The Invisibles #5

It says "Crash the bus" on the back cover and I fucking get it so hard.

My inherent nihilism doesn't show often because, ultimately, I believe in a humanitarian morality based around kindness and compassion, built upon the foundational belief that nothing exists beyond our short lifespans and any act of wanton cruelty which makes any part of that short and challenging life more difficult for another person is the only true evil in the universe. But I feel the statement, "Crash the bus," deep down in my bones sometimes. Maybe it stems from a carefree and flirtatious relationship with suicidal ideation that allows me to embrace the idea of burning it all down. Most people want safety and comfort and will bargain with the devil to keep as much of that safety and comfort as possible, no matter how illusory it may be (because we have to face the fact that a good illusion may as well be reality). We're living in a Jenga tower where we refuse to restablilize the base even though it's teetering on just three misplaced blocks. And because of that, the amount of true reform that can be applied to this system is limited to what shapes can stand upon those three blocks. Most people are willing to work in that paradigm because they're afraid of starting completely over and losing their current safety and comfort, or because they think those three blocks are too sacred to remove. But imagine if you kicked out those three blocks, or, to sort of get back to the original analogy, crashed the bus into them and brought the whole tower down. Imagine the stable structure you could build if you started from a foundation that was built to support a better, kinder, more just system rather than trying to build that better system on a foundation not meant to support anything like it. Just because a structure has stood for over two hundred years doesn't mean it's still worth living in today, or maintaining its upkeep simply because we've always maintained its upkeep. I often dream of crashing the bus. And believe me, I don't fantasize about it because I think I'll survive the crash. I fantasize about it because I don't think I'll survive the ride.

On the inside cover of this issue, there's a brief description of who and what The Invisibles are. "An organization dedicated to subversive activity in all its forms...the only rule of the organization is disobedience." In an earlier The Invisibles review, I believe I equated this organization to the Upright Citizens Brigade (specifically the show and not the comedy troupe). It's probably why I understood this comic book from page one. My intro or about page on Facebook has simply said this for however long I've been on the cursed site: "My only enemy is the status quo. My only friend is chaos" (that's stolen from the Upright Citizens Brigade intro, just to be clear). So I really can't remember why I stopped reading this comic book. It was right up my alley, even at twenty-three! I highly suspect I just lost track of it because I was a terribly disorganized comic book collector.

I just realized King Mob is Grant Morrison's Mary Sue, isn't he? I had an image of him in my head but I just checked the Internet to makes sure he did look just like King Mob and, well, the Internet confirmed my suspicions. Also while scanning Morrison's Wikipedia entry, I noticed a short paragraph about Morriosn noting the similarities between The Invisibles and The Matrix. You know, like I noticed as well! Me! I noticed it too!

Try to remember that these reviews are really just reviews about me and no the comic books I'm pretending to read but really just looking at the pictures.

Morrison just puts the pieces of the puzzle on the table and you're supposed to put them together. But who does fucking puzzles?! Boring!

In my 30s, I planned on reading every holy book and writing copious amounts of commentary from a person who wasn't taught the dogma behind the words and was simply trying to understand the book with the words that were there. I made it about forty pages through Genesis with nearly three hundred pages of commentary and then the project just sort of petered out. I suppose I'm still alive so I can always restart this project. But sometimes life has a way of kicking you in the brain by distracting you and suddenly eighteen years have gone by and you're all, "What's the fucking point?" The Mahabharata was going to be one of those books. I read part of it in college but damned if I can remember any of it. Hell, I was even going to read Dianetics! I was going to save the Quran for last just in case I invoked the rage of some fundamentalist psycho for interpreting something in the book literally as opposed to the way it's been taught according to centuries of dogma (I was pretty sure I was going to offend Christians as well but Christian fundamentalists are mostly lazy, selfish bastards who wouldn't dare take any risks to disrupt their Earthly life for their spiritual beliefs). The few bits I've read from the Quran that line up with Genesis were far more interesting in the way they sort of held a dialogue with The Bible. Like when Abraham apparently went to sacrifice his only son in The Bible and the book claims it was Isaac. And yet the only time Abraham had an only son was before Isaac was born and his only son was Ishmael. So, you know, it sounds pretty much like The Bible is lying about what happened while the Quran is just telling it like it is (although I'm not sure the Quran ever names the child so that's another part of the mystery! Maybe it was Isaac and somehow Ishmael just didn't count as a true son for reasons. You know the reasons. Maid's sons don't count is the reason).

