters anyway.  Inside she finds some Cyphermen baddies.  They have found the oracle they had been searching for.  There on some sort of steampunk machination sits the head of John the Baptist! 

Annotations at The Bomb.

And now letters in another Invisible Ink column.

*********

So that was the "controversial" issue #7.  No big deal, huh?
I'm always surprised by the number of letter writers who want to see lists of my reading/reference material.  I tend to resist these requests, on the grounds that they provide nothing more than the opportunity for me to flaunt my intellectual bona fides, and show off how clever and well-read I an pretend to be.  However, since this particular storyline has been unusually heavy on boring research, since I still only have a couple of letters in on #4 and since so many people have expressed a genuine curiosity about the background to this stuff, I've decided to break my own cherished rule.  Here then, for the interested out there, is the ever-loving' list of books I read, reread or consulted for the "Arcadia" storyline.

The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail - Michael Baigent, Richard Liegh and Henry Lincoln
Poetical Works - Shelley
Shelley - The Pursuit - Richard Homes
Bloody Poetry - Howard Brenton
Ariel - Andre Maurois
The Illuminoids - Neal Wilgus
Aztec and Maya Myths - Karl Taube
Words of Fire, Deeds of Blood - Loivier Bernier
The Guillotine and the Terror - Daniel Arasse
The Marquis de Sade - Robert Del Quiaro
The Passionate Philosopher - A de Sade Reader - Selected and Translated by Margaret Crossland
Dark Eros -  Thomas Moore
The Sedian Woman -  Angela Carter
Sexual Anarchy - Elaine Showalter
When the Whip Comes Down- Jeremy Reed
Mary Shelley - Muriel Spark
Secret and Suppressed - Edited by Jim Keith
Teh Voudoun Gnostic Workbook - Michael Bertiaux
The 120 Days of Sodom - The Marquis de Sade
The 120 Days of Sodom (play) - adapted by Nick Hedges
Coleridge: Early Visions - Richard Holmes
Monsterous Cults -  Stephen Sennitt
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test -  Tom Wolfe
On the Bus - Ken Babbs and Paul Perry
Cyberia - Douglas Rushkoff

So there you go.  Now it's time to let some readers get a word in edgewise.
-Grant Morrison

(The first letter is from a guy from Texas that is clearly on drugs.  He apparently got some stuff signed by Morrison at San Diego in 94 and thought that was rad.  He asks about Moonshadow.)

I imagine the rights to MOONSHADOW probably were and still are owned by the creators, David, and my apologies for not speaking to you at San Diego.  I'm usually jet-lagged and brutally hung over at these events and only speak to people if they speak to me first.  How I long to be capable of turning out the easy chat and carefree bandinage that Neil Gaiman fans are so familiar with, but sadly, I'm destined to live and die as a surly junkyard dog who can offer no words of advice and encouragement to my readers.  Maybe next time...

(I think the record shows that we here in 2012 know that Morrison got better at the whole con thing.  Or at least good enough to be the main event at his own show.   The next letter is from "Spunkmeyer" and is full of words and thoughts on Morrison's previous works like Arkham Asylum, Sebastian O and The Mystery Play.  )

Nice to hear from you again, Spunkmeyer.  It's always heartening when somebody notices stuff like the Joseph Campbell archetypal-patterns material.  Any thoughts on Dane's recently Wounded Hand, then?

(The next letter writer is a bit disappointed but plans to hang around.  What a soldier!)

Two letters in two issues, Mark!  You must be up for one of those acronymic awards Stan Lee used to hand out.  Sorry to disappoint you with #4 but there's no going back now.  I'm pleased to hear that you'll be hanging around, however, and you'll be happy to know that Dane won't always occupy center stage.  Unlike you, however, I'm very fond of the character and still intend that this series will chart his progress towards... um, "enlightenment."  He's only shallow because he's had to be in order to survive, bu surely self-destructive, thoughtless, rude and offensive little yobs are very bit as deserving of information and illumination as anyone else.  More so, perhaps.  Surely you dont' believe that "arcane knowledge" is the sold province of sensitive, well-brought up, middle-class boys with glasses and treasured paperback copies of The Lord of the Rings on their shelves? (Hi, Tim!)

