tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80295989919216814632024-03-05T15:28:58.894+00:00Counting to 2012John Norhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08096540803723805612noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8029598991921681463.post-77341152569048863872012-08-22T19:32:00.000+01:002016-01-18T21:02:09.323+00:00The Invisibles volume 2 issues 11 to 16<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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-- <span style="color: red;">These issues are</span>:<br />
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<i>The Invisibles</i> volume 2...<br />
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The arc-title of #11 and #12 and #13 is <b>AMERICAN DEATH CAMP</b>, #14 and #15 and #16 are an arc without an overall title.<br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Collected edition</span>:<br />
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These are the last 3 issues of the fifth collected edition "Counting to None" and the first 3 issues of the sixth collected edition "Kissing Mr Quimper" - pictured.<br />
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(Bolland's cover for the sixth collected edition is again new to the series.)<br />
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<span style="color: red;">ANALYSIS</span><br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Quote of the month</span>:<br />
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<span class="st">"I'm an international freedom fighter and a photogenic witch, darling. I'm the most glamorous creature you'll ever meet."</span> - Lord Fanny.<br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Panel of the month</span>:<br />
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Issue #11, page 9 – The "Rex 84 Presidential Directive".<br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">[5]</span>:<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">[6]</span>:<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">[7]</span>:<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Annotations</span>:<br />
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Issue #11, page 12 – "And which side are you on?"<br />
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Issue #11, page 14 – Venus.<br />
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Issue #12, page 13.<br />
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Issue #12, page 21.<br />
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Issue #13, page 6 – auto-critique.<br />
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Issue #13, page 21 – BARBELiTH.<br />
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Issue #14, page 14. <br />
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Issue #14, page 15<br />
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Issue #14, page 20<br />
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Issue #14, page 19<br />
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<b>AMERICAN DEATH CAMP</b> is a three-part arc, issues #11 and #12 and #13, all with issue titles "Counting to (something)".<br />
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<b>Counting to None</b> is issue #11.<br />
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v2#11 page 9 – one of the Panels of the Month, The "Rex 84 Presidential Directive".<br />
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v2#11 page 12 – one of the Panels of the Month, "And which side are you on?"<br />
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v2#11 page 14 – one of the Panels of the Month, Venus.<br />
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<b>Counting to Five</b> is issue #12.<br />
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v2#12 page 13 – one of the Panels of the Month, [the hand is an entry point].<br />
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v2#12 page 21 – one of the Panels of the Month, [summon the Kings by mid-99, their plan].<br />
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Counting to Ten is issue #13.<br />
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(Why "Counting to Ten" after "Counting to Five"? One meaning is the revelation of Cell 23 - five Invisibles to add to the five Invisibles of Ragged Robin's cell.)<br />
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v2#13 page 6 – one of the Panels of the Month, auto-critique.<br />
v2#13 page 21 – one of the Panels of the Month, BARBELiTH.<br />
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<b>Only Lovers Left Alive</b>, <b>The Philadelphia Experiment</b>, and <b>Scorpio Rising</b> form a three-issue arc.<br />
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(These 3 titles also being titles of films or planned films of counter-culture cinema.)<br />
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<b>Only Lovers Left Alive</b> is issue #14.<br />
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v2#14 page 14 – one of the Panels of the Month – [sometimes I get tired]<br />
v2#14 page 15 – one of the Panels of the Month – [I want to be a number]<br />
v2#14 page 19 – one of the Panels of the Month – [the most glamorous creature - you don't even believe a word].<br />
v2#14 page 20 – one of the Panels of the Month – [is this what you want?]<br />
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<b>The Philadelphia Experiment</b> is issue #15.<br />
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<b>Scorpio Rising</b> is issue #16.<br />
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<span style="color: red;">BEYOND THE PAGE</span><br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Further reading</span>:<br />
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John Norhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08096540803723805612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8029598991921681463.post-40192068263482472342012-07-22T19:15:00.000+01:002016-01-18T21:02:23.139+00:00The Invisibles volume 2 issues 5 to 10<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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-- <span style="color: red;">These issues are</span>:<br />
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<i>The Invisibles</i> volume 2...<br />
<br />
The issues #5 and #6 and #7 are an arc without an overall title and the arc-title of #8 and #9 and #10 is <b>SENSITIVE CRIMINALS</b>.<br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Collected edition</span>:<br />
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These first six issues of the nine issues of the fifth collected edition "Counting to None" - pictured. <br />
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(Bolland's cover is new for this. It imagines the five of Ragged Robin's cell as some sort of pop group, like the Beatles or Queen, recalling those groups' imagery.)<br />
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ANALYSIS</div>
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-- <span style="color: red;">Quote of the month</span>:<br />
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"I believe in the modern world, Mr Skat. I believe in the automobile and
the Charleston and the dry martini. I believe that nothing we know will
ever be the same again" – Edith.<br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Panel of the month</span>:<br />
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Issue #9, page 13 – "It can't be. It can't be".<br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">[5]</span>:<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">[6]</span>:<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">[7]</span>:<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Annotations</span>:<br />
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Issue #5, page 11 – Gideon & Jacqui dressing up as "Gideon Stargrave" & "Genivieve".<br />
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Issue #5, page 12. <br />
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Issue #5, page 13.<br />
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Issue #5, page 16.<br />
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Issue #6, page 2 – "What IS that thing?"<br />
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Issue #6, page 7 – "They never were aliens"<br />
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Issue #6, page 12 – "Ey. All right, love?"<br />
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Issue #6, page 21 – "Our universe is a hologram formed by their overlap" [3 panels]<br />
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Issue #7, page 16.<br />
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Issue #8, page 13.<br />
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Issue #8, page 22.<br />
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Issue #10, page 4.<br />
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Issue #10, page 5, top panels.<br />
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Issue #10, page 5 last panel.<br />
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Issue #10, page 7 – the same scene different perspective.<br />
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Issue #10, page 20 – "Tom's a-cold" <br />
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A three-issue arc of Time Machine Go, The Girl Most Likely To, The Sound of the Atom Splitting.<br />
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<b>Time Machine Go</b> is issue #5.<br />
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v2#5 page 1 – "JAPAN: NOW. 1945" - the idea that all time is one, again.<br />
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v2#5 page 3 – "SAN ILDEFONSO PUEBLO: NOW." - it doesn't say "1997" (the date, going by v2#8) perhaps as the original comic was publised in 1997.<br />
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v2#5 page 5 – what the television news is saying of the Aum Supreme Truth cult in the top two panels is actual news. <br />
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v2#5 page 8 – So King Mob has sent Dane and Hilde "on a mission, yeah?" (To retrieve the Hand of Glory.) How does King Mob know about it, what does he think it is, why does he want it? These six issues (starting with this issue) seem to make it clear King Mob has no clue about what it is. However, volume 1's issue #9 has a flashback to King Mob and John A Dreams chatting about the Hand of Glory, and "Universe B", so he does have some sort of clue?<br />
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v2#5 page 10 – "Christ! He's making this bit too far-fetched..." – King Mob is reading a comic, and the cover looks very much like the cover of this issue of The Invisibles, v2#5.<br />
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v2#5 page 11 – one of the Panels of the Month – left handside of the page what would appear to be Gideon & Jacqui dressing up as "Gideon Stargrave" & "Genivieve". Gideon has spiky hair in the last panel like ENTROPY IN THE UK.<br />
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v2#5 page 12 – one of the Panels of the Month – the PKD quote is from VALIS.<br />
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v2#5 page 13 – one of the Panels of the Month – "you're not cool, you're not a hero" - the comic The Invisibles has been suggesting this for a while.<br />
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v2#5 page 15 – the Magic Mirror fluid at the top of the page. <br />
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v2#5 page 16 – one of the Panels of the Month – compare the description of the idea of 'jump "UP" from the surface of timespace' to the King-of-All-Tears rotating the supersphere in the final issues of volume 1.<br />
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v2#5 page 17 - so it is Takashi's grandfather who "makes the final fold" of the origami, it isn't sent back in time as Takashi thinks and says (on previous page), but rather created by his grandfather. Will this ever be explained?<br />
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<b>The Girl Most Likely To</b> is issue #6.<br />
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v2#6 page 2 – One of the Panels of the Month – BARBELiTH in the sky.<br />
v2#6 page 3 – "Go. We've been scanned. We can pass" - BARBELiTH turning green for "Go."<br />
page 4 - a small background detail, but hugely significant, is the zeppelin above the Invisible College. It suggests that when those zeppelins appeared in the sky of during DOWN AND OUT IN HEAVEN AND HELL that Jack and Tom were in the BARBELiTH universe.<br />
v2#6 page 5 – "Tom O' Bedlam showed me, way back. I think he showed Jack how to do it too".<br />
v2#6 page 7 – one of the Panels of the Month. "They never were aliens. They're antibodies ..." Compare to Jack's "alien abduction" issue in DOWN AND OUT IN HEAVEN AND HELL and Quimper being taken to the Outer Church issue in BLACK SCIENCE for a similar process except they weren't healing as such but "improving" Quimper.<br />
v2#6 page 8 – new century, new artist drawing the pages. <br />
v2#6 page 9 – "all will be well, all will be well and all manner of things will be well" is Toby in the last panel quoting from T S Eliot's The Waste Land.<br />
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v2#6 page 11 – "The ancient Mayan calendar runs out tomorrow at 8am" & Terence McKenna's Timewave graph - these ideas were mentioned in ARCADIA.<br />
v2#6 page 12 – one of the Panels of the Month. Of the five of the 1990s Invisible cell of volume 1, only Hilde and Dane are with Ragged Robin, King Mob and Boy are not seen in this future. Dane of 2012 is saying he saw Ragged Robin "get back" from the past of the 1990s, back the future of 2012. (Something we the audience haven't seen yet).<br />
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v2#6 page 13 – Dane saying "I've got to get back to Liverpool to meet the Buddha on the road" - we've seen him speaking to someone on a Liverpool road in the last few issues of volume 1.<br />
v2#6 page 18 – "...Phoenix has landed... ...confirm reentry..." - this is Ragged Robin is this panel then, "getting back" to the future? The panels above and below are here saying - "I HAVE to get back".<br />
v2#6 page 19 – "You're thirty three" & "Christ, you're brilliant" another way of saying Ragged Robin is sort-of like Christ?<br />
v2#6 page 20 – The explanation of what the photographs means is really weird and convoluted, even for this series The Invisibles.<br />
v2#6 page 21 – one of the Panels of the Month, the "Vesica Piscis".<br />
v2#6 page 22 – Animal Man-esque page shenanigans.<br />
v2#6 page 23 – "It was all those Moorcock books; I wanted to be Jerry Cornelius, the English Assassin. I wanted the guns and the cars and the girls and the chaos..." - Grant several issues after ENTROPY IN THE U.K. acknowledges the inspirational material<br />
v2#6 page 24 – note the (ringed) red circle of BAREBELiTH; the red circle of King Mob's mod T-shirt; the red circles of Ragged Robin's make-up.<br />
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<b>The Sound of the Atom Splitting</b> is issue #7.<br />
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v2#7 page 16 – one of the Panels of the Month. "Don't come the fucking role-playing elves and fucking dungeons shit with me, man!" – Dane.<br />
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v2#7 page 18 – One of Pierrot and Columbine says ' "They talk in emotional aggregates" ', (in quote marks). What's that about?<br />
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v2#7 page 21 – "D'you remember those weird things coming in? Like blobs" – so when Dane and Hilde are given the Hand of Glory, the Magic Mirror blobs seem to have been summoned.<br />
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Poor Little Rich Girl, Mad Dogs and Englismen, and Parisian Pierrot form a three-part arc titled SENSITIVE CRIMINALS.<br />
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<b>Poor Little Rich Girl</b> is issue #8.<br />
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v2#8 page 3 – "I believe in the modern world, Mr Skat. I believe in the automobile and the Charleston and the dry martini. I believe that nothing we know will ever be the same again" – Edith. King Mob will express similar sentiments in the next issue.<br />
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v2#8 page 13 – one of the Panels of the Month, [freddie jealous]<br />
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v2#8 page 22 – one of the Panels of the Month, [spacetime direction says Gideon]<br />
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<b>Mad Dogs and Englismen</b> is issue #9.<br />
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v2#9 page 8 – "This is when the future started: James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Picasso, black music, drugs and dancing..." – King Mob. An echo of what Edith said to Mr Skat (v2#8 page 3) and we've seen (or will see with rest of the arc) each of those six things represented on the pages of The Invisibles...<br />
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James Joyce - DOWN AND OUT IN HEAVEN AND HELL is a kind of Ulysses for London.<br />
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T.S. Eliot - quoted v2#6 page 9<br />
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Picasso - see next issue.<br />
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black music - Jazz this arc, and Hip Hop in previous issues of volume 1.<br />
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dancing - Dane and Hilde dancing in the last arc.<br />
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v2#9 page 13 – one of the Panels of the Month, "It can't be. It can't be", just before givin the Hand of Glory to Edith, the Harlequin shows BARBELiTH to Edith while Magic Mirror swirls about. Compare to how Dane describes when he and Hilde are given the Hand of Glory (v2#7 page 21) – "D'you remember those weird things coming in? Like blobs".<br />
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v2#9 page 20 – "the first King Mob" and some of his philosophy.<br />
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<b>Parisian Pierrot</b> is issue #10.<br />
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v2#10 page 2 – the issue title Parisian Pierrot on the second page, on the second-last page of this issue, 23, Edith writes "Au revoir, my favorite Parisian Pierrot" (to Freddie / Tom O' Bedlam).<br />
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v2#10 page 4 – "Edith says to call him Boody" – from volume 1, it's the first King Mob rather than Edith observing this, it's still no clearer what it's supposed to mean, unless it's supposed to mean Edith also was "there" but we didn't see that event. (That still doesn't make sense.)<br />
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v2#10 page 5 – one of the Panels of the Month, top panels – [picasso]<br />
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v2#10 page 5 – one of the Panels of the Month, last panel – [red disc, marvelous]<br />
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v2#10 page 7 – one of the Panels of the Month, [same scene different perspective from DAOIHAH] <br />
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v2#10 page 20 – one of the Panels of the Month, "Tom's a-cold"<br />
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v2#10 page 22 – one of the Panels of the Month, [four people]<br />
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BEYOND THE PAGE</div>
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-- <span style="color: red;">Further reading</span>:John Norhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08096540803723805612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8029598991921681463.post-65236492535731285622012-06-22T23:18:00.000+01:002016-01-18T20:48:20.846+00:00The Invisibles volume 2 issues 1 to 4<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">These issues are</span>:<br />
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<i>The Invisibles</i> volume 2...<br />
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The arc-title is <b>BLACK SCIENCE</b> and the issue-titles are: <b>Bangin'</b> (#1), <b>Kickin'</b> (#2), <b>Sorted</b> (#3), <b>Safe</b> (#4).<br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Collected edition</span>:<br />
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These four issues are all of the issues of the fourth collected edition "Bloody Hell in America" - pictured.<br />
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(Bolland's cover for volume 2 issue 1 of The Invisibles is re-used for this collected edition. The title of the collected edition isn't an issue-title or arc-tiltle re-used unlike the previous two books.)<br />
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ANALYSIS</div>
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-- <span style="color: red;">Quote of the month</span>:<br />
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"Elephant head. Elephant head. I WORSHIP A GOD WITH AN ELEPHANT HEAD!"<br />
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King Mob (volume 2, issue #2, page 2 and 3).<br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Panels of the month</span>:<br />
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Volume 2, issue #1, page 6 – "What it's mean?" "Nothing really. I don't know. It just sounds good".<br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Roots</span>:<br />
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Grant Morrison's life and the writing of his saga The Invisibles had begun to merge (or so he believed).<br />
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During the penning of the storyline in which King Mob is weakened by the "other side" then cured by (which the last third of volume 1), Morrison became himself ill and had to be hospitalised becaue of the infection (see previous month).<br />
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After his recovery he wrote the issues of volume 2.<br />