After teaching about Indian puppetry, Morrison gives the reader a lengthy scene of Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley discussing their roles as poets in the betterment of the world. With all these conversations of dead artists who died young, I wonder if Grant Morrison is bitter that he's lived so long? Anyway, George and Percy have some interesting things to say but this isn't a synopsis but a review. Also I don't like to comment on things I don't understand, like intelligent dialogue and beautiful poetry and earnest compassion.

Meanwhile, Jack Frost learns that the most important part of being an Invisible is being more paranoid than the next guy.

King Mob has to get back to England after his Indian puppet show and a visit to a Ganesh statue but he hates flying. So instead, he takes a shortcut through the future where the world has been ravaged by a great war and the Berlin Wall was rebuilt but bigger. Probably not to keep people on either side of it (the world seems mostly devastated) but probably just because the few fascist assholes still alive felt building a monument to being controlling dicks was the right thing to do to celebrate.

Some mysterious guy without a face takes the face of some kids' father in a park somewhere at some point. It's hard to tell if this story has a place in time that can be considered the "now" being that King Mob is in a ravaged future and Byron and Shelley are in a long gone past and Jack Frost is in the present. Oh, that's probably the now! And the guy who stole the face of the other guy is probably in Jack's now time.

King Mob returns to his Invisibles cell with information about their next mission. He also lets everybody know that Orlando is currently in London. I think it was Orlando who stole the face of the guy in the park. But that's just supposed to raise the tension because the Invisibles are going to leave their bodies behind in present day London as they time travel to the French Revolution. If we didn't know about Orlando, we would just be all, "Okay, cool! I guess they're time traveling and leaving their bodies so it'll be safe. Not because there are no threats from long-lived assassins without their own faces but because it's fucking time travel and I imagine they can return to their bodies the exact moment in which they left them!" Although the idea that the amount of time they spend in the past is equal to the amount of time their bodies sit unguarded makes a lot more sense than having somebody from the future tell Bill and Ted in his past that their clock is always ticking no matter where they are in time. I mean, it just doesn't make any sense! Especially when they break the rules later and will probably shit all over the time travel rules of their own established universe in the upcoming movie. Anyway, I like the idea that their spirits leave their bodies in the present in this time travel and that the spirits are away exactly as long as they spend in the past. That actually makes sense to me!

The Invisibles #5 Rating: B+. Well, thanks a lot, twenty-three year old asshole me from the past! You just had to stop buying this comic book, didn't you?! And now I have to suffer not knowing what happens! Although I suppose you also suffered that and you seemed to have been fine. Aside from having no ambition and never finishing any writing projects and killing all of your dreams to play more video games. You know. Aside from that, you did just fine. Yeah. Real fine. Idiot.

The Invisibles #4

Is this how idiotic social beliefs are purged from assholes?

I don't understand the people who want less politics in comic books. We need more politics in comic books! Except what I don't really understand is using the word "politics" when they're actually angry about discussing social ills. Except I really do understand what they mean when they refer to social issues as politics. Certain people refer to being compassionate and kind and inclusive as "political correctness" because they can't imagine being compassionate or kind or inclusive until the cost of not being those things adversely affects them. So they think people only believe in being that way if it confers some kind of selfish advantage, usually in the political arena. And thus actually being a compassionate human being becomes political to them.

Also, can we just stop arguing about how comic books used to be when they've always been about making the world a better place and there have always been comic book fans who found that political because they were terrible people? A terrible person reading a comic book where Batman stops some bank robbers can feel good about the story because they know they'll never rob a bank. But when Batman deals with some social ill, the terrible reader might see themselves reflected back at them in the villain of the story. Suddenly, to them, the story has become political. How dare the comic book company choose the other side which is just a political difference and not a basic human decency issue! And they never think, "Maybe, like Batman, I should also try to do better?" No, instead they send a letter to the publisher demanding that the publisher change the stories they tell so that they don't have to take a long, hard look at themselves.