(The next letter is from H. The Wolf.   The Wolf says some words including "No bread, no art".  The 90s Vertigo letters pages everybody!)

The happiest years of my life are right now, Mr. Wolf.  I was poor for twenty-seven years and it was crap.  Nor do I believe souls can be sold.  Who's selling?  Who's buying?  Whats the currency look like?  The most decadent luxury of all is to lie back in comfort, gently flagellating oneself for having sold one's soul.  In fact, I simply must try it later this evening.
Knowing you know all this, saying it anyway, filing up space.

(The next letter is from a guy who is writing his first letter to a comic book in ten years.  And he threatens to write poetry.)

And when you've written it, send ti to SANDMAN.  They can't get enough poetry in that letters column.  There's probably loads of my stuff you've missed but I don't have space for a checklist.  Some kind soul may be able to send you one.

*********

Tune in next time as we wrap up "Arcadia".

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

p.s. Say you want a leader but you can't seem to make up your mind. I think you'd better close it and let me guide you to my twitter feed.

p.p.s. Let's pretend we went to high school together on facebook.

p.p.p.s. Google + is another place you can read the same thing I posted here.

p.p.p.p.s. I'll tumblr for ya.

Into the Supercontext part 7: The Invisibles Vol. 1 No. 6

The Invisibles Vo. 1 No. 6

"Arcadia Part 2 Mysteries Of The Guillotine"

Written by Grant Morrison.  Pencils by Jill Thompson.  Inks by Dennis Cramer.  Colors by Daniel Vozzo.  Cover by Sean Phillips.

A Vertigo comic book published by DC Comics in 1995.  

 "I don't believe in average people.  SANDMAN does very well, and while I recon it's unlikely that anybody, including I suspect Neil himself, will ever repeat the SANDMAN sales-with integrity phenomenon, I'd like to think that there are enough readers both within the traditional comics audience and outside to keep something like THE INVISIBLES on its feet." -Grant Morrison.

Hi friends.  I had some further delays but I'm back at it, hoping to get caught up and on track to get through the complete The Invisibles before the end of the world

Again, I'd like to look at this cover for a bit.  Its a nice one by Sean Phillips.  A bit more subdued than other colors.  Very minimal pallet.  It reminds me of the type of cover you would see on a mass market mystery/thriller novel at a book store.  I think it is a very good representation of the changes DC and specifically Vertigo were making in the 90s as to how they package and market their books to audiences outside of the super hero devotees.  Look at how the creators names are listed in much the same way you would see names printed on a genre novel.  And the simple design that looks about the same from 10 feet away from a book store table as it does close up.  DC was way ahead of the competition as far as this kind of design sense goes.  They were ahead then and they are ahead now.  Although I'd argue that they have lost a lot of their good taste in the past couple of years.

The color is a bit drab compared to the very colorful team that makes up The Invisibles and compared to previous covers but it is focused on one of the bad guys (a Cypherman) and I think it does sell that idea of ethereal mystery that the series is trying to sell.  Morrison is still building the world at this early stage and the cover does a good job of playing up the horror elements.

The comic picks up where issue 5 left off in the shadow of the guillotine in France 1793.  "Christ!  I always forget just how bad the past smells," says time windmill time travel King Mob.  The team begin looking for clues as to the whereabouts of a local agent that will lead them to the one they have been sent to extract.  Mob reveals that it is non other than the Marquis de Sade that they are there to rescue.  "Oh terrific, first time travel.  Now S and M." says Boy.

The local agent Etienne summons the team through some incantation and is shocked when they show up.  "Somehow it's always a surprise when it actually works isn't it?" says Mob.  Local guy takes them in a horse drawn wagon which allows some exposition as he gives them a tour of Paris.  Etienne tells them about some crazy monsters eating the bodies out of the mass graves.  The Invisibles don't have to wear period clothes because people's brains just fill in the holes and make them think they fit in.  Very Doctor Who of people's brains.  But Jack Frost's brains are not working so great.  All the time travel business is making him sick.

Next we get a beautifully drawn Jill Thompson page of Mary Shelley traveling in a coach and reading a letter from her husband Percy.  A mysterious dark haired man hands her an apple. Shelley.  Poets. Apple. Beatles. Etc.