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The timeline that can be discerned by interviews wit Grant Morrison is vague, though it seems Morrison was behind on deadlines - for both The Invisibles and JLA - because of his illness.<br />
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To catch-up with the planned schedule he was writing almost constantly, half-asleep sometimes, on painkillers sometimes, but the writing flowed through almost automatically. He regards the "channelling" of volume 2 as contributing to how it's more cohesive than the previous volume.<br />
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There had always been a plan for three volumes says Morrison, a British volume then an American volume then the last volume. (Morrison had seen a lot of America in recent years.)<br />
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Influences from other media: Tarantino movies, the X-Files (which also are inlfluenced by the exisitng UFO mythos).<br />
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Influences from modern-day mythology - a inspired merging of two New Mexico mythos of the 1940s - the UFO mythos including Roswell incidient of 1947 and the Atomic test mythos of 1945 including Oppenheimer's famous phrase.<br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">"I think that everything I do now is The Invisibles"</span>:<br />
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<i>Animal Man</i> - the mesa ritual, in which the main character learns more the nature of the universe.<br />
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<i>Batman, Incorporated: Leviathan Strikes!</i> #1 - the colour-coding of the five elements.<br />
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<i>Doom Patrol</i> - the Pentagon as symbol of a hidden conspiracy.<br />
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<i>Zenith</i> - the gathering Lovecraftian menace which may yet triumph.<br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Thoughts</span>:<br />
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The artist for these four issues Phil Jimenez has a similar style to cover artist Bolland, but with a different kind of realism more suited to expressing the sticky and grimy textures of this arc.<br />
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What is this blog? (As this is a new volume starting this month I thought I'd re-ask and re-answer that question.)<br />
<br />
I'm reading Grant Morrison's The Invisibles over 2012. There will be 12 blogposts across 2012, each published on the 22nd of each month. Each blogpost will cover 4 or 5 or 6 issues of the 59 issues of the 3 volumes of The Invisibles. (These first six months have actually been a re-read, though as of next month it will be a read.)<br />
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I'm also reading other stuff each month. I began reading each relevant chapter of Anarchy for the Masses (see month one's "Further Reading") but stopped at Chapter 16 (up to issue 16 of volume 1) as it seemed to jump ahead to much later issues when discussing the early issues. (The long Morrison interview at the end of the book I've read though.)<br />
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The Barbelith dot com and Lunabase annotations (as month one's "Further Reading") I'm continuing with each month. (The "Annotations" sections on this blog are intended to try and add to the sum of these existing annotations.)<br />
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As we begin a new volume, a recap of what the plot of this epic is (such as it is and such that can be discerned).<br />
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<span class="st">Dane McGowan, a Liverpool youth, has been inducted into a mysterious organisation known as "The Invisibles", a shadowy organisation that has been at war seemingly for centuries with "the other side". This opposing group's objective seem to be to bring about the subjugation of the humanity, under the heel of their otherdimensional masters "the Archons". The Invisibles, in contrast, stand for freedom and liberty and resistance. There is a coming Apocalypse of some form due December 2012, and The Invisibles seem to be preparing for this moment so the outcome is one more attuned to their philosophy (vague), rather than "the other side" seizing the moment. Dane is part of a 5-person "cell", a small group of The Invisibles led by King Mob.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="st">It's useful to contemplate that paragraph-description of the story-so-far as we consider what King Mob is actually doing this arc (as the roles of the cell change and Ragged Robin becomes the leader of the group). The vagueness of their ultimate mission (how are they exactly preparing for the </span><span class="st">Apocalypse again? <b>ARCADIA</b> almost explained) </span><span class="st">means that a discrete one-off mission - to recover the vaccine - allows a plot for this arc.</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span>
<span class="st">Bubbling and swirling around this action-adventure plot are various ongoing themes. There's another creation myth in the fourth issue (though is it any more "correct" than the other ones we've read?) and the theme of language is given prominence by first page ("It's the end of the word as we know it") and the language mind-games of the White Flame Meditation.</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span>
<span class="st">The words that Oppenheimer spoke are from the </span>Bhagavad Gita - a story of prince Arjuna wavering in his role but given guidance by Krishna. King Mob seems to waver (or rather he mocks the idea of him wavering from his role, a soldier in this war). The audience can question too though, and the echos of last volume's #12 (which humanises the opposing soldiers) shows this is more complex than an action movie.<br />
<span class="st"><br /></span>
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-- <span style="color: red;">Annotations</span>:<br />
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Issue #1, page 1 – "It's the end of the word as we know it." The theme of language on page 1 of volume 2. (Who is narrating?) Dynamic splash page of Jolly Roger.<br />
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Issue #1, page 1's narrative box (the same page, zoomed in.)<br />
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Issue #2, page 13 – Ragged Robin's picture of a cloud again.<br />
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Issue #2, page 21 then issue #3, page 14 – 'The aliens in "Independence Day" represent the negative side of the human psyche' - Mason Lang again theorising about movies in issue #2. The page of issue #3 (and the next) is an example of what Mason Lang was talking about by particular things representing "the negative side of the human psyche".<br />
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Issue #3, page 13 – The White Flame Meditation.<br />
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Issue #4, page 16 – "It's alive. It's living information. Pure information from another universe".<br />
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Issue #4, page 21 – Another creation myth.<br />
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Issue #4, page 23 – Humor / humour.<br />
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<b>BLACK SCIENCE</b> is issues #1, #2, #3, #4.<br />
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<b>Bangin' </b>is issue #1.<br />
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v2#1 page 1 – one of the Panels of the Month. "It's the end of the word as we know it." The theme of language on page 1 of volume 2. (Who is narrating?) Dynamic splash page of Jolly Roger.<br />
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v2#1 page 4 – another dynamic splash page this time of King Mob (though to compare the two as if they were Tarot Cards this page is "inverted"). Che Guevara T-shirt.<br />
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v2#1 page 6 – more of the Panels of the Month. "What it's mean?" "Nothing really. I don't know. It just sounds good", could be read as a commentary on the series The Invisibles itself.<br />
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v2#1 page 8 – racy stuff but it is Vertigo.<br />
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v2#1 page 11 – Mason has joined the side of The Invisibles, and it seems all that have done so each have their own version of the BARBELiTH encounter. The "Holy Grail" with its red liquid from above looks like a red circle (BARBELiTH).<br />
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v2#1 page 13 – "New Mexico? Why New Mexico?" "Little fluffy clouds" - the photograph Ragged Robin was looking at during the last three-issue arc of volume 1.<br />
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v2#1 page 16 – Some "say the Ultras are experimenting on people to create some sort of hybrid drone species". That idea along with the Roswell angle of the fourth issue of this volume is very X-Files. This issue has a February 1997 cover-date. The similar X-Files plotline about hybrid species was progressing onscreen during 1996 so possibly it's parallel invention or possibly drawing from the same existing UFO mythos.<br />
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v2#1 page 17 – 'Mektoub -- "It is written" ' - an Arabic word that King Mob translates.<br />
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v2#1 page 18 – Mr Quimper from the end of the last volume.<br />
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v2#1 page 19 – 'Just look at the number of times you see the number "23". It's in scene after scene. That's not a coincidence' - again this could be a commentary on the series The Invisibles rather than Mason talking about the film Speed. (There's an irony in this Keanu Reeves film being discussed in the comic as The Matrix seems to have been influenced by The Invisibles.)<br />
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v2#1 page 20 – "the subway train at the end" (also a description of this four-parter). The Pulp Fiction theory is a popular theory though the Speed theory seems to have been crafted by Morrison as it has elements that chime with The Invisibles.<br />
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Tarantino-esque diner scene. "I'd call that a triumph for post-modernism any day of the week".<br />
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v2#1 page 22 – "this is a different kind of movie" - there's an American movie tone being created for this volume.<br />
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<b>Kickin'</b> is issue #2.<br />
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v2#2 page 1 – Another cloud of many in this four-parter.<br />
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v2#2 page 2 – ' "I am become death." "The shatterer of worlds" ' - there seems to be some debate over whether Oppenheimer said "destroyer" or "shatterer", though shatterer will make more sense in the context of The Invisibles as issue #4 explains.<br />
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v2#2 page 3 – the Quote of the Month. The god with the elephant head is Ganesh, meaning that King Mob is peforming the second ritual to this god we've seen, both times at the start of volumes of Invisibles (see #1 of the previous volume). These rituals when journeys (volumes) are begun.<br />
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v2#2 page 6 – if Mason Lang is The Invisible's Bruce Wayne (an American with a mansion and various companies and vast wealth) then it seems appropriate he should be praising the bat.<br />
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v2#2 page 7 – "That's called BARBELiTH, that is. Don't you remember?" - Dane doesn't get many lines of dialogue in this four-parter but this emphasises that he is still "enlightened" if foul-mouthed for the rest of these issues.<br />
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v2#2 page 8 – "I just saw this... porcelain train" - time is all over the place during this mesa sequence and King Mob gets a premonition of the later issues.<br />
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v2#2 page 10 – "Invisibles cells tend to model their structure around elemental symbolism" - "we like to change it around". The role of Earth is defined on this page, (thinking of "mundane stuff" like finaces and equipment) with Air being "leader" on a later page. The other roles remain unelaborated upon, although we know "Spirit" is meant to shake things up, from the <b>SHE-MAN</b> arc of the last volume.<br />
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v2#2 page 12 – the band mention is Kula Shaker. A contemporary band this issue would have been published before their swastika interview was published. (<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sorry-about-the-swastika-says-kula-shaker-singer-mills-1268161.html">Link</a>.)<br />
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v2#2 page 13 – one of the Panels of the Month. Ragged Robin's picture of a cloud again.<br />
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v2#2 page 15 – we can deduce, given that "Fire" is likely to be the colour red...<br />
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Spirit - colour White - Boy's role (is to shake things up).<br />
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Fire - colour Red - Lord Fanny's role (role not explained).<br />
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Air - colour Yellow - Ragged Robin's role (is leader).<br />
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Water - colour Blue - Jack Frost's role (role not explained).<br />
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Black - colour Black - King Mob's role (is mundane stuff).<br />
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v2#2 page 17 – 'This is amazing! It's like "Batman"!' - could be another commentary on the series The Invisibles, (and Grant Morrison has watched the same TV shows you have).<br />
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v2#2 page 21 – one of the Panels of the Month. 'The aliens in "Independence Day" represent the negative side of the human psyche' - Mason Lang again theorising about movies, though there would seem to be a parallel with the "ultraterrestrials" of The Invisibles representing the negative side of the human psyche', as v2#3 page 14.<br />
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v2#2 page 22 – more X-Files, again during 1996 there was a similar immunisation with sinister extra purpose plot-strand.<br />
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<br />
<b>Sorted</b> is issue #3.<br />
<br />
v2#3 page 2 – sage is traditional.<br />
<br />
v2#3 page 4 – issue's title "Sorted".<br />
<br />
v2#3 page 9 – there is an echo of volume 1's #12 with the scenes from the trooper's life.<br />
<br />
v2#3 page 11 – "they operate within a rigid hierarchy", the other side, while The Invisibles change their roles about.<br />
<br />
v2#3 page 13 – one of the Panels of the Month. The White Flame Meditation. The theme of language. <br />
<br />
<br />
v2#3 page 14 – "the negative side of the human psyche" <br />
<br />
v2#3 page 18 – the same sort of plane from ENTROPY IN THE U.K. that Gideon Stargrave is able to pilot, but not King Mob it seems.<br />
<br />
v2#3 page 19 – "This is going to be a CLASSIC. This WILL be James Bond" - it quite James Bond.<br />
<br />
v2#3 page 22 – Lord Fanny is using the same method for magick rituals extolled by Grant Morrison in the letter pages.<br />
<br />
v2#3 page 25 – This issue has a page 25!<br />
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<br />
<b>Safe</b> is issue #4.<br />
<br />
v2#4 page 1 – "Set the spell in motion with a ..." - as the letter pages.<br />
<br />
v2#4 page 3 – "It's got nothing to do with luck. Everything's going exactly to plan" - Ragged Robin is saying this against a backdrop of clouds, reminding us of her cloud picture and the fact that she knows how this "present" (her past? the others' future?) plays out.<br />
<br />
v2#4 page 4 – issue title "Safe". Some of the panels show events of past issues of The Invisibles (the jars of Dead Beatles, the Cyphermen of ARCADIA), some: the future?<br />
<br />
v2#4 page 7 – King Mob is recounting what someone told him about UFOs. Remember the hitcher of The Invisibles volume 1's #14 page 11 – the mention of Roswell and UFOs?<br />
<br />
v2#4 page 13 – "...'s you isn't it? In the junkyard. I was a kid. The Angel of Death?" The second echo of volume 1's #12.<br />
<br />
v2#4 page 14 – "I was your imaginary playmate, your invisible friend. I was a little light. Do you understand what I am?" What's that all about?<br />
<br />
v2#4 page 16 – one of the Panels of the Month. "It's alive. It's living information. Pure information from another universe". (Note that three "shamanic" characters, Ragged Robin, Jim Crow, Lord Fanny, as recognise the Magic Mirror on page 24 of #24 of volume 1. King Mob seems entranced by it but not familiar with it.)<br />
<br />
v2#4 page 18 – the description of the world under their control is similar the Earth swamped by the Anti-Life equation shown by the pages of Final Crisis. <br />
<br />
v2#4 page 21 – one of the Panels of the Month. Azathoth is from the Lovecraft mythos. Another creation myth described in the pages of The Invisibles, but is it any more "correct" than the others described (the South American culture myth, the Zoroastrian myth)?<br />
<br />
v2#4 page 23 – one of the Panels of the Month. What seems like rude dialogue from Dane actually points up the fluidity of language (a running theme) and the duality of the starting two volumes of The Invisibles (the UK volume now the American volume).<br />
<br />
UK English - Fanny means vagina.<br />
<br />
American English - Fanny means buttocks.<br />
<br />
"I think we have to talk about our future soon" - does she mean their future as a couple (her and King Mob, as her discussion with Boy) or the group's future?<br />
<br />
v2#4 page 24 – this page isn't collected by the collected edition "Bloody Hell in America"! (It's a page which is a preview of the next arc so it does make sense for a book but not for completeness.)<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="color: red;">
BEYOND THE PAGE</div>
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Blank badge</span>:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Song of the month</span>:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/QIIgfYC7ZlA?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br />
The Orb - Little Fluffy Clouds<br />
<br />
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Synchronicity</span> - the USA June 2012:<br />
<br />
- (<a href="http://www.comicsbeat.com/2012/06/16/grant-morrison-mbe/">comicsbeat.com</a>)<br />
<br />
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Further reading</span>:<br />
<br />
The Bhagavad Gita.John Norhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08096540803723805612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8029598991921681463.post-31534904842751297722012-05-22T20:43:00.000+01:002016-01-18T20:48:55.065+00:00The Invisibles volume 1 issues 21 to 25-- <span style="color: red;">These issues are</span>:<br />
<br />
<i>The Invisibles</i> volume 1...<br />
<br />
<b>Liverpool </b>(#21), <b>House of Fun</b>, <b>The Last Temptation of Jack</b>, <b>Goodbye Baby Rabbits</b>, (the three-issue arc without an overall title: #22, #23, #24), <b>And a Half Dozen of the Other</b> (#25).<br />
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Collected edition</span>:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLHR1YXjIFqrVDIO8gNAHBHhrMLFO0QmpfiynZwijoS0aDxkEJaKedetXVv3tXlZjGSFx2-ZnB6oWAIzd69ppd1seTFumQdN15O04brGey1VXJepgIfaBtb1vbWXYh4kNw8PUI7Li7Yx8/s1600/ce03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLHR1YXjIFqrVDIO8gNAHBHhrMLFO0QmpfiynZwijoS0aDxkEJaKedetXVv3tXlZjGSFx2-ZnB6oWAIzd69ppd1seTFumQdN15O04brGey1VXJepgIfaBtb1vbWXYh4kNw8PUI7Li7Yx8/s200/ce03.jpg" width="131" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>(SECOND HALF)</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
These issues are the last five (of the nine) of the third collected edition "Entropy in the U.K." - pictured.<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;">ANALYSIS</span><br />
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Quote of the month</span>:<br />
<br />
George Harper: "Who are the bloody 'INVISIBLES' anyway?"<br />
<br />
Jack Flint: "A secret occult conspiracy, dedicated to destroying the world by opening the gates onto... I don't now... Armageddon, the return of the Great Old Ones, the Hopi Fifth World, Ragnarok, you name it."<br />
<br />
Mr Six: "No one knows who they are. Perhaps you're one of them George. Perhaps we all are."<br />
<br />
(Issue #25, page 15.)<br />
<br />
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Panel of the month</span>:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<br />
Issue #25, page 1 - a creation myth (Zoroastrian).<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Roots</span>:<br />
<br />
<br />
These five issues are more about wrapping together various existent story-strands (Dane's BARBELiTH experience, Jim Crow's Voodoo, King Mob's capture) than introducing new story-strands (and so the Roots of much in these pages have already been discussed by previous months of the blog), but there are notable new elements to mention (and discuss the Roots of) from these five issues.<br />
<br />
Dane's new "facing the jaws of the dragon" (remember Edith's phrase?) in the three-issue arc centred on The Last Temptation of Jack is modelled on the stories of how a Buddha achieved Enlightenment: the temptations of Siddhartha Gautama.<br />
<br />
Also the title of the centre issue (The Last Temptation of Jack) alludes to the story of Jesus (specially the telling by <span class="st">Nikos Kazantzakis and Scorsese.)</span><br />
<br />
This blending of stories is in keeping with the general theme of these issues.