Ideas are political. If you think a story about Batman breaking the bones of The Joker's henchmen because The Joker is robbing banks isn't political, you're kidding yourself. You're just not looking deeply enough into the story and the systemic problems in Gotham that creates a demand for henchmen that are desperate enough to work for a maniac who could murder them at any moment while also having to worry about a man in a bat suit nearly killing them for working for the maniac. How is a billionaire going out at night dressed as a flying rodent to beat up poor and mentally ill people not political? How is any Superman story not political when it's about an immigrant to America embracing his new country and trying to make it a better place for everybody? If you actually think you want comic books to not be political, you're telling on yourself. You're just saying that you're the type of person who doesn't want to read criticism's about our world that might make you feel guilty about your selfish attitude.

The Invisibles is an old comic book which came out 26 years ago and it couldn't be more political. But then it's dealing with magic and the irreality of reality, so if you're dumb enough, you can probably pretend it's not political at all.

This issue begins with a Books of Magic trading card.

At the end of the last issue, Tom told Dane they were going to climb to the top of the skyscraper with the magic pyramid on top and leap off. It was going to teach Dane about the finality of life and not really kill him. But when this issue begins, they seem to have put that off for the moment. Instead, they've stolen a sports car, driven it out to some sleepy little UK pasture, and begun a game of catch with a Frisbee. Tom starts rambling on about how his time is up and he's going to die because he's a warrior sorcerer and his time is up and he can see the shape of his life and it's super small and everything sucks but it also doesn't, you know? Dane barely listens to him because he's now full of life again and he just wants to do the things people who feel alive do. I don't know what those things are because I just sit in barely lit rooms reading terrible books from my youth and finding reasons not to begin writing my second module for my role playing game, Places & Predators.

I should take a break and call my mother!

I'm back! I also ate and watched an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and an episode of Community and lay on the couch with Gravy.

Gravy's head is behind mine and not inside mine because we don't own a teleportation device and, if we did, we wouldn't be so careless with it.

The next day, Tom and Dane head off to jump off of a skyscraper. Tom will presumably be doing it for real because he's tired and he's done his part and he thinks Dylan Thomas is a fucking asshole who can't just let a person die in peace when they're ready to go. I mean, lay off me, Dylan! I'm fucking dying here! This isn't about you and your fear of death (which, ironically, is probably why you drink so much and why you'll be dead at 39). Dane smokes some blue mold which will probably allow him to fly or bounce or something.

Sometimes I think about the angst of youth and then I think about how optimistic and embracing Quiet Riot was of the youth and youth culture and it just makes me fucking smile, man. That wasn't supposed to be a non sequitur. That was just a reaction I had to Tom telling some bystanders witnessing Dane's drug induced realizations, "It's drugs. Dope. They're all on it nowadays. With their computer games and violent videos and swear words. We had The Bible and a nice apple when I was his age." Tom is being smarmy and telling the adults what they want to hear. And, especially with reference to their video games, it made me think of Quiet Riot who didn't care what adults wanted to hear. They knew what the kids needed to hear. And it wasn't just "Being a teenager sucks and we get it and the world is garbage!" Their message was often "We see how things are different for you and how you cope differently than we did and we fucking get it man and we approve and you're going to be all right. Your doing good, kids." Most of you probably only know "Metal Health" and "Cum on Feel the Noize" so you're thinking, "What the fuck are you talking about?" But some of you also know "Winners Take All" and "The Wild and the Young" so you fucking know what I'm talking about.

This reminds me of The Last Temptation of Christ.

The problem with books that revolve around Jesus is that I truly can't tell if they're making a statement about secular life or if they're truly reinforcing the opinion that Jesus was the son of God and the only truth you need to know about Jesus is that he was resurrected. Was Jesus preaching about being good on Earth because it was the salvation of your soul and your way into heaven? Or was Jesus literally trying to tell everybody to give unto Caesar what is Caesar's because this shit don't matter, bro. Fuck Earth and Earthly conceits. Should every action taken on Earth be concerned with your spiritual self and your relationship with God and getting into heaven? Because I'm tempted to see The Last Temptation of Christ as a parable for secular life. Are we all Christ in the desert being tempted by the devil away from our true calling? But if all the regular trappings of society are illusions and lures away from whatever it is we should do, what is there really? What would a person do if they didn't have a career? Or a spouse? Or a mortgage? Or a child? Not falling for those temptations isn't enough, right? So what's the next step? Sacrificing your own desires for the common good of the world? But what common good would that be if people aren't supposed to fall for any material temptations?! What are we striving for if we aren't striving for everybody to equally fall for the same societal illusions?! What is the magic asking of us?! To just burn it all down to prove that we weren't fooled by any of it?! How is waking up outside of The Matrix better than living within it?! Show me my fucking cards before you ask me to jump off the top of a skyscraper is what I'm saying!