Back in Paris, Etienne is talking about the Invisible College.  Morrison is developing that idea that The Invisibles have been around forever and there are ways for individuals to join without having been recruited.

Meanwhile back to the future of 1995 (or 94 maybe) bad guy Outer Church agent Orland is being creepy and disturbing nailing dogs to doors, putting heads on lamp posts, wearing someone else's face and playing "Pop goes the Weasel" on a record player.  Like ya do.  Orlando gets a call about the time travel wind mill.  Uh oh!

Back in Paris past Etienne goes on about all the weird goings on and creatures and Mob finally pieces together that the monsters are Cyphermen.  (Rhymes with Cybermen.  Again with the Doctor Who.)  Cyphermen are "humans who've been modified by high frequency subliminal transmissions" to be loyal to a hive mind.  Bad biscuits!  But don't worry, Mob is excited because it gives him a chance to play with his cool looking space ray gun he calls the "Ghostbuster".

Then we are finally with the Marquis in some awful hospital where the living share beds with the dead.  The Marquis is short and sixteen years in prison have left him fat and angry.  "Hurry? By fuck, citizen!  I'll hurry for no man!"  Thompson's drawings of the Marquis are great in this thing.  The Marquis stumbles upon three Cyphermen feasting upon some poor naked dead lady's guts.

Back in the coach with Mary Shelley and the mysterious stranger.  The stranger has recently read Frankenstein.  The stranger talks about the Invisible College.  Shelly has heard about them and says that she heard they were behind the revolutions in American and France.  (This scene is years after the revolution where Mob's team is hanging out.)  The stranger says that "we need our poets and dreamers" and wishes Shelley to be strong and take care.  He never reveals his name.  Let me just say that these Mary Shelley pages are beautifully drawn and colored.

Back in Paris the Marquis is watching the Cyphermen feast on naked lady guts.  They want de Sade to join them in the feast but he is paralyzed with shock.  "I've imagined the human body, the female body, subject to every outrage... but this... to see this... here... real..."  But just as the Marquis gives in and begins to touch the lady buts, the door busts open from the force of King Mob's book as Mob yells "Bollocks!"  Mob uses his Ghostbuster gun to take out the baddies.

Mob explains that they need the Marquis (or at least his astral projection) to come with them to the future.  He reveals that the naked lady was never a lady at all but a rat.  He had been manipulated by the Cyphermen.  But no time to be freaked out.  Ragged Robin is getting bad vibes.  Something is wrong.  They need to go.  They focus on the Arcadia postcard to go back but it all goes wrong.  Instead they find themselves stuck in the postcard!  But that's not the worst part.  Orlando is in the time windmill with their real bodies.  We see panels featuring the guillotine chopping off heads mixed in with panels showing Orlando cut off the tip of Jack Frost's finger with garden shears.  Eww.

That scene has a lot of impact.  Something about chopping off a finger tip that is more tangible than more serious injuries or even death in fiction. Yep, there is no way around it.  Orlando is bad biscuits.

Annotations at The Bomb.

Up next "120 Days of Sod All"!

But first, letters in another Invisible Ink column.

*********

(This Invisible Ink column starts off with a letter as opposed to Grant himself.  The first letter talks a lot about the Illuminati and Roshaniya and asks some questions about Morrison's plans with these secret societies.)

Thanks for bringing the Roshaniya to my attention, Rux.  These days, Islam has become so thoroughly identified with fantatical fundamentalism that people tend to forget the Mohammedan religion's mystical and esoteric fringes.  One of the upcoming story lines for the third year of this book brings in a great deal of material from the Moslem world, and I'll definitely add the "illuminated Ones" to that spikey eastern stew of a story arc.  As for catching the buzz, I think that's exactly what I'm doing as the following letter, one of an outrageously high number of very similar letters, may indicate:

(The next letter is full of praise, Knights Templar and how aliens may want to take Morrison away.  Standard stuff.)