<span class="st"> </span><br />
<br />
Mr Malcolm is drawn to resemble the actor Jason Wyngarde and the character's new (old) role of Mr Six is based on...<br />
<br />
Jason King (played by Jason Wyngarde) of the 1970s television programmes "Department S" and the spin-off "Jason King".<br />
<br />
The other two of the three-man Division X are modelled on the young and old geezer pairing of...<br />
<br />
George Carter played by John Thaw, and Jack Regan played by Dennis Waterman - of the 1970s television programme "The Sweeney". <br />
<br />
Also this paranormal division is very "The X-Files".<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">"I think that everything I do now is The Invisibles"</span>:<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>Doom Patrol </i>- nanomachines transforming the environment.<br />
<br />
<i>The Filth</i> - the character's other identity (old / new) as a policeman (of sorts).<br />
<br />
<i>Flex Mentallo</i> - the saviour(s) from the other side of the Moon.<br />
<br />
<i>Zenith</i> - the extra-dimensional entity manifesting itself on our heroes' plane of existence.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Thoughts</span>:<br />
<br />
So - with month number 5 of this year-long read - 25 issues of The Invisibles have concluded, and with them Volume 1 of the series have concluded.<br />
<br />
The Invisibles so far is many things: a tale of a battle between super-heroes and super-villains (for example King Mob and Sir Miles) overlaid with the imagery of British television shows like The Avengers and The Prisoner and The Sweeney; the foreshadowing of an apocalypse of December 2012; the ongoing mystery of BARBELiTH; the story of Dane achieving Enlightenment like a Liverpudlian Buddha.<br />
<br />
Though of course all these story-strands are woven together. Also, it's notable that any actual legible plot of each strand is still - after 25 issues - rather opaque. (Not a criticism.)<br />
<br />
The two "sides" of the "war" - what are each actually trying to achieve? The last issue of ARCADIA, in which King Mob says to Sade gives some sort of reason for that particular mission (of bring Sade to the 20th Century) is one vague objective.<br />
<br />
The rest of the time King Mob's group are either inducting Dane into The Invisibles or trying to get him back - or escaping from Sir Miles and the "other side".<br />
<br />
(The collected editions, which have to blurb what the heck is going on in these pages for any potential readers, decide to call Sir Miles's side "The Conspiracy" but I'm really not sure if these 25 issues ever really give a title to them, other than saying "the other side" or "the enemy" to contrast them against The Invisibles.)<br />
<br />
Sir Miles's side seem to be aware of this coming 2012 apocalypse too, and wish for a "coronation" of the Moon beast seen in issues #11 and #25 - and are keen to capture The Invisibles.<br />
<br />
The coda issue #25 doesn't exactly make things any clearer with the (after a few cameos) proper introduction of "Division X", one of the trio being The Invisible Mr Six, and yet the story continues stylishly and grippingly.<br />
<br />
Mark Buckingham and Paul Johnson provide the pencil art either side of Steve Yeowell's three issues. It's fascinating to see veteran inker Dick Giordano ink over Yeowell's art. There's a definite difference as the three issues go on, with the hatching of #22 gradually becoming more like the blocks of black of Yeowell's own inking.<br />
<br />
One last thing to say about this three-issue arc is how these issues (when read with the rest of the volume) make it seem that Grant Morrison is keen to give a certain significance to the numbers 22 and 23 and 24.<br />
<br />
"22" is the day of December on which the apocalype of this series is supposed to happen, as well as the number of Major Arcan Tarot cards (cards that feature in the series The Invisibles). Volume 2 will end with issue "22".<br />
<br />
"23" is a number that appears in Robert Anton Wilson's The Illuminatus! Trilogy (as well as on page 23 on issue #25 and as part of the title to issue #9), the trilogy being an influence on Morrison's series.<br />
<br />
"24" is the issue volume 1 really ends on (#25 being a coda of sorts that doesn't include any of the main five characters), as well as being the number of pages of an issue of The Invisibles. (So there's 24 pages in an issue, 24 issues in this volume without the coda. "As above, so below".)<br />
<br />
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Annotations</span>:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />
Issue #21, page 7 - "The magic mountain, the virtual college, the school of shadows".<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRRWdBqXz7BR3OSIlIeLT5PAikJ0ic__0UJwPj28l_KE3VxdY-v-10GmMbgJW1eYTkDSHpgG0CEKnIfqeaFO51jaJ2NEWnZcz2U1OpkSa0G0br2gwfZgt8NvZBidv4hwHi3lqJsghN7dE/s1600/invis012116.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRRWdBqXz7BR3OSIlIeLT5PAikJ0ic__0UJwPj28l_KE3VxdY-v-10GmMbgJW1eYTkDSHpgG0CEKnIfqeaFO51jaJ2NEWnZcz2U1OpkSa0G0br2gwfZgt8NvZBidv4hwHi3lqJsghN7dE/s400/invis012116.jpg" width="217" /></a></div>
<br />
Issue #21, page 16 - "RVM cultural gloss: imprinted Christian / Roman Catholic symbol structure".<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<br />
Issue #21, page 23 - "You made me. You left me here, alone and transmitting, waiting for you. The reverse of the Moon. The string in the labyrinth. The way out. It's only a game."<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6MoM0YHEhaA2ah4fAcepm3UrKeuohJUDzobpWWXqVRamvmTtEC29ikWiXlHn4Wd2RYAW-7-6zgWW3g2USBtWZm5pbILeMlOxM1eo518Uq1WGYyFGaMcqDco2yRBq5JXewkcKirxL_x-s/s1600/invis012214.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="361" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6MoM0YHEhaA2ah4fAcepm3UrKeuohJUDzobpWWXqVRamvmTtEC29ikWiXlHn4Wd2RYAW-7-6zgWW3g2USBtWZm5pbILeMlOxM1eo518Uq1WGYyFGaMcqDco2yRBq5JXewkcKirxL_x-s/s400/invis012214.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Issue #22, page 14 - "Is everybody in on this?", "Just about yeah".<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNFOmjhgekGxwnVde4WpWG3IlUqOeCaUuKy-2x3-YoLG_D11UaGbnqhFdUTdedC-yyHnaN0w2A3uEYWG4LvihBzePtE1usBtCRz30eGpcAUFwF1dzNktXiKKLMeYaQizZRW6SlnFTSNDY/s1600/invis012301-123.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNFOmjhgekGxwnVde4WpWG3IlUqOeCaUuKy-2x3-YoLG_D11UaGbnqhFdUTdedC-yyHnaN0w2A3uEYWG4LvihBzePtE1usBtCRz30eGpcAUFwF1dzNktXiKKLMeYaQizZRW6SlnFTSNDY/s400/invis012301-123.jpg" width="390" /></a></div>
<br />
Issue #23, page 1 - panels 1 and 2 and 3 - Liverpool: December 22nd, 2012 8 am.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKlKcDyvs86wor2Xbl2KeDKq170Ao7O51uTnihQ0YuKT3krffNzCqs_lNfzZIaA3EX6Oo2VA-MkZWwr0mdVUgD5JjTeqKlqd1MmGW9fFodgLoa5mMn6lLBswjccohwdfyu8J5xROTy5cY/s1600/invis012301-4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKlKcDyvs86wor2Xbl2KeDKq170Ao7O51uTnihQ0YuKT3krffNzCqs_lNfzZIaA3EX6Oo2VA-MkZWwr0mdVUgD5JjTeqKlqd1MmGW9fFodgLoa5mMn6lLBswjccohwdfyu8J5xROTy5cY/s400/invis012301-4.jpg" width="350" /></a></div>
<br />
Issue #23, page 1 - panels 4 - storytelling.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinpG4m5kP3wDgr2IkYxGiIf6j_mTFNKxcmgUY8SvqF_YrHqzs0FemyiL3xo0_r00-ccYnd9rV-dJS4kbzUs5sA2cGyZ0eJ1dgp8gLNDo4e2PStPgYnhC9ro0lLIWmU0R0M_9RiKn4_VzU/s1600/invis012315.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinpG4m5kP3wDgr2IkYxGiIf6j_mTFNKxcmgUY8SvqF_YrHqzs0FemyiL3xo0_r00-ccYnd9rV-dJS4kbzUs5sA2cGyZ0eJ1dgp8gLNDo4e2PStPgYnhC9ro0lLIWmU0R0M_9RiKn4_VzU/s400/invis012315.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Issue #23, page 15 - "It saved me like it's gonna save us all. We made it to save us".<br />
<br />
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Issue #23, page 22 - "Dane McGowan was one of the things we made".<br />
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Issue #23, page 23 - "It was flat at first, then it was solid and then it was more than solid and then more than more than solid"<br />
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Issue #24, page 5 - "Dane. You must return".<br />
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Issue #24, page 8 - "I am the hidden stone and break all hearts".<br />
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Issue #24, page 15 - How the King-of-All-Tears extra-dimensionally observes the universe.<br />
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Issue #24 page 24 - "nobody knows what I am".<br />
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Issue #25, page 22 - the continuation of the creation myth.<br />
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<b>Liverpool</b> is issue #21.<br />
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#21 page 1 – the first page of <b>Liverpool</b> and Dane has the Tesco bag (Tesco being a chain of British supermarkets, American readers) that he retrieved at the end of <b>London</b> (issue #16), having gone from London to Liverpool.<br />
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#21 page 3 – Dane has been away for about a year: after two years of published comics at least year has passed in the story (the events of issue #1 seem to have been about when the first issue was published, e.g. 1994). For a story that's progressing towards 2012 and the publishing of it progressing towards the pre-millennial tension of 2000 it seems like the story chronology is important. Perhaps with the next volume being set in America the publishing-dates and story-dates will sync up?<br />
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#21 page 4 – it's now clearer what the jump of issue #4 was all about, Jack and Tom are somehow jumping to another world (to BARBELiTH).<br />
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#21 page 5 - Dane is called "Lost One" by BARBELiTH which seems noteworthy as Sir Miles says that The Invisibles call the King-of-All-Tears and his sort as the "Lost Ones". (See page 9 of next issue.)<br />
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#21 page 6 - Root Doctoz and Niggaz on da Triggaz are the two Hip Hop groups from issues #10 (Jim Crow's group) and #20 (Boy's brother's group).<br />
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#21 page 7 - one of the Panels of the Month. "The magic mountain, the virtual college, the school of shadows" - the circle of BARBELiTH has turned green (for "Go", like traffic lights), and Dane is (or rather as this is a flashback, was) let in to what BARBELiTH is seemingly the gateway to.<br />
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#21 page 16 - another one of the Panels of the Month. "RVM cultural gloss: imprinted Christian / Roman Catholic symbol structure" - although the language is opaque this is one of the clearest expressions yet of the nature of BARBELiTH. What this means is: BARBELiTH appearing to the brought-up-as-a-Catholic Dane as Jesus, but isn't actually Jesus. Jesus is a symbol that Dane would comprehend though. (It's like BARBELiTH appearing to Hilde in the form of South American culture.)<br />
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#21 page 21 - "I just made up a magic word, like Tom said" - a demonstration on the comics page of a Chaos Magick sigil that Grant Morrison is going on about in the letters pages (in this instance the sigil takes the form of a word made of letters of the alphabet).<br />
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#21 page 23 - one of the Panels of the Month, BARBELiTH again "You made me. You left me here, alone and transmitting, waiting for you. The reverse of the Moon. The string in the labyrinth. The way out. It's only a game." (The text continues with three words that are repeated across the issues, but were prominent in issue #12, the story of one of the footsoldiers of the "other side": "Try to remember".)<br />
<br />
This version of BARBELiTH is reminiscent of VALIS. (The book by PKD.)<br />
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#21 page 24 - Dane pinning on the blank badge and accepting that he's an Invisible now.<br />
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<b>House of Fun</b>, <b>The Last Temptation of Jack</b>, <b>Goodbye Baby Rabbits</b> are issues #22, #23, #24.<br />
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<br />
<b>House of Fun</b> (Quite a straightforward action issue so less annotations in comparison to other issues.)<br />
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#22 page 9 – Sir Miles says "I believe you people call them the 'Lost Ones' ". (See page 4 of previous issue.)<br />
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#22 page 14 – one of the Panels of the Month - - "Is everybody in on this?", "Just about yeah". The running theme of everyone being on one of the "sides" even if they don't know it, obliquely expressed.<br />
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#22 page 23 – "the end of the universe, in miniature" - a smaller version of the apocalypse? More of "as above, so below", the fractal repeating at different scales.<br />
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<b>The Last Temptation of Jack</b><br />
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#23 page 1 – panels 1 and 2 and 3 (Panels of the Month), the actual apocalypse of December 2012 from Jack's perspective. <br />
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"It'll be different for everybody". An echo of the idea described by King Mob that each person will have their own personal experience. (Annotations for issue #8).<br />
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#23 page 1 – panel 4 (Panels of the Month), across these last five issues of the Volume there's the idea of this comicbook series of "The Invisibles" being a story told by a narrator, and in this instance Jack is telling the story of what happened.<br />
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#23 page 4 - "Remember. Try to remember. Remember what you are" - Mr Six is guiding Dane through this issue, he seems to have the same knowledge that BARBELiTH has (or at least is saying the same thing, "Try to remember"). Does Mr Six know things the rest of the Invisibles don't?<br />
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#23 page 13 - "He's 23, Dane" - the number 23 occurs across the series and this instance happens in issue #23.<br />
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#23 page 14 - "That thing that's on the dark side of the Moon? 'BARBELiTH'? It's a sort of satellite, yeah?", "I'll tell you what it REALLY is a bit later, right?" - Dane is speaking to his companion in 2012, but also Grant Morrison is speaking to the audience.<br />
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#21 page 16 - shades of the aged Dave in 2001: a Space Oddysey. (Which is another story of something transmitting from the Moon.)<br />
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#23 page 15 - one of the Panels of the Month. "It saved me like it's gonna save us all. We made it to save us", so what is BARBELiTH and save from what?<br />
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#23 page 21 - Ragged Robin being born in 1988 doesn't make sense, as yet.<br />
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#23, page 22 - another one of the Panels of the Month. "Dane McGowan was one of the things we made", so the "we" are, what?<br />
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#23, page 23 - another of the Panels of the Month. "It was flat at first, then it was solid and then it was more than solid and then more than more than solid" - the classic Grant Morrison thing of talking about things in five dimensions. ("More than more than" solid, "solid" being 3 dimensions.)<br />
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<br />
<b>Goodbye Baby Rabbits</b><br />
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#24, page 5 - "Dane. You must return" - one of the Panels of the Month. Dane has reached Nirvana, or heaven, but it's too soon and the one distraction ("booting him up") that succeeded of the King-of-All-Tears's ploys.<br />
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#24 page 6 – "leafing through him for a shape to dress in" - just as BARBELiTH chose a form (Jesus of Nazareth) that was a symbol Dane knew of, the "supermatter" from the "Kingdom of the Outside" is trying to manifest in the shape of something Mr Six knows of, a "drawing of the Devil" or "Cthulhu". So it's not literally the entities that Lovecraft describes in his books, it'd just take that form because Mr Six has read Lovecraft's books?<br />