You know what? I think that's what Jesus asked God the night of the Last Supper!

Jumping off of a skyscraper to get Dane to pierce the illusion of reality and see what lies beneath is way better than giving him a red or blue pill. The Matrix pussed out, even though it had this scene from The Invisibles as a perfect example of what it was doing.

Dane survives the leap and finds himself in a four color comic sci-fi pulp novel cover. The world has changed and he's not sure what to do. So he goes to the address of the Invisible College that Tom gave him. He's finally ready to report for duty.

Dane meets the other Invisibles: King Mob, Ragged Robin, Boy, and Lord Fanny (which would have gone right over my head in 1994 and possibly only made it into the comic book because the editors didn't know quite enough British slang). As far as drag names go, Lord Fanny is proper good.

Meanwhile, some shadowy guy answers a phone call from Orlando (probably exactly the Orlando you're thinking of because why not? He/she was good enough for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). They discuss raiding an Invisibles safe house they've discovered. But the non-Orlando guy on the phone can't direct it because he's got British politics to do.

Back in 1994, I also wouldn't have understood what this door with the 10 on it was telling me about the person on the phone.

Dane decides to stick with The Invisibles as Jack Frost and they make their getaway before Orlando and the Prime Minister's Myrmidons break into the safe house. All they find is a chalkboard that reads, "Big Brother is watching you. Learn to become invisible," and a pink grenade with the word "smile" printed on it in ransom letter letters. And that's the end of the first story arc.

The Invisibles #4 Rating: A. I'm seriously getting angry at my 23 year old self for not continuing to purchase this series. It's hard to remember exactly where I was at that time in my life that caused me to stop reading it. I'm sure I liked it. Maybe I just had trouble remembering it from month to month. Or maybe I just missed Issue #6 at the comic book store (I never had anything put on hold. I'd just show up on Wednesdays (unless it was Thursday back then? I can't even remember that!) and pick up my books (I didn't even ask the store to hold a copy of the Death of Superman for me. The clerk, Jeff, just happened to hold one for me anyway. He probably thought I was super cool or something)) and so just forgot about the series. Maybe I'll pick up the collected edition whenever my local comic book store reopens. Although if I show my face in there, they may try to get me to buy comics that were placed in my pull box after I cancelled my pull box. See, they weren't getting comics from Diamond for over a month and I just decided it was as good a time as any to stop buying new comics. So I cancelled my pull box. But what if, in their mind, I was still on the hook to buy all the comics for the weeks that Diamond didn't ship?! That would be fucked up and, knowing me, I'd instantly cave and say, "Oh yeah! Okay! Sorry! Sorry! I'll purchase all of this shit I don't want anymore just so we don't continue this awkward conversation!"

The Invisibles #3

This is exactly what taking drugs isn't.

Our world is composed of geniuses and not-geniuses. That's the kind of statement a not-genius makes because it's so fucking obvious. Do you ever have to say anything that pretty much says "All of the people on the world are either this or that"? Anyway, the point I was making wasn't that I'm one of the not-geniuses even though it's the point I accidentally made. The point was that in the non-genius camp, we have those who are smart enough to recognize genius and those who sit grumpily in their pee-puddles whining about how the high-falutin' elites are trying to make things different. Different, in this case, generally means better but if you're a non-genius who can't recognize geniuses, you're just mad that somebody said french fries might not be the most nutritional side dish (even though you could still live in a world where you acknowledge that french fries are both not even close to nutritional and also the best food on the planet. I mean, you have that choice. But I guess the pee-puddle you're sitting in (which is slowly leaking into your gun cabinet) has probably distracted you from rational thought). Again, that wasn't the point I was going to make (about the french fries!) but I have a problem staying on topic. Partly it's because I've never been able to stay on topic (you should read some of my college essays which I'm not going to release to the public so even though I suggested you should read them, you won't be reading them. Ever) and partly it's because of another reason that I forgot while typing the college paper parenthetical statement.