They want me, they're gonna have to go through my ultra dimensional scorpion sorcerer pals, and those fuckers can rip the shit out of any ol' ET.  Like I said, I've had tons of letters from people telling me that they've been working on, or planning to publish, projects very like THE INVISIBLES.  Perhaps it's just millennium fever, but something major seems to be stirring in the human collective unconscious.

(A long letter full of praise.)

Blab all you like, Greame.  This here's Blab City.

(The next letter has some praise then pulls out a soap box to talk about hypocrisy and chaos and evil and all that jazz.)

I don't think we're evil at all, Alexander, just stupid and scared.  And some of us have more power than stupid and scared people can be trusted with.

(The next letter talks about how dense the series seems to be and asks some questions.)

Fnord yourself, although I wouldn't agree that Dane was brainwashed.  As far a I'm concerned, breaking down buried psychological blocks (such as those surrounding Dane's long-suppressed feelings for his absent dad), is a de-conditioning strategy rather than a brainwashing technique.  I can vouch for this, as I've had it done to me quite recently by a therapist using a system based partly on the theories of Wilhelm Reich.  (Reich believed that traumatic and emotionally-unresolved experiences are stored in the body where they manifest themselves in the form of recurring health problems, such as asthma, migraine, chronic muscular armoring, and even cancer and heart disease.  Release of the tensions locked up in our bodies "unfreezes" the withheld emotions and we re experience and integrate the original hurtful event.   This leads to a release of bound-up energy with corresponding feelings of well-being and bliss.  It also breaks the cycle of pointlessly repetitive behavioural and emotional patterns.  Incidentally, these and other ideas were considered so dangerous by the U.S. government that, in 1956, the had Reichs's laboratory destroyed and his books burned.)  As for the "average" reader, who needs him?  I don't believe in average people.  SANDMAN does very well, and while I recon it's unlikely that anybody, including, I suspect Neil himself, will ever repeat the SANDMAN sales-with integrity phenomenon, I'd like to think that there are enough readers both within the traditional comics audience and outside to keep something like THE INVISIBLES on its feet.  I could be wrong, of course.  It wouldnt' be the first time.  Having said that, the "Arcadia" storyline is as "difficult" as the book will get, so if people can handle this, the shouldnt' have too much trouble with the upcoming feast of gore, guns, bombs, and metaphysics.
Answers:
1) The King Mob character appeared in some of my earlier published and unpublished work under his real name.  He has since shaved his head and taken to wearing clothes you may have seen in fetish magazines like Skin Two and .
2) I'm not allowed to answer this one for copyright reasons (Crazy Jane belongs to DC, Ragged Robin belongs to me), but I'm sure you've thought long and hard about what happened to Kay Challis after she left Danny the World.
3) Blank badges are cheap and easy to make.  Go to it.
4)  They're not Lobster Men and they're not from Venus.

(And the last letter is a long one from Charles J. Sperling and is mostly praise with a few bits to point out how clever he is.)

Julie!  Julie!  Charles J. Sperling just called you an orangutan!  Hope you enjoyed your trip to Southeast Asia, Charles.  I spent a couple of weeks in Malaysia when I was doing my round the-globe bit but i was mostly in Penang and Singapore on the buses and trains. By now, you'll have realized that the hunters didnt' kill Dane because they were King Mob's group pretending to be hunters.  (For more on the real homeless-hunters, as seen in #2, you'll have to wait for the upcoming INVISIBLES #11.)  As for the couple preparing the Hand of Glory, they'll make a lot more sense when you've read the story arc "Sensitive Criminals" next year.  It may help to tell yo that the "Hand of Glory" scene was not the first appearance of those two in these pages.  One of the problems of doing a long story in monthly parts is that some elements may appear to be arbitrary and inexplicable but, res assured, everything will come together if you keep reading.
-Grant.

Next Issue:
Cruelty, perversion, degradation, innocence defiled, and vice triumphant.  Welcome to the wonderful world of the Marquis de Sade as the Invisibles endure "120 Days of Sod All."
-Grant
*********

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

p.s. Say you want a leader but you can't seem to make up your mind. I think you'd better close it and let me guide you to my twitter feed.

p.p.s. Let's pretend we went to high school together on facebook.

p.p.p.s. Google + is another place you can read the same thing I posted here.

p.p.p.p.s. I'll tumblr for ya.