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#24 page 8 – one of the Panels of the Month. BARBELiTH dressing in the shape of Jesus again.<br />
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The poetic phrase "I am the hidden stone and break all hearts" apparently appeared to Grant Morrison in a fever-dream.<br />
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#24 page 9 – "a little Christ to harrow hell" - a more modestly sized apocalypse requires a more modestly sized saviour then.<br />
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#24 page 14 - "OUR WURLD, ALL THAT UUUIII MADE" - blink and you'll miss it but this is the King-of-All-Tears saying that Dane (and his fellow humans?) made the world of the King-of-All-Tears. (Like they "made BARBELiTH"?) Plus "you" is spelt with "U" and "I". Ha!<br />
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#24 page 15 - another one of the Panels of the Month. The King-of-All-Tears extra-dimensionally observing the universe, as Dane effectively banishes him with a magic word (or the intent of one).<br />
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#24 page 16 - "Who is telling this, and to whom?" - a perplexing line as it seemed to be established that Dane was telling the larger story, but that was last issue, with narrative boxes that were what the Dane of 2012 was saying. These narrative boxes are the ones describing Mr Six's experience of the mini-apocalypse.<br />
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#24 page 21 - all three recognise what Dane is doing - "Is that what I think it is?" (Ragged Robin), "Fresh out of the well, le Mirror Fantastique" (Jim Crow), "It's Magic Mirror" (Lord Fanny).<br />
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#24 page 24 - "nobody knows what I am" - so Dane has gone from pinning on the badge of the Invisibles on the page of last issue to rebelling (effectively) against the leader of his group of Invisibles by reversing what King Mob has done. Plus the line chimes with Dane being repeatedly told "Try to remember what you are". All very mysterious.<br />
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<br />
<b>And a Half Dozen of the Other</b> is issue #25.<br />
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#25 page 1 - Panels of the Month - note in this telling of the Zoroastrian creation myth, Ahriman is described as "the forces of evil", trapped.<br />
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#25 page 2 – The TV programme is “Father Ted” written by Graham Linehan & Arthur Mathews.“The Third Policeman” by Flann O'Brien – is also mentioned in the TV show “Lost”.<br />
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8029598991921681463" name="jubilee">#25 page 3</a> – The newspaper on the wall is the Daily Mirror of December 2, 1976, we can conclude that this represents approximately the last time Division X was active - it's the news story of the Sex Pistols being interviewed Bill Grundy, with him asking them to “say something outrageous”, prompting them to use swear-words even more than they had already.<br />
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“Grundy in rock outrage”, “THE FILTH AND THE FURY!”<br />
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“Christ! It must be bad if they've had to recall the three of us: I mean, after what happened at the Queen's Jubilee...” - the Queen's Silver Jubilee was June 1977. (The Diamond Jubilee, June 2012.) The Sex Pistols released their single “God Save the Queen” in June 1977.<br />
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Note the Sex Pistols influence on "Kirk Morrison" on page 1 of issue #19, and that the arc of #17, #18, #19 <b>ENTROPY IN THE U.K</b>. is an adaptation of their song title "Anarchy in the U.K.".<br />
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#25 page 5 – The Elfayed & King Mob meeting – page 1 of the series The Invisibles – was 1994, just before King Mob meets Dane. (Issue #1 is September 1994 cover date.) Dane has been gone a year – so it's 1995. Which ties into the 2070s not being for 75 years. (This issue has a cover date of October 1996.) So it's approximately 20 years that Division X has been inactive.<br />
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#25 page 6 – George's “dartboard divination” is mentioned: it spelled out “CROWN IT” on the previous page.<br />
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“Not the bloody Royals again! Not after the last time.” (The 1977 Jubilee presumably.)<br />
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#25 page 8 – Is this glowing green jar the same sort of thing as the “soul jars” of issue #1? The “handler” Mr Crowley for Division X is based on another (similar) character from the Sweeney (read the Roots section for more) – Frank Haskins played by Garfield Morgan.<br />
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#25 page 10 – “Detective Inspector bloody buggering bastard to you, Benny!” - this is the tone and type of dialogue from “The Sweeney” replicated for “The Invisibles” in the Nineties, and which would be replicated for the television programme “Life on Mars” in the Noughties.<br />
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#25 page 11 – “It's a Shoggoth Mr Flint... like Lovecraft said... they've got a Shoggoth”<br />
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“Tekkeli-Li, you bastard, Tekkeli-Li!”<br />
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It's amusing as Benny's response in still in the style of “The Sweeney” while mixing in elements of Lovecraft (“Tekkeli-Li!” is the noise of the “Shoggoth” from At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft.)<br />
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#25 page 13 – “Hele, conceal and never reveal” - an oath of Freemasonry.<br />
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#25 page 15 – refer to the Quote of the Month section for this significant discussion between the three of Division X. Of course Mr Six IS an Invisible, and IS drinking a ludicrous cocktail.<br />
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Those end of days myths:<br />
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“Armageddon” - the final battle between good and evil from the New Testament, the word appears once, in Revelation 16:16.<br />
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“the return of the Great Old Ones” - Lovecraft, again.<br />
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“the Hopi Fifth World” – not to be confused with the Fives Suns of South American myth, this is the Hopi Native North American myth.<br />
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“Ragnarok” – Norse myth.<br />
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#25 page 16 – “Quimper yes. Please excuse my mask”. Mr Quimper is introduced.<br />
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The pig mask hanging up is reminiscent of the masks worn by those that captured Hilde before he/she was an Invisible.<br />
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#25 page 20 – “Queen of Hearts” - Diana said of herself in a 1995 interview, “I'd like to be the queen of people's hearts”, and this three-word phrase became a tabloid slogan when writing about Diana.<br />
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#25 page 21 – “See the Five Suns in his mirror” - number 5 again though this also seems to reflect the Fifth Sun, the “Sun of Motion” of South American culture (refer to the Annotations the arc SHEMAN of third month of the blog, issues #13, #14, #15.)<br />
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#25 page 22 - Panels of the Month - read page 1, and note that while on this page it also says "the forces of evil", trapped, (as the retelling continues) "the forces of Ahriman struggle for liberation" (which reads as a "good"). So "which side being which" is blurred.<br />
<br />
“Where will you be standing on the day of coronation when the gates come crashing down?” So this is one the “enemy side” emphasising that the coronation of the Shoggoth is what they are hoping to achieve on the day of the apocalypse?<br />
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#25 page 23 – It doesn't matter to Mr Quimper what each “side” represents - “What matters is that WE are winning”.<br />
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The roulette ball coming to rest on Black 23: it's the number 23 again. And on page 23.<br />
<br />
Mr Six is saying they are "back in the game" - he's talking about their mission, over the game of roulette and there's the running theme of BARBELiTH saying it's a "game".<br />
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"RAF Hullavington" – an actual RAF station of Wiltshire in the Nineties.<br />
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#25 page 24 – Sir Miles's involvement with the Shoggoth's mirror (revealed to Division X by Quimper, curiously) indicates this “conspiracy” goes “right to the top”.<br />
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“Then gentlemen, so must we”.<br />
<br />
So volume one's coda ends as the previous issue (and main storyline) ends, the group (led by an Invisible) declaring their statement of intent for the next volume.<br />
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<br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;">BEYOND THE PAGE</span><br />
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Blank badge</span>:<br />
<br /><br />
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Song of the month</span>:<br />
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<br />
Madness - House of Fun<br />
<br />
(As issue #22.)<br />
<br />
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Synchronicity</span> - the UK May 2012:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_802247052">'On Monday it was announced the protest track would be re-released by record label Universal.</a><br />
<a href="http://on%20monday%20it%20was%20announced%20the%20protest%20track%20would%20be%20re-released%20by%20record%20label%20universal.%20%20%22i%20would%20like%20to%20very%20strongly%20distance%20myself%20from%20the%20recent%20stories%20and%20campaign%20to%20push%20god%20save%20the%20queen%20for%20the%20number%20one%20spot,%22%20the%20singer%20said.%20%20%22this%20campaign%20totally%20undermines%20what%20the%20sex%20pistols%20stood%20for,%22%20he%20added./">"I would like to very strongly distance myself from the recent stories and campaign to push God Save The Queen for the number one spot," the singer said. "This campaign totally undermines what The Sex Pistols stood for," he added.'</a> (bbc.co.uk)<br />
<br />
That's an April news story about a June event so I'm saying that's good enough for "May 2012".<br />
<br />
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Further reading</span>:<br />
<br />
<i>At the Mountains of Madness</i> by H. P. Lovecraft<br />
<i>The Call of Cthulhu</i> by H. P. Lovecraft <br />
<br />John Norhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08096540803723805612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8029598991921681463.post-87000442173587686042012-04-22T23:51:00.000+01:002016-01-18T20:49:29.507+00:00The Invisibles volume 1 issues 17 to 20<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">These issues are</span>:<br />
<br />
<i>The Invisibles</i> volume 1...<br />
<br />
<b>ENTROPY IN THE U.K.</b> (#17 and #18 and #19), <b>How I Became Invisible</b> (#20).<br />
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Collected edition:</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLHR1YXjIFqrVDIO8gNAHBHhrMLFO0QmpfiynZwijoS0aDxkEJaKedetXVv3tXlZjGSFx2-ZnB6oWAIzd69ppd1seTFumQdN15O04brGey1VXJepgIfaBtb1vbWXYh4kNw8PUI7Li7Yx8/s1600/ce03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLHR1YXjIFqrVDIO8gNAHBHhrMLFO0QmpfiynZwijoS0aDxkEJaKedetXVv3tXlZjGSFx2-ZnB6oWAIzd69ppd1seTFumQdN15O04brGey1VXJepgIfaBtb1vbWXYh4kNw8PUI7Li7Yx8/s200/ce03.jpg" width="132" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>(FIRST HALF)</b></td></tr>
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These issues are the first four (of the nine) of the third collected edition "Entropy in the U.K." - pictured.<br />
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(A note on the cover. Another wholly new Bolland cover not on any issue of the series. It's a curious cover as unlike the other “wholly new Bolland covers” it doesn't try to up the glamorous quotient.)<br />
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<span style="color: red;">ANALYSIS</span><br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Quote of the month</span>:<br />
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Elfayed: 'Things repeat themselves on all scales, from the smallest to the largest. "As above, so below." '<br />
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(Issue #17, page 9.)<br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Panel of the month</span>: <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0SIOaRBvQ1ynSKkldRRVSW3bQxoiZhmYWhA1FR_7s0jmUeq1jYpEtdcxdz5jnACbnqRC0s-y3LYqvmtENyeX8AUQvhCRkT3clt64dQC7gtzTMY8yiGnlElRAJJk0CAU4lm-cCM0To7FQ/s1600/invis011719.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="493" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0SIOaRBvQ1ynSKkldRRVSW3bQxoiZhmYWhA1FR_7s0jmUeq1jYpEtdcxdz5jnACbnqRC0s-y3LYqvmtENyeX8AUQvhCRkT3clt64dQC7gtzTMY8yiGnlElRAJJk0CAU4lm-cCM0To7FQ/s640/invis011719.jpg" width="512" /></a></div>
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Issue #17, page 19 – Genevieve and Gideon Stargrave.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>-- <span style="color: red;">Roots</span>:<br />
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Reading ENTROPY IN THE U.K., anyone familiar with Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius stories will understand the main influence, as the similarities between that character and “Gideon Stargrave” are many. (The dandy assassin with a sister/lover hopping between worlds to say the most basic).<br />
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Whether this is a homage or not or was a homage is exactly won't be debated by this analysis - but will say it's not just as simple as Morrison basing Stargrave on Cornelius.<br />
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The Gideon Stargrave on the pages of The Invisibles is based on the Gideon Stargrave on the pages of Near Myths stories which were also not-coincidentally written by Grant Morrison. (Or perhaps it's the same character?)<br />
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It's actually the teenage Grant Morrison who first re-purposed the basic character of Cornelius. The Grant Morrison writing in the Nineties is using some of his earliest comics work as part of this arc that blends the biography of author and character, Grant Morrison and Gideon Stargrave, Kirk Morrison and King Mob.<br />
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The vague timeline of both Kirk Morrison and Grant Morrison's life (born at the start of the Sixties, spectacular writing success in 1988) is discussed more in the annotations of issue #19.<br />
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It's not just Morrison's comics from 1978 that are things from his life that feed into these storylines. The Kathmandu experience was mentioned in the “Roots” section of month 3.<br />
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The Scorpion experience and the Roots of #17, #18, #19 - Morrison had been trying out some Voodo communication as part of the writing for the Jim Crow character. Somehow these Scorpion gods "spoke" to Morrison, he used some of the ideas for the comic. Soon after, he collapsed with <i>staphylococcus </i> infection.<br />
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So Morrison regards the tribulations of King Mob in these issues as somehow merging with his life which is appropriate considering the themes of the storyline. <br />
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The roots of #20 are partly PKD as the annotations will explain.<br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">"I think that everything I do now is The Invisibles"</span>:<br />
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<i>Gideon Stargrave</i>...<br />
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Gideon Stargrave (before The Invisibles) starred in two stories.