My point might have been that you can recognize a genius because they can state plain what other people are obfuscating in their pronouncements. If you're not smart enough to recognize the genius, you might think the genius is spreading propaganda, mostly because you really want to believe the thing that isn't true because it shields you from guilt or blame or repercussions stemming from following your own selfish desires at any cost. The genius is reviled by people who can't recognize genius and viled by people who can. Or unviled? Previled? Maybe I should have just gone with lauded.

You might think I'm saying all of this in regards to Grant Morrison but you'd be wrong. I'm actually saying this about A.R. Moxon, the author of The Revisionaries, whose Twitter handle is @JuliusGoat. He did not pay me to point out that he's a genius although he probably should have. I suppose it's not too late. Being that he's a genius and knows the smart thing to do, I'm sure he'll buy my RPG when he Googles his name and/or Twitter handle and finds me sticking my tongue way up his asshole in this post. I mean, I'm basically saying he's smarter than Grant Morrison!

Getting back to Grant Morrison, is he really a genius? I'm not so sure. I think maybe he's just a libertine who did a lot of drugs and traveled to a lot of sort-of-spiritual places (not to be more spiritual but to get his hot genius take on spirituality in a place that smells of burning corpses and goat semen while he shits his guts out back at the hotel high on hashish). Sometimes when you've done acid and other illicit substances, you feel the need to think you've risen above the flock by doing a thing most people will never consider doing. Maybe Grant doesn't exactly feel this way but some of his stuff sometimes comes across as that. I mean, sure, if you've ever done LSD or the like, you've definitely experienced a sort of melding of yourself with the profound and the mundane and the timeless in a way that usually only schizophrenics experience. You have done something that has changed you from the person you were before. But thinking that it has somehow made you different or better than those who haven't done it just means that you've never talked to people who went to high school in the flyover states. I've known some really boring and backwards people who did a lot of acid simply because there wasn't anything else to do out in the cornfields. It really did surprise me, a resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, to discover how prevalent psychoactive drugs were in the Midwest and Plains states. I thought that was just the hippies and children of hippies! What I didn't think, though, was that it made me a non-sheep (like the guy in my San Jose State creative writing class who once wrote a story about how he had broken from the flock because he dared to try LSD. The teacher loved his take and luckily for me, she was blind so she didn't see me rolling my eyes and making jerk-off motions from the back of the class. I mean, wow, dude. You dared to try LSD. I was probably on LSD while listening to the teacher read that stupid ass story!).

Okay, maybe my whole take on "Grant Morrison thinks he's better than everybody else" stems from my envy of the idiot jock who wrote a stupid story that the teacher loved while she mostly just reacted to my stuff with "WTF? I guess I see how nostalgia can seem like a dream and the pop culture death of Superman can sometimes be more powerful than the death of a close family member but why did you choose to make none of this linear and what the hell do your Star Wars figures have to do with your future death? Also, the baseball game between Heaven and Hell where Heaven wins because Hitler snarls 'Jew' and then beans Jesus with the pitch to push in the last run was decent."

Now that we've resolved some of my issues (I mean, maybe not "resolved" but at the very least "put out there in the open so you know where my biases are coming from"), let's get on with The Invisibles #3.

When we last left our homophobic pouting white suburban "my mother doesn't hug me enough" anarchist protagonist, he was about to be hunted to death by a mystical group of human fox hunters in the secret London hidden beneath the one everybody thinks of as the "real London." I sort of hope the kid gets murdered. But then we won't get to see him learn his lesson which allows viewers to also maybe a learn a lesson. It's sometimes why you need characters like Mrs. Oleson from Little House on the Prairie. Although it was kind of enough to have Laura Ingalls who was a selfish devil child who was always learning lessons from humble and righteous Pa (who probably only killed one or two Native Americans, making him a stalwart saint of the frontier). I suppose the audience didn't need an over-the-top scurrilous villain like Mrs. Oleson. Although without Mrs. Oleson, how could the show have glorified the true saint of the frontier, Nells Oleson? The patience and kindness of that man were a testament to, um, patience and kindness!