A 2-page story “Famine” in the <i>Food For Thought</i> anthology but before that...<br />
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The three-part <b>THE VATICAN CONSPIRACY</b>, with parts 2 and 3 having the episode titles <b>Prelude to Ragnarok</b> and <b>The Fenris Factor</b>.<br />
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(Each part was seven pages and the mini-epic was published in issues #3 and #4 of<i> Near Myths</i>.) <br />
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Some panels that are particularly relevant to The Invisibles...<br />
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Episode 1 page 1 – Gideon Stargrave and perhaps Genevieve, and also Lennon and another Beatle. Plus the Moon. The Invisibles in one panel on page one of Grant's earliest epic?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT3l1naTBl9wtchAEbtnNiMVnPN956AM7yOEcVnTSrKhH-M79rY-5ifLLRDbiK45hhJbAaMAC7LZ-qORG4hQHgWq8mNI71dPV6HHeBsEPP7qIZMF710x2yxjSTOWtATbv5dANoJq3LG0I/s1600/GSep2pg1b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihBN_eXl-A2rmnyqwYf2KLKTQjrhcBtrJ32E5HQq8dsyj0cbrOluYms3gGm9WiejHwwFRYRKl5_yAYyGxJQXSEL7AONYFB_JtSwKbS5QtYKwDOheiAuVGeLPw1WDBXLRQlvx_5xqG48nI/s1600/GSep2pg1a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="388" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihBN_eXl-A2rmnyqwYf2KLKTQjrhcBtrJ32E5HQq8dsyj0cbrOluYms3gGm9WiejHwwFRYRKl5_yAYyGxJQXSEL7AONYFB_JtSwKbS5QtYKwDOheiAuVGeLPw1WDBXLRQlvx_5xqG48nI/s640/GSep2pg1a.jpg" width="640" /></a><img border="0" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT3l1naTBl9wtchAEbtnNiMVnPN956AM7yOEcVnTSrKhH-M79rY-5ifLLRDbiK45hhJbAaMAC7LZ-qORG4hQHgWq8mNI71dPV6HHeBsEPP7qIZMF710x2yxjSTOWtATbv5dANoJq3LG0I/s640/GSep2pg1b.jpg" width="640" /><br />
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Episode 2 page 1 – a remix of these four panels appears at the start of The Invisibles issue #17.<br />
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Episode 2 page 6 - “Tom's a cold” - echoed by Tom of issues #2, #3, #4.<br />
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Episode 3 page 2 – the hero portrait seen again on page 2 of issue #17 of The Invisibles with the same costuming.<br />
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Episode 3 page 4 – Genevieve and her legs as seen on The Invisibles #17's page 19 (see “Panels of the Month”.)<br />
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<i>Animal Man</i> – King Mob stumbling upon the fish-ship in the rock of The Invisibles #18 recalls Buddy Baker stumbling upon the alien ship (which then gives him his powers).<br />
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<i>Dare</i> – The destruction of London of #17 page 7 recalls a similar scene in Morrison's version of the Dan Dare story.<br />
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<i>Zenith</i> – The extra-dimensional entity summoned on #17 page 13 recalls a similar scene in one of the interludes between Zenith Phases I and II.<br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Thoughts</span>:<br />
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Pencil artists Phil Jimenez & Tommy Lee Edwards: great stuff.<br />
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At first glance these two stories - the three-issue arc starring King Mob and the one-issue tale of how Boy "became Invisible" - are very different. One showcases the outlandish and sparkling Gideon Stargrave, the other has the dull throb of grim conspiracy<span class="st"><b><i></i></b> theories running through it, with "Rex 84" being an actual thing (although the disturbing prison camps of the story seem unlikely).</span><br />
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Reading these issues in the 21st Century though (they were published in 1996) after the events of September 11, 2001, and all that happened after - and they are similar in that they both have echoes of this uneasy new century.<br />
<br />
Reading Gideon Stargrave comandeering a plane towards the Pentagon, or toasting the destruction of an American city skyline, you can't but think of the events of 2001 (which were obviously tragic real life events not to be celebrated while the Gideon Stargrave stories remain outlandish stories, but slightly less outlandish now).<br />
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The "Gitmo" camps, Obama tried to shut them down, but they still exist. Obviously they are nothing like the camps shown in issue #20, but was anyone thinking in the Nineties that America would choose to have such things? <br />
<span class="st"></span><br />
<span class="st"><i></i></span> <br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Annotations</span>:<br />
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ENTROPY IN THE U.K. is issues #17 and #18 and #19.<br />
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Issue #18, page 17 - BARBELiTH mention.<br />
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Issue #19, page 1 – (Kirk) Morrison.<br />
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Issue #19, page 3 – more (Kirk) Morrison.<br />
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Issue #19, page 7 - five fingers.<br />
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Issue #19, page 23 - Gideon Stargrave's Odin trip.<br />
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Issue #20, page 9 – PKD?<br />
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Issue #20, page 17 – PKD again?<br />
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<br />
Dandy, issue title of #17<br />
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#17 page 1 – this imagery of a helicopter action sequence over the Thames is straight from the main Gideon Stargrave story, (refer to the “Everything...” section), though in this version it's speedboat versus helicopter rather than helicopter versus helicopter, and “Jenny” rather than “Jan”. Pink Floyd “post-Syd” dates it to after April 1968.<br />
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#17 page 2 – each of the 3 parts of ENTROPY IN THE U.K have as their page 2 a splash-page of a character. Also each issue's Sean Phillips cover features the same character. This issue it's Gideon Stargrave of the 1970s. Note that the original Gideon Stargrave story is “1970”.<br />
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#17 page 3 - “Gideon sets the controls for the heart of the Sun", (refer to the Song of the Month” section). As well as paraphrasing a famous song, it resonates with the Red Sun-like disc of what we recognise as BARBELiTH. <br />
<br />
Just as Dane and Lord Fanny have had to “brave the jaws of the dragon” this is apparently the equivalent event for King Mob, which also combines storytelling of their initiation into The Invisibles and their encounter with BAREBELiTH.<br />
<br />
However it's slightly different with King Mob. That's the only time we see the red circle on the pages of these three issues. There is an equivalent “Shamanic ritual” - Ayers Rock in issue #18 for King Mob but unlike the other two characters the red circle isn't shown to us as part of the sequence, though the word BARBELiTH is mentioned on the Ayers Rock page if not the red circle image.<br />
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#17 page 7 – see the “Everything...” section, under <i>Dare</i>.<br />
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#17 page 9 – see the “Quote of the Month” section. "As above, so below” is a catchphrase of the Hermetic Magic tradition. Kind of appropriate for the "Russian Doll" nature of the Stargraves and Morrisons.<br />
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#17 page 12 – the scorpion tattoo. Apparently, according to Grant Morrison interviews, he has the same tattoo.<br />
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#17 page 13 – the summoning of the extra-dimensional entity, refer to Zenith in “Everything...” section.<br />
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#17 page 16 – Harper of Division X is introduced into the story.<br />
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#17 page 17 – the symbolism of ancient Egyptian culture was actually on page 1 of this series.<br />
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#17 page 19 - Gideon Stargrave and Genevieve. One of the "panels of the month" (refer to that earlier section).<br />
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The mention of a “nuclear holocaust that destroyed the world in another 1972” - is this a third 1972 or is it the 1980s on this new world?<br />
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“I'm sure I saw Price Charles on telly marrying something like a jellyfish”<br />
<br />
The original Gideon Stargrave story THE VATICAN CONSPIRACY includes sister/lover Genevieve and also Gideon dies and is reborn several times acroos the 21 pages of the mini-epic.<br />
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#17 page 21 - “What do you want?”, “Information”, is a direct quote from the Sixties Spy-fi Series The Prisoner. (Remember in issue #1 King Mob alluded to these sort of programmes.) The straw boater and piped coat that Miles wears in the dream sequences of these issues are from the programme The Prisoner, as a sort of "prison uniform" which may give some idea as to Miles's new status in this "dreamworld". What's this “Doctor Cohen” panel mean? <br />
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#17 page 22 – interesting “young Gideon” has the role of “Dane” in this and Miles has the role of “Mr Malcolm”, is that a further blurring of the “sides” of the “war”?<br />
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#17 page 23 - “Room 101”, from Orwell's 1984.<br />
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Messiah, issue title of #18<br />
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#18 page 1 – an incredibly dense page. What Gideon Stargrave is describing to his companion, the shamanic ritual, it's “the same ritual experience” that Dane and Lord Fanny have experienced, and what King Mob is experiencing/has experienced. His companion is also aware of he himself playing a role in this story, with a comedy callback on page 3.<br />
<br />
Of the mythology of this ritual and of the initiate he says they “remake his body, always introducing into it some alien element, like the magic bone or stone”.<br />
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#18 page tt - each of the 3 parts of ENTROPY IN THE U.K have as their page 2 a splash-page of a character. This issue it's Gideon Stargrave of the 1980s.<br />
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#18 page 3 - “Goodness gracious me” is the comedy callback to the idea of “Peter Sellars in gupta drag” on page 1. It's the title of a comedy song recorded by the comedian and Sophia Loren which in 1960 was a top 5 UK hit.<br />
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#18 page 5 - “Jolly Roger”. An Invisible we haven't been introduced to yet.<br />
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#18 page 6 - “a fruit club”. A fruit club being a popular biscuit in the Nineties (<a href="http://www.thegreatbritishdiet.co.uk/Articles/JacobsClub.html">offsite link to lovely biscuits</a>).<br />
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#18 page 9 – Gerry calls it Uluru, “the navel of Australia”. To King Mob: Ayers Rock is “the magic stone”. (Read page 1 again which talks of the “magic bone or stone” of the ritual.<br />
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#18 page 10 – King Mob tells Joey “I'm an initiated man” while they psychically link. Does this indicate Joey is an Invisible?<br />
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“I'm not a whitefella, Gerry. I'm a scorpion dreaming”. A clever line as of course it refers to King Mob's native Australian culture “dreaming”, but it alludes to something else perhaps. The tale of the King who dreamt he was a butterfly, or was it a butterfly who dreamt he was a King? (The theme of a fluid self.)<br />
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#18 page 11 & 12 – the fox hunt (“You're one of us now”) & “my own ...ah... memories reflected back at me”. Was that Miles's equivalent initiation into “the Conspiracy”? (Although the bookjackets of the collected editions are keen to call it “the Conspiracy” the “other side” of the war has not been definitively given a title in these pages.)<br />
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#18 page 17 - the fish-ship in the rock. “There's ruh-red thing … kurrf … BARBELiTH?” It seems significant that it's King Mob telling the story of Ayers Rock and mentioning this to Miles as the “BARBELiTH experience” seems – like for Dane, life for Lord Fanny – to go beyond the encounter with the red circle and extend to the trials that these three Invisibles experience in the present-day storylines.<br />
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#18 page 20 & 21 – the “musk & dried flowers” ritual. There's a similar ritual in the third episode of the Gideon Stargrave story described in the “Everything...” section.<br />
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#18 page 24 – a splash-page for Jim Crow, as he joins the other Invisibles.<br />
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Assassin, issue title of #19<br />
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#19 page 1 – See “Panels of the Month”. Although Grant Morrison doesn't use a pen-name, there are similarities between him and “Kirk Morrison”. Both born at the start of the Sixties. The last panel of the page has “Morrison” quoting the Sex Pistols' Anarchy in the UK (which of course gives the arc its title).<br />
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#19 page 2 – The third “page 2 splashpage”, after “the Gideon Stargrave of the 1970s” and “the Gideon Stargrave of the 1980s”. As we now realise King Mob is effectively a fiction, it's “the Gideon Stargrave of the 1990s”. Floating around King Mob are various icons of the 1990s like Pamela Anderson.<br />
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#19 page 3 – More parallels with Grant Morrison's biography with some subtle differences. The 1981 pop group was “The Fauves” rather than “The Five”. 1985 Grant Morrison was writing. The big royalties of 1988 for Grant Morrison were from the Batman Arkham Asylum graphic novel, which allowed him to travel (Katmandhu rather than India).<br />
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The whole Katmandhu experience has been mentioned by Month 3.<br />
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#19 page 6 – Orwell's 1984 mentioned again.<br />
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#19 page 7 - five fingers. The number five again.<br />
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#19 page 8 – the symbol is that of the Zodiac's Scorpio, also used in alchemy and the Hermetic magic tradition.<br />
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#19 page 13 – Miles in straw boater and piped jacket as mentioned, allusion to "The Prisoner".<br />
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#19 page 18 - “the game's afoot”, a phrase from the London of Sherlock Holmes.<br />
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#19 page 23 - Gideon Stargrave's Odin trip. At the end of the original Gideon Stargrave epic, Gideon also echoes Norse myth.<br />
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How I Became Invisible, issue title of #20<br />
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#20 page 4 - “He has some interesting ideas” - Boy's partner talking about her Hip Hop artist brother. An indication that both her partner and her brother are both Invisibles?<br />
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#20 page 6 and 7 - "That when when the scenery cracked and I saw the ropes and pulleys and wires in back of everything", "I didn't know it then but I know it now", "That was my apocalypse".<br />
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This is Boy's initiation, her braving “the jaws of the dragon” though it only gets one issue rather than a three-part arc like Dane or Lord Fanny or King Mob.<br />
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#20 page 9 - "Black Iron", "The Empire never ended!" - these phrases are from P K Dick's VALIS, indeed the character saying these words looks kinda like P K Dick.<br />
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#20 page 12 - "Rex 84". This is an actual thing amazingly,- something like the Rex 84 described on this page happened.