I'm assuming Dane spends the next twenty pages snot-crying into a used coffee filter.

Dane continues to hang out with Tom of Bedlam because Dane can't survive on the street on his own and he knows it. He's not hard at all. He's a little wanna-be suburban gangster who read half of a book on anarchy and now thinks he's better than the slack-eyed populace going about their normal day-to-day bullshit. But he also thinks he still needs money and a place to live. He's not really great at the anarchy thing. But maybe if he listens to Tom, he'll learn a little bit about life and his heart will grow three sizes. Not because he suddenly cares more about everybody; it'll be a side-effect from learning the Dark Arts.

Tom casts a spell so that Dane can look through the eyes of a pigeon as it flies about London. While Dane is seeing the hidden, creepy monsters lurking behind reality that pigeons can see (just as Pigeons can enter the afterlife in Moore's Jerusalem. I'm sure there are other urban horror stories that tell of the magic of pigeon vision. Did Lovecraft ever right any pigeon poems?), Tom tells Dane the secret history of cities. They're a virus that has propelled man from small villages which barely change across the centuries into huge population centers that use up the life force of the hosts as they build more and more and more, bigger and bigger, until, one day, they can build a rocket to propel the city virus into space and onto a new planet. Tom has seen, in visions, other planets affected by the virus, dead planets where the buildings stand as gravestones for the previous used-up races that contracted the virus. It's all very Lovecraftian. Not in the racist way but in the visions of other realities that change the nature of your own reality once you realize their existence. Hmm, that can actually kind of describe racism. I suppose Lovecraft's xenophobia was what made his stories about strange, unknown terrors so compelling.

After teaching him loads of magic, Tom decides to teach Dane the most important lesson:

It's a really good lesson but also it's just Tom's attempt to get Jack Frost to appear.

Tom teaches Dane not to be a sheep or, in Tom's words, a robot. It's one of those weird lessons that everybody thinks they learn but nobody really learns it. Like when people read just that one Frost stanza on some poster in their English Lit class from "The Road Not Taken". Everybody gasps in air as the profundity of that single stanza (extracted from the context of the larger poem, much to the detriment of all of us) washes over them and they suddenly believe they've seen what life really is. Life isn't doing the thing you're supposed to do! Life is living to the fullest! Carpe diem! But the feeling of that moment erodes. It is eroded by the path we all take as we pretend we've taken the other path. We stop seeing that their weren't just two paths but many. And we get a job and we get a spouse and we get a house and we get a child and we occasionally think of Frost's single stanza and we decide, "You know what? I'm going to find the time to jump out of a plane!" or "I'm going to climb Everest!" or "I'm going to sleep with somebody of my same sex because I've always wanted to and hopefully my wife won't find out!" And sometimes we do and sometimes we don't; it doesn't really matter. Because the thing about taking the path less traveled is that it's still a path and it still represents the path you took and, you know what, there's that other path over there that I never got to experience and it's just shitting all over the path I'm currently on. Some people somehow block out the phantom possibilities and they're the lucky ones. The ones you can claim they have no regrets and maybe they're speaking truth when they say it. But mostly they just try not to think about it. Because once you start peeling at the wallpaper of your current life because the wallpaper, which others upon first glimpsing might think is beautiful and extraordinary, but which you've looked at every day for thirty years, you're done for. And you don't do it to find the beauty of what's underneath; you simply do it to see something different. And the new thing hasn't been scrutinized and deconstructed and critiqued; there's been no time to obsess over it. It's imaginary and if you happen to be like most people, imaginary must be better because why imagine the worst?! Okay, okay. I've just outed myself as not an anxious or depressive person! But I also don't go peeling at the wallpaper, so who knows? Maybe I do imagine the path less traveled was an intense tragedy?!

The Invisibles #3 Rating: A. It's still pretty good and I'm still upset that I only have a few issues. Recently, I was thinking of writing an essay about how the worst thing about growing up is how you stop feeling things. Not