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/27/1027497418339.html">Sydney Morning Herald says</a> of <i>Readiness Exercise 1984</i>...<br />
<br />
"From 1982-84 Colonel Oliver North assisted FEMA in drafting its civil defence preparations. Details of these plans emerged during the 1987 Iran-Contra scandal.<br />
<br />
They included executive orders providing for suspension of the constitution, the imposition of martial law, internment camps, and the turning over of government to the president and FEMA."<br />
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#20 page 15 - “everybody. Heads of the beast, you know what I'm saying?” Eezy D is describing the “other side” of the war to Boy.<br />
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#20 page 17 - This, presumably different, guy looks like P K Dick too, and he's on the "other side" from The Invisibles.<br />
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#20 page 21 - 'It's me. It's not “Oscar” any more, but it's me” - so was Oscar just a temporary deep-cover for an Invisible, or has he newly joined the Invisibles? It's ambiguous.<br />
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#20 page 23 -"I guess I'm different from the people I work with. I've been through all the psychological shit they put you through and it's still the same".<br />
<br />
Although it seems unlikely Boy is acknowledging the idea, is this a nod to the idea that the events of this one-issue story were orchestrated by The Invisibles? She's been “put through this” as part of her initiation? Again, it's ambiguous.<br />
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<span style="color: red;">BEYOND THE PAGE</span><br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Blank badge</span>:<br />
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<span class="st"><i><br /></i></span>
-- <span style="color: red;">Song of the month</span>:<br />
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Pink Floyd - Set the Controls of the Heart of the Sun<br />
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(As issue #17.)<br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Synchronicity</span> - the UK April 2012:<br />
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<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/apr/04/duchess-cambridge-tussauds-waxwork">"Photographers and camera crews jostled for position on Wednesday morning as Madame Tussauds in London unveiled its Catherine and William engagement tableau." The Royal Wedding (of the Tenties rather than the Eighties) almost one year on.</a> (guardian.co.uk)<br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Further reading</span>:<br />
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<br />
<i>The Day of Forever</i> by J.G. Ballard<br />
<br />
<br />
The Jerry Cornelius books by Michael Moorcock:<br />
<br />
Recommended selections<br />
<i>The Final Programme</i><br />
<i>A Cure for Cancer<br />The English Assassin</i><br />
<i>The Condition of Muzak</i><br />
(These 4 being "The Cornelius Quartet".)<br />
<br />
<i>The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius</i> (Four Walls Eight Windows edition, 2003)
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<br />John Norhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08096540803723805612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8029598991921681463.post-13791056698680778342012-03-22T21:22:00.003+00:002016-01-18T20:32:32.751+00:00The Invisibles volume 1 issues 11 to 16<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">These issues are</span>:<br />
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<i>The Invisibles</i> volume 1...<br />
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<b>Royal Monsters</b> (#11), <b>Best Man Fall</b> (#12), the three-parter <b>SHEMAN</b> (#13, #14, #15) and <b>London</b> (#16).<br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Collected edition:</span><br />
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These six issues are the last six (of the eight) of the second collected edition "Apocalipstick" - pictured.<br />
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(A note on the cover. While the first collected edition is currently being published, with a re-use of, oddly, Brian Bolland's cover for an issue of volume 2 of <i>The Invisibles</i>, this is a wholly new Bolland cover not on any issue of the series.<br />
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Another note - just announced - the omnibus edition will be published in August 2012!)<br />
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<span style="color: red;">ANALYSIS</span><br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Quote of the month</span>:<br />
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Edith, on Dane being “spirit” of the five elemental roles of the team...<br />
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“Spirit? Oh well, it's dazzlingly obvious then. The spirit's role's always unpredictable, you know that. It exits to galvanize and revitalise the elements around it. Here's a boy whose hatred of authority is such that he even rebels against us, against the Invisibles. I think he's here to test you to your limits, Gideon. That's what I think. He's here to shake you to the core. <br />
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To get him back, you're going to have to enter the labyrinth and face the beast. You must brave the jaws of the dragon, dear.<br />
<br />
Each of you in turn, I shouldn't wonder."<br />
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(Issue #13, page 20.)<br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Panels of the month</span>: <br />
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Issue #13, page 2 - King Mob and Lord Fanny discuss the eschaton.<br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Roots</span>:<br />
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Issue #11 <b>Royal Monsters</b> is heavily influenced by the stories of H.P. Lovecraft, in basic content (shambling monsters from beyond the stars) and in the tone of gloom.<br />
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Issue #12 - not so easy to say but, well, there's definitely a vibe of the films of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, bitter-sweet realism.<br />
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Morrison has mentioned the roots of the wildly varying formats of the pages of issues #13, #14, #15 (<b>SHEMAN</b>). Inspired by the way the Oliver Stone film Natural Born Killers used a variety of film stock, there is an intentional bricolage to these issues, and Jill Thompson was asked to draw various pages “in the style of” previous comics.<br />
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Although drag queens seem a “very Vertigo” topic (The Sandman got there first) the main character of the arc <b>SHEMAN</b> comes primarily, it seems, from Grant's own experiences. Not that he was raised in South American as a sorcerer but rather his own nightclubbing in ladies' clothes is something he described as an inspiration.<br />
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This experimentation seems to come from a period in Grant's life around 1993. A vague timeline can be discerned from the Grant Morrison interviews of the book <i>Anarchy for the Masses</i> - see month one "Further Reading" - the mini-interview for Chapter 1 and the long interview at the end of the book.<br />
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That vague timeline of Grant Morrison's life as he was writing Volume 1: the conception of the series in 1993 during the San Francisco Vertigo tour; the Kathmandu experience sometime after that; then the Scorpion experience (which is around the time of Grant penning the scripts for #10 and #17, #18, #19) sometime after that - but before 1996, when Grant was penning Volume 2.<br />
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The Scorpion experience and the Roots of #17, #18, #19 will be described next month when those issues are covered, in (of course) the “Roots” section.<br />
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The Kathmandu experience recounting this at comics conventions was essentially Grant Morrison's party-piece. The whole thing is described, apparently, in Morrison's chapter of the book Fortune Hotel but to summarise: him and a friend climbed the shrine of Swayambhunath, and on top of the roof garden, he was abducted by aliens, or rather had an out-of-body experience which seemed like that. During this experience the fifth-dimensional reality of our universe was revealed to Morrison (yes, I know, it sounds absurd, but it makes for an attention-grabbing party-piece at comics conventions doesn't it)?<br />
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Dane's encounter with BARBELiTH is apparently inspired by this experience of Morrison's though note the next section Everything... and what it has to say about the series <i>Flex Mentallo</i>.<br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">"I think that everything I do now is The Invisibles"</span>:<br />
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<i>Zenith</i> – the idea of Lovecraftian entities using specially created vessels to manifest in a universe. (The Invisibles #11, already seen in #9).<br />
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<i>Batman Inc (Volume 1) #5 </i>– the Falklands of The Invisibles #12 also in this issue.<br />
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<i>Doom Patrol</i> – Rebus is the “boygirl” (as Hilde of #12, #13, #14) character of that team, and the series also features the flamboyant “Danny the Street”.<br />
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<i>JLA World <span class="searchmatch">War</span> <span class="searchmatch">III</span></i><i> / Final Crisis</i> – while the Fourth World is a Jack Kirby creation, Morrison adds to the Forth World saga imagining its end and the dawn of the “Fifth World”. All that seems a curious echo to the South American “Fifth Sun” myths described by issue #13 of The Invisibles.<br />
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<i>Flex Mentallo</i> – the red/green “cosmic traffic lights” of BARBELiTH can also be seen in the pages of this. As this other series seems semi-autobiographical was BARBELiTH “revealed” to Morrison before Kathmandu?<br />
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<i>Animal Man</i> – mysterious (yellow) “aliens” are involved in the Secret Origin of Animal Man, just as “aliens” are with the Secret Origin of Jack Frost. “Aliens” which exist outside the “bubble” of their world.<br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Thoughts</span>:<br />
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So, issues #11 to 16: two one-off stories, a three-parter (<b>SHEMAN</b>), and one more issue, <b>London</b>.<br />
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A welcome return for Jill Thompson, again drawing the main arc, with John Ridgway the perfect artist for <b>Royal Monsters</b>, Steve Parkhouse illustrating <b>Best Man Fall</b> tenderly, Paul Johnson the artist for <b>London </b>giving it a gritty glow<b>.</b><span style="background-color: #ff9999; color: black;"></span><br />
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The previous two blogposts have covered, respectively, the run of the first four issues (Dane's initiation into the Invisibles) and the next six issues: the main team adventuring through the four-part <b>ARCADIA</b> storyline and a coda-issue, plus one issue that's a one-issue tale of an Invisible beyond the central team.<br />
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For all its UFO-Voodoo and zombies-on-crack weirdness, that issue, #10, is remarkably straightforward when these next two one-off tales are considered. That issue has the confident super-hero figure of Jim Crow triumphing over the bad guys (who are presumably on the same “side” as Sir Miles).<br />
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Both these new issues feature confused people encountering a monster.<br />
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Issue #11 <b>Royal Monsters</b> has as its “hero” Sutton, another Invisible operative, though one that has drifted into inaction and routine, who has delayed his mission to kill the star-beast as he believes the monster “likes him”.<br />
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Sutton isn't quite sure what side is which any more, his dilemma illustrated as he literally stands between two sides of the river – refer to the panel shown in the “Panels of the Month” section.<br />
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Bobby Murray of issue #12 <b>Best Man Fall</b> doesn't even realise there's a “war” between two sides, and his taking the job of a Harmony House security guard is just one element of a whole life told - in a non-linear fashion - over 24 pages.<br />
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The “monster” of issue #12 is actually King Mob. It means we have a different perspective on the events of issue #1, and the series as a whole.<br />
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<b>Royal Monsters</b> in probably the most beautifully written of the issues so far, and stands as its own Lovecraftian short-story, but also progresses the wider plot-lines of The Invisibles. There's a focus on Sir Miles, the main villain of the series, (and after the next issue there's more of Sir Miles for the next four issues). <br />
<br />
Best Man Fall is told in comics panels that constantly change from one time of Bobby's life to another – a story presented as a restless wandering across time is also how the next three issues <b>SHEMAN</b> is told.<br />
<br />
If you thought Pulp Fiction had a complicated time-hopping narrative then <b>SHEMAN</b> and London are even more complicated. During the three-parter, Sir Miles is complaining of Dane having bested him: London is effectively a flashback for the reader, and also it contains flashbacks to Dane's encounter with BARBELiTH of the first four issues of the series.<br />
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With <b>SHEMAN</b>, it's Lord Fanny's life-experiences that are jumbled so as to be non-linear though - King Mob and Edith, Boy and Ragged Robin, their search for Dane progresses over each issue.<br />
<br />
The point of the non-linear jumble of Lord Fanny's (or rather Hilde's) story is that three times of stress are told together to signify the revelation to Hilde that everything happens together, she can observe with the Magic Mirror the whole of her life: it's her own encounter with BARBELiTH and each of these three times of her life are seemingly somehow all the same “initiation”, the same task to gain wisdom.<br />
<br />
Edith says to King Mob in issue #13 - “To get him back, you're going to have to enter the labyrinth and face the beast. You must brave the jaws of the dragon, dear.<br />
<br />
Each of you in turn, I shouldn't wonder”. (The full quote is the “Quote of the Month” section.) T<br />
<br />
Entering “the labyrinth” then is what Dane flashes back to in London, his endurance of his “abduction” by “aliens”, and the South American gods are the equivalent of the “aliens” for Hilde. <br />
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“Show me what you really are” Hilde literally says and Dane effectively says, and the answer each time is the mysterious red/green disc of BARBELiTH.<br />
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If The Invisibles is essentially a super-hero series, then<b> DOWN AND OUT IN HEAVEN AND HELL</b> was the Secret Origin of Jack Frost (Dane), just as <b>SHEMAN</b> is the Secret Origin of Lord Fanny (Hilde). As I say, I've read the first 30 issues of this 59-issue series already, and I will say the next three issues are the Secret Origin of King Mob (Gideon), I won't tend to speak of future issues – mentioning this specifically though to make the point that “How They Became Invisible” seems to be inextricably tied to Edith's idea that each must “enter the labyrinth and face the beast. You must brave the jaws of the dragon”.<br />
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<b>ARCADIA</b> casts a disturbing shadow over the middle time-frame of the jumble of Hilde's story in <b>SHEMAN</b>, the time when she is 18 and encounters the Sade-esque group. There's an echo of the Castle of Silling sequence of <b>ARCADIA</b>, but also of the final pages, that show Sade in the 20th Century assembling his (hopefully different to the Castle) Châteaux “utopia”, supposedly though one of the “good guys” - as he's an Invisible.<br />
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At the end of <b>ARCADIA</b> a streetwalker is scooped into Sade's car and given a blank badge (joining the Invisibles), and in <b>SHEMAN</b>: immediately after her own encounter began by the Sade-esque character in the car, Hilde is asked to join the Invisibles by John-A-Dreams. <br />
<br />
So does this mean all three times of stress for Lord Fanny are all equally part of the initiation into The Invisibles? That is a disturbing thought.<br />
<br />
So what is BARBELiTH exactly?<br />
<br />
Something communicating to both Dane and Hilde that much is clear. The “Magic Mirror” fluid is part of this same mystery too it seems, and Hilde says it's from “outside the bubble”.<br />
<br />
What is BARBELiTH trying to say?<br />
<br />
We read on. Next month's blogpost is <b>ENTROPY IN THE UK</b> and <b>How I Became Invisible</b>...<br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Annotations</span>:<br />
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<b>Royal Monsters</b>, issue #11, page 21 - Sutton between Miles and the monster that "likes him" (he believes).<br />
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<b>Best Man Fall</b>, issue #12, page 4 - a curious echo in these panels of the balloon of issue #8.<br />
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Issue #15, page 11 - John-A-Dreams asks Hilde if she's heard of The Invisibles.<br />
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<b>London</b>, Issue #16, page 12 – are the “aliens” alien?<br />
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Issue #16 the whole of page 13 – BARBELiTH.<br />
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<b>Royal Monsters</b> is issue #11.<br />
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#11 page 1 – A Lovecraftian tale from page 1 onwards. (Continuing this influence from the first few pages of issue #9.) The way Sutton is drawn, he recalls H.P. Lovecraft himself, in appearance. Five hand movements: the recurring motif of the number 5. “Magic Mirror” has appeared in this series before, but is it connected to this magical mirror?<br />
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#11 page 2 - “And beauty becomes the Beast”, an oblique nod to the Cocteau films mentioned on the previous page (the film “Beauty and the Beast”.)<br />
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#11 page 6 – Haunted Britain by Hippisley Coxe – actually exists as an actual book.<br />
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#11 page 7 – the Diana mentioned here is of course Princess Diana, whose actual firstborn is William, first in line for the actual throne after the Queen and Prince Charles.<br />
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#11 page 12 – Killing Moon by Kirk Morrison, not an actual book.<br />
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#11 page 21 – one of the “Panels of the Month”.<br />
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<b>Best Man Fall</b> is issue #12.<br />
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#12 page 4 – Highlighted in the “Panels of the Month” section, it's the image of a balloon rising up again.<br />
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#12 page 7 – the only inexplicable element of this issue: “Edith says to call him Boody”. It makes slightly more sense after Edith is introduced in issue #13 and #16 page 13 has the line “We spoke through your /(toys)/”, though not much more sense.<br />
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#12 page 20 – the events of King Mob at Harmony House of issue #1 from a different perspective, which will be told again in issue #13, page 10.<br />
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<b>SHEMAN</b> is issues #13, #14, #15. (Note, as the “Roots” section explains, various pages are drawn “in the style of”.)<br />
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<b>Venus as a Boy</b><br />
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#13 page 1 and 2 – The myth of the Five Suns is directly from the myths of South America, except there would seem to be an emphasis on certain aspects by Grant to fit in with the themes of The Invisibles.<br />
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The sequence Suns (and gods) that is: Sun of Earth, Sun of Wind, Sun of Rain, Sun of Water - for the previous four Suns - is as the myths.<br />
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They also map onto the four of the five elements (as Rain is in the myths a Rain-of-Fire). This fits with the themes of The Invisibles: fifth element Spirit (Dane's role in the team of five) fits with the fifth Sun, “Sun of Motion”, and “Sun of Motion” fits with idea of the <span class="st">Terence McKenna's </span>Timewave (mentioned in #8), of time speeding up to December 2012. (Some interpretations of the Mayan Calendar give the end of the Fifth Sun as December 2012.)<br />
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I believed the phrase "Sun of Motion" might be a Morrison invention, but it's actually from the myths too.<br />
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The rest of the South American gods described by SHEMAN are all part of the actual myths, even the idea of “celestial monsters”, the “star demons”, the Tzitzimime. <br />
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The Tzitzimime are, in the actual myths, the doom of the Fifth Sun.<br />
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(It should be noted that the idea “celestial monsters” chime with the idea of the Lovecraftian monsters seen in issues #9 and #11.)<br />
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#13 page 2 – Lord Fanny and King Mob's discussion on time speeding up is one of the “Panels of the Month”: “the Apocalypse or the Eschaton or whatever you want to call it”, (refer to the “Panels of the Month” of last month for more on this idea).<br />
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#13 page 9 – Lord Fanny spewing Magic Mirror.<br />
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#13 page 10 - the events of King Mob at Harmony House of issue #1 from a different perspective, as retold by Gideon to Edith, drawn by Jill Thompson in the style of Rob Liefield (!).<br />
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#13 page 11 – this page has mention of Invisibles operatives beyond King Mob's current team of five, (as well as mentioning King Mob's name is Gideon), the lost team-member “John-A-Dreams” plus a mysterious new character “Mr Six”.<br />
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#13 page 15 – From Rio to Mexico. Teotihuacan, the City of the Gods. This panel is in the style of “Ripley's Believe it or Not”.<br />
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#13 pages 16 and 17 – in the style of Frank Miller's “Sin City”.<br />
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#13 page 18 – the red disc of BARBELiTH.<br />
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#13 page 20 – as the “Quote of the Month” section. “Each of you in turn”, would seem to allude to Dane's and Hilde's troubles and by the end of #15, Gideon's too. (That is to say, Jack Frost's and Lord Fanny's and King Mob's troubles.)<br />
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<b>Day of Nine Dogs </b><br />
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#14 page 5 – some more on Magic Mirror: “It's the time stuff, isn't it? The mirror stuff comes from outside the bubble and reflects it...”<br />
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“Lewis Brodie” seems to be an echo of the TV show The Professionals.<br />
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#14 page 6 – comics page in style of: prose over a full-page illustration.<br />
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#14 page 9 - “Jack Flint” of the re-activated Division X introduced, who doesn't appear on any other pages on the six issues thought about this month. <br />
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#14 pages 10 and 11, 14 and 15 – comics pages (the lowest panels) in the style of a Newspaper Cartoon: “Boy & Ragged Robin”.<br />
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#14 page 11 – mention of Roswell and UFOs. Remember this was published in 1995 and the X-Files began broadcast in September 1993, about a year before The Invisibles, Morrison and Chris Carter are both tapping into the modern myths of UFOs.<br />
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<b>Apocalipstick </b><br />
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#15 page 9 – comics page in the style of Frank Miller's “The Dark Knight Returns”.<br />
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#15 page 11 – Lord Fanny seems to be about to be asked to join the Invisibles, the John-A-Dreams panel is one of the “Panels of the Month”.<br />
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#15 page 16 – “Show me what you really are”, the red disc of BARBELiTH again. (Whatever BARBELiTH is.) <br />
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<b>London</b> is issue #16.<br />
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#16 page 7 – Jim Crow's Hip-Hop group “Root Doctaz” (of issue #10) feature on the posters as well as actual groups of the Nineties: Supergrass and Underworld and Pulp.<br />
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#16 page 12 – Dane is effectively asking, as Hilde did, “Show me what you really are”, of BARBELiTH.<br />
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#16 page 13 – the whole page is shown in the “Panels of the Month” section of this blogpost.<br />
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BARBELiTH.<br />
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“Which side are you on?” - a running theme of The Invisibles, over an illustration of a Möbius strip (which just has one side).<br />
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“The body is inside the soul” - not immediately apparently by issue #16 what this means exactly.<br />
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“Look. We are you” - Dane is gazing into the Magic Mirror that's previously seen to be spewed by Jim Crow (issue #10) and Lord Fanny (issue #13).<br />
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“Try to remember” - Brodie and Lord Fanny forgot the Magic Mirror. Also this is the phrase that begins and ends “Best Man Fall”, issue #12.<br />
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Dane gazing at the BARBELiTH graffiti – it's London, the “now” of issues #16, but he's remembering seeing the same graffiti during his time with Tom in the London underground, (issues #2, #3, #4) and his encounter with BARBELiTH itself.<br />
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<span style="color: red;">BEYOND THE PAGE</span><br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Blank badge</span>:<br />
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<span class="st"><i><br /></i></span>
-- <span style="color: red;">Song of the month</span>:<br />
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<br />
Underworld - Dirty Epic<br />
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(Underworld being one of the bands featured on the posters of the issue <b>London</b>. The lyrics conjure up London too.)<br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Synchronicity</span> - the UK March 2012:<br />
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<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/22/occupy-arab-spring-political-protest">More on Occupy London with a curious picture - "Occupy and the Arab spring will continue to revitalise political protest"</a> (guardian.co.uk)<br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Further reading</span>:<br />
<br />
<i>The Book of the New Sun</i> by Gene Wolfe<br />
<br />
(Another story inspired by the New Sun mythology of South America. It's a great and epic read, comparable in depth to <i>The Invisibles</i>. Actually four books which form the whole.)<br />
<br />John Norhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08096540803723805612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8029598991921681463.post-55367745181379025292012-02-22T20:33:00.001+00:002016-01-18T20:24:46.090+00:00The Invisibles volume 1 issues 5 to 10<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">These issues are</span>:<br />
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<i>The Invisibles</i> volume 1...<br />
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The four-parter <b>ARCADIA</b> (#5, #6, #7, #8, a time-travel adventure to the turn of the 19th Century and back) and <b>23: Things Fall Apart</b> (#9, the escape from the windmill) and <b>Season of Ghouls</b> (#10, the character Jim Crow is introduced).<br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Collected edition:</span><br />
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These six issues are the second half of the first collected edition "Say You Want a Revolution" and the first two issues of "Apocalipstick" - both collected editions pictured.<br />
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<span style="color: red;">ANALYSIS</span><br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Quote of the month</span>:<br />
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King Mob - "Welcome to the revolution, Jack."<br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Panel of the month</span>: <br />
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Issue #8, page 17 - the date of the apocalypse, the transformation: December 22nd, 2012.<br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">Roots</span>:<br />
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The <b>ARCADIA</b> arc reflects the genesis of <i>The Invisibles</i>.<br />
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There was tour in 1993 to promote the early Vertigo books - such as <i>The Sandman</i> and the <i>Sebastian O</i> mini-series by Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell. These two guys were on the tour, along with Jill Thompson who was promoting The Sandman. They talked together about doing a Morrison-penned series.<br />
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The rave in San Francisco they went to during the tour, during this was one specific event Grant's ideas for the series came together. This from an interview-excerpt with Grant Morrison in Chapter 1 of <i>Anarchy for the Masses</i> - see the "Further Reading" section from Month 1:<br />
<br />
"I realised I had to talk to the mass culture which was emerging at the time, the psychedelic culture based on the dance culture that had hit America. That was '93, so it kind of big in San Francisco at the time".
(The other big realisation regarding what the The Invisibles would be "about" was Grant's experiences in Kathmandu which will be discussed in another "Roots" section".)<br />
<br />
The artist for the first four issues is Steve Yeowell; the artist for the next four issues is Jill Thompson.
Just as King Mob eventually, gradually, became the avatar within the book for Grant Morrison, Ragged Robin was drawn as Jill Thompson by Jill Thompson, though from the beginning. (She had produced concept drawings for all five of the main characters, though Steve Yeowell got to draw King Mob's appearance as those concept drawings all featured a masked King Mob.)<br />
<br />
There are also historical events, poems, and novel, and a painting which are all the roots of <b>ARCADIA</b>, these will be mentioned in the "Thoughts" and "Annotations" sections...<br />
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-- <span style="color: red;">"I think that everything I do now is The Invisibles"</span>:<br />
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<i>Batman</i> - The four characters of the novel 120 Days of Sodom - Morrison adds in a fifth, The General, for <b>ARCADIA</b>, and these five characters can also be seen in these panels of Morrison's <i>Batman</i> #680.<br />
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<i>DWM comic stories</i> - One of the stories in the Doctor Who collected edition <i>The World Shapers</i> features the Cybermen, and those monsters seem to be the model for the Cyphermen of <i>The Invisibles <b>ARCADIA</b></i>, monsters keen that others should "be like" them.<br />
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<i>Final Crisis</i> - The ultramenstruum, the extra-dimensional silver lifeblood between universes<i></i><span class="st"><i></i></span> seem to be very similar to the "magic mirror" fluid of issue <i>The Invisibles</i> #10.<br />
<br />
<i>Zenith</i> - The mention, <i>The Invisibles</i> #9, of Tsathoggua, an entity of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, and same scene has the idea of entities using specially created vessels to manifest in a universe.<br />
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<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Thoughts</span>:<br />
<br />
So, after the first four issues which included discussion of the Russian Revolution (specifically criticism <span class="st"><i></i></span>of it by Kropotkin) and included the revolutionary Sixties as symbolised by John Lennon and also featured the "revolution of the head" that Dane undergoes - these next four issues focus on the theme of revolution again.<br />
<br />
The French Revolution and its aftermath the Reign of Terror, (the actual events and the Byron and Shelley philosophising about the events 25 years later), and, with the San Francisco sequence of issue #8, <b>H.E.A.D</b>., the Sixties revolution again with its then-contemporary (contemporary when The Invisibles was published) echoes of the Nineties.<br />
<br />
Grant Morrison writing on the "Invisible Ink" letters pages of issues #5 and #9 give an idea of the "why" for <b>ARCADIA</b>.<br />
<br />
"Invisible Ink" of #5:<br />
<br />
'The theoretical scaffolding for the entire INVISIBLES series is revealed herein, but I'm not still not sure whether people will actually want to persevere with page after page of rambling historical bullshit.'<br />
<br />
"Invisible Ink" of #9 In response to a letter about #5:<br />
<br />
'I felt the "cultural walkthrough" of the <b>ARCADIA</b> storyline was necessary in order to set up the historical and thematic framework of the series'.<br />
<br />
So The Invisibles then seems to have a central theme of revolution, revolution with utopian goals, though page 1 of the four-part <b>ARCADIA</b> arc introduces another theme, that of the blurring of the supposedly opposed "sides" of the turmoil.<br />
<br />
Of the puppet show on page 1 - "His skill makes us believe that we see a war between two great armies, but there is no war. There is only the Dalang".<br />
<br />
Some other quotes from issue #5 on this theme...<span class="st"> </span><br />
<br />
<span class="st">Percy Bysshe </span>Shelley speaks of Blake's 'Mind-forg'd manacles' and of gods and devils. "We must do away with them and stand up tall."<br />
<br />
Dane - "How do I know I haven't joined the other side?"<br />
<br />
The second-last page has the pianist saying "Can it be the same hand which plays both white notes and black? My skill is gone. Black wars with white. Keys like chessmen. I would play for you but that my arms are burdened so with these chains". The silhouette of the Pope's blessing he makes is that of a horned devil.<br />
<br />
So what does it all mean? "There is no war"?<br />
<br />
Now, I've writing this having read the first 30 issues of the 59 issues before (though I've also read the big Morrison interview of "Anarchy for the Masses" which alludes to later issues, the book mentioned in month one), so it will be interesting to read how this "thematic framework" of the series ultimately plays out.<br />
<br />
The plot of <b>ARCADIA</b> is minimal - King Mob's group's mission is to bring a "projection" of Sade to the present-day to help them win against "the enemy", the "other side", to help them "put together a blueprint for the future of humanity".<br />
<br />
Though the as the three panels of the month indicate (see the "Panels of the Month" section"), the intent of King Mob's side is that everyone gets the arcadia, the paradise, the utopia, the world that they want, "everyone including the enemy", everyone including the "other side". Which means: what?<br />
<br />
Regarding the two sides, it seems, broadly, that one of them - the Invisible College, that is, King Mob's side - stands for liberty, equality. The "other side" stands for control and tyranny. With <b>120 Days of Sod All</b>, the Banker & Judge & Bishop & Duke would seem to represent that "other side" with their tyranny over the castle.<br />
<br />
In that issue #7, Sade explains that his "120 Days" is meant to show "the hypocrisy of the Enlightenment. These are the monsters bred by the god of reason. Idealists and reformers all executioners in their turn". (An idea that was shown by the previous issue <b>Mysteries of the Guillotine</b>.)<br />
<br />
The last issue of <b>ARCADIA</b> ends with Sade in the 20th Century assembling his "experimental community", his chateau.<br />
<br />
His latest recruit speaks the last line of <b>ARCADIA</b>, "And in my mind, I see the sun rise on a new and better world", and as Sade regards the tyrants of the castle as "monsters", and he's supposedly with the "good side", <i>The Invisibles</i>, presumably there will be no tyrannous reign but a liberated community? Though as <b>ARCADIA</b> seems to suggest, the sides seemed to be blurred.<br />
<br />
All this ambiguity though in the series <i>The Invisibles</i>, there is less ambiguity in the real world and Shelley's words in this series "One day men and women will be equal and free from tyranny, free of God and fear, and we will have have helped to hasten that day with our words" reflect that the 21st Century Europe is a much better society than that before the Enlightenment.<br />
<br />
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Annotations</span>:<br />
<br />
<b>ARCADIA</b> is issues #5 and #6 and #7 and #8.<br />
<br />
<b>Bloody Poetry</b><br />
<br />
#5 - page 1 - "His skill makes us believe that we see a war between two great armies, but there is no war. There<br />
<br />
#5 - page 2 - P. B. Shelley's "Julian and Maddalo: A Conversation", which begins vaguely as the next page begins.<br />
<br />
#5 - page 3 - "There's a painting by Monsier Poussin, the Frenchman. It shows three shepherds and a shepherdess in a ideal landscape". The first mention of the painting "Les Bergers D'Arcadie".<br />
<br />
#5 - page 4 - Shelley: "One day men and women will be equal and free from tyranny, free of God and fear, and we will have have helped to hasten that day with our words". Byron: "It begins with fancy words but always end in blood. Think of the Terror in France, the hideous mountains of severed heads."<br />
<br />
#5 - page 5 - Shelley: "It's our responsibility not to fall prey to cynicism and despair, George. The utopia I speak of lies in the imagination. It is not built, it grows."<br />
<br />
#5 - page 6 - Another mention of Ganesh, "the god who breaks down obstacles", "nine's his number". (Refer to the Lennon Godhead sequence of issue #1.)<br />
<br />
#5 - page 9 - "A member of the Invisible College, as we are", including Byron and Shelley seemingly in The Invisibles.<br />
<br />
#5 - page 19 - The postcard is of "Les Bergers D'Arcadie".<br />
<br />
#5 - page 23 - The pianist mentions chess which features by Rennes-Le-Chateau in #7 and #8.<br />
<br />
<b>Mysteries of the Guillotine</b><br />
<br />
#6 - page 3 - A note on the dates of the arc - the Reign of Terror was 1793 & 1794, though it must be 1793 as Madame Roland appears next issue.<br />
<br />
#6 - page 14 - The character of the "chess-player" gives Mary Shelley (author of Frankenstein) an apple. It's 25 years after the Reign of Terror. So 1818 which fits with the historical Shelleys.<br />
<br />
#6 - page 15 - "Tell me, have you heard of the Inivisible College?" They are "dedicated to the ideals of liberty".<br />
<br />
#6 - page 20 - "Oh Liberty, how many are the crimes committed in thy name?" Madame Roland was part of the movement that led to the French Revolution but was judged to be of the other "side" and executed for treason during the Reign of Terror in 1793.<br />
<br />
<b>120 Days of Sod All</b><br />
<br />
#7 - page 1 - "The Banker", "The Judge", "The Bishop", "The Duke", the same characters of De Sade's "120 Days of Sodom", as King Mob and Boy and De Sade must journey through one of De Sade's own fictions, though it's slightly different from the original.<br />
<br />
#7 - page 3 - The issue title "120 Days of Sod All" of course being a version of the title of De Sade's story, and the image of this page is "Les Bergers D'Arcadie", they are in both the story and the painting, via the "ontic sphere" whatever that is.<br />
<br />
#7 - page 14 - Rennes-Le-Chateau, and the story of Saniere. It's the "chess-player" again.<br />
<br />
#7 page 15 - The chess-player mentions a reproduction of "Les Bergers D'Arcadie" being purchased by Sauniere.<br />
<br />
#7 page 24 - The "lost treasure of the Templars" is usually thought of the Holy Grail but it's apparently "The head of John the Baptist" (still a Jesus connection however).<br />
<br />
<b>H. E. A. D.</b><br />
<br />
#8 - page 1 - Another revolution. Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey and the "magic bus".<br />
<br />
#8 - page 3 - "He was talking about revolutions. Or the revolution. I suppose there only is ever one".<br />
<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTPVRoyYGIIKGbzWl6wNsktQUkfRYO_Y186mdy2jYV06nQysrVlt33O6Gl-0E8JmZpPxBIFPXQi-V3a67Cz3UarB9hoNC0tkHbdSq0vyTXtAPnSEvC_jIrpqjFTKiAfb84_ROGu-VpFtY/s1600/invis010806.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTPVRoyYGIIKGbzWl6wNsktQUkfRYO_Y186mdy2jYV06nQysrVlt33O6Gl-0E8JmZpPxBIFPXQi-V3a67Cz3UarB9hoNC0tkHbdSq0vyTXtAPnSEvC_jIrpqjFTKiAfb84_ROGu-VpFtY/s1600/invis010806.jpg" /></a></div>
#8 - page 6 - After saying "We hope you're going to help to put together a blue-print for the future of humanity", "we're coming up on the apocalypse at last", King Mob expands on the reason for bringing Sade to San Francisco.<br />
<br />
#8 - page 11 - Another P. B. Shelley poem, this time "Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills".<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX4fK8pznKEnY8Up4B4duQNpNSjIpMiRqAjFIZtbW5j2U7UFo0vZ7WEXt8E0AqfogGA3blf7JKabKgMqHpHfgM6DyFKBiYUTR_uASHHkZVsP8gQqFUikQ5-wm96U0zJqybIR0hyphenhyphend_Ub0U/s1600/invis010811.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX4fK8pznKEnY8Up4B4duQNpNSjIpMiRqAjFIZtbW5j2U7UFo0vZ7WEXt8E0AqfogGA3blf7JKabKgMqHpHfgM6DyFKBiYUTR_uASHHkZVsP8gQqFUikQ5-wm96U0zJqybIR0hyphenhyphend_Ub0U/s1600/invis010811.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
#8 - page 11 - Ragged Robin explains another reading of the phrase that gives the arc its title.<br />
<br />
#8 - page 16 - "Hedonic Engineering and Development". (A Robert Anton Wilson idea.) The new revolution. "From one bunch of heads to another in two hundred years".<br />
<br />
#8 - page 20 - More of the poem ""Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills".<br />
<br />
#8 - page 24 - The last line. "And in my mind, I see the sun rise on a new and better world". Summing up of the arc.<br />
<br />
<b>23: Things Fall Apart</b><br />
<b> </b>
<br />
#9 - page 1 - Tsathoggua is an entity of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.<br />
<br />
#9 - page 2 - The title <b>23: Things Fall Apart</b> is a combination of a quote from "The Second Coming" by Yeats, and the I-Ching hexagram 23 which means "Splitting Apart" appropriately enough as King Mob's group is spit in this issue.<br />
<br />
#9 - page 3 - The character of "John" that King-Mob-with-hair is talking to seems to be the member of the group that Dane is replacing.<br />
<br />
<b>Season of Ghouls</b><br />
<br />
#10's "Invisible Ink" letter pages:<br />
<br />
"For elements of this month's story..." says Grant:<br />
<br />
Divine Horsemen by Maya Deren<br />
Voodoo and Hoodoo by Jim Haskins<br />
Mama Lola by Karen McCarthy Brown<br />
The Voudon Gnostic Workbook by Michael Bertiaux<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;">BEYOND THE PAGE</span><br />
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Blank badge</span>:<br />
<br />
<br />
<span class="st"><i><br /></i></span>
-- <span style="color: red;">Song of the month</span>:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<br />
Dead or Alive - You Spin Me Round (quoted by the head of <b>H.E.A.D</b>.)<br />
<br />
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Synchronicity</span> - the UK February 2012:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2012/feb/22/occupy-london-conversation">"Occupy London has started a conversation that can't be stopped"</a> (guardian.co.uk)
<br />
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Further reading</span>:<br />
<br />
<i>The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789–1848</i> by Eric Hobsbawm
<br />
<br />
<br />John Norhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08096540803723805612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8029598991921681463.post-28179899465263648222012-01-22T23:00:00.000+00:002016-01-18T21:15:50.179+00:00The Invisibles volume 1 issues 1 to 4<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">These issues are</span>:<br />
<br />
<i>The Invisibles</i> volume 1...<br />
<br />
<b>Dead Beatles</b> (#1, Dane meets King Mob with Lennon in the background) and the three-parter <b>DOWN AND OUT IN HEAVEN AND HELL</b> (#2, #3, #4 Dane is prepared by Tom O'Bedlam to join The Invisibles with a magickal mystery tour of London).<br />
<br />
Welcome to "Counting to 2012"! There will be 12 blogposts across 2012, each published on the 22nd of each month. Each blogpost will cover 4 or 5 or 6 issues of the 59 issues of the 3 volumes of Grant Morrison's meisterwerk <i>The Invisibles</i>.<br />
<br />
Originally published from 1994 to 2000, this "comic about everything" is being re-read in 2012: because that year is part of the fabric of the story; because 2012 is turning out to be a year of revolutions (also part of the fabric of the story); because it seems a fascinating exercise to re-read now that many of the ideas of <i>The Invisibles</i> are mainstream in 2012. I should say this will be for me a re-read for the first 30 issues, and I'll be reading the second half of the 59 for the first time.<br />
<br />
These 12 blogposts with their 12 sections should be self explanatory - if you fancy reading along then note the sidebar which explains which collected editions will be read and talked about when.<br />
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Collected edition:</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNu_PjqSWFYXh89JE-fRDYZBY4YvlP6Wb0zCcJzSSqFwifwOniWX82Bg5imw7zX6_EUpXWY60IuHUER64XWZGaWjgfrQJA3SDZ75m1642vLW4TR-T28dtptBP3pAsgMUFerzcn1U-u5Dc/s1600/ce01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNu_PjqSWFYXh89JE-fRDYZBY4YvlP6Wb0zCcJzSSqFwifwOniWX82Bg5imw7zX6_EUpXWY60IuHUER64XWZGaWjgfrQJA3SDZ75m1642vLW4TR-T28dtptBP3pAsgMUFerzcn1U-u5Dc/s200/ce01.jpg" width="133" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>(FIRST HALF)</b></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
These four issues are the first half of the first collected edition "Say You Want a Revolution" - pictured.
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;">ANALYSIS</span><br />
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Quote of the month</span>:<br />
<br />
King Mob - "You joined a long time ago. But if you don't want to come with us now, if you don't want to find out more about what this is all about, you're free to go your own way."<br />
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Panels of the month</span>: <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
One of the two pages of the Lennon godhead (art by Steve Yeowell) of issue #1.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Roots</span>:<br />
<br />
King Mob mentions "living in a '60s spy series" and that's perhaps the basic template over which things are overlaid.<br />
<br />
For #1 (<b>Dead Beatles</b>) - <i>A Clockwork Orange </i>by Anthony Burgess (Dane's sentencing). Pop. Chaos Magick.<br />
<br />
For the Lennon elements of <b>Dead Beatles</b> and for the London of the three-parter <b>DOWN AND OUT IN HEAVEN AND HELL</b> - <i>From Hell</i> by Alan Moore, his imagining of the story of Jack the Ripper and perhaps Moore's meisterwerk seems to be a major influence. Chapter 2 of it features the idea that Ganesh is to be consulted before embarking on a journey, and the Lennon godhead sequence is Morrison's version of this - "his number 9 the number of ganesh the god who breaks down obstacles scent of jasmine number of lennon number 9 more popular than Jesus". (The ideas of Ganesh and Jasmine corresponding to the number 9 are from Crowley's <i>Liber 777</i>, and Lennon wrote Revolution 9.)<br />
<br />
"From Hell, Chapter 4: What Doth the Lord Require of Thee" - originally published in 1991 in Taboo #5 (so well before 1994's #1 of <i>The Invisibles) </i>this has the city as a morass of symbols to be decoded - Tom mentioning a sigil (on page 16 of #3) formed by joining up the McDonald's of London is surely a nod to Moore's similar idea with the churches of London.<br />
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">"I think that everything I do now is The Invisibles"</span>:<br />
<br />
<i>Zenith</i> - Peter St John communing with the Beatles in Phase II. (While all are very much alive. Art again by Steve Yeowell.)<br />
<br />
<i>Batman: Arkham Asylum</i> - there's two adjacent pages of #1 which have an interesting resonance with this, that of the "YES/NO" cards and the Tarot cards on the next page. In this graphic novel Two-Face tries to expand beyond the duality of a coin-flip with the Tarot.<br />
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Thoughts</span>:<br />
<br />
The oversize first issue has so much in it, and re-reads (after reading later issues) really mean the meaning of it all is less opaque. The communion with the godhead of Lennon is spectacular though on any reading, and Dane's similar "meeting", with Lennon the man, is eerie and another highlight. A rollicking start to the series.<br />
<br />
The three-parter for all its weirdness is actually the age-old story of a mentor welcoming an initiate into a new way of being (think Ben Kenobi and Luke Skywalker, or Ducard and Bruce Wayne).<br />
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Annotations</span>:<br />
<br />
These Annotations are not going to be exhaustive for these four issues (as much of the meaning of these starting issues only really unfolds with later issues, and I won't be mentioning anything about future issues when I annotate) and I'll point to two online existing annotations and one book's Grant Morrison interview, (see Further Reading) a sum of knowledge which I will try to add to this month and future months.<br />
<br />
<b>Dead Beatles</b>, issue #1:<br />
<br />
Page 1 of #1 - "Kephra, the sacred beetle, goes down into darkness and rises again" - the dead scarab beetle that King Mob is given is one meaning of the issue's title. <br />
<br />
Page 18 and 19 of #1 are the Lennon godhead sequence (see Roots and Panels of the month sections).<br />
<br />
Page 22 of #1 - very <i>A Clockwork Orange</i> (see Roots). <br />
<br />
Page 25 and 26 of #1 have the YES/NO cards and the Tarot (see "I think that everything I do now is The Invisibles" section).<br />
<br />
Page 27 of #1 - King Mob's mention of "living in a '60s spy series" (see Roots). <br />
<br />
The <b>DOWN AND OUT IN HEAVEN AND HELL </b>issues, #2, #3, #4:<br />
<br />
The story of Dane's encounter with the red circle will be told again in later issues, and annotated then... <br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;">BEYOND THE PAGE</span><br />
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Blank badge</span>:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Song of the month</span>:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
The Beatles - Tomorrow Never Knows (quoted by the Lennon magick sequence).<br />
<br />
Spookily appropriate themes in this cartoon version.<br />
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Synchronicity</span> - the UK January 2012:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/jan/20/paul-mccartney-new-album">Paul McCartney's new album: 'I wanted to do this with the Beatles' </a>(guardian.co.uk)
<br />
<br />
-- <span style="color: red;">Further reading</span>:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.barbelith.com/bomb/">barbelith dot com</a> annotations.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.lunabase.org/%7Efaber/Vault/invisibles">lunabase dot org</a> annotations.<br />
<br />
<i>Anarchy for the Masses: The Disinformation Guide to the Invisibles</i> by Neighly and Cowe-Spigai. (The long Grant Morrison interview.)
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<br />
<br />John Norhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08096540803723805612noreply@blogger.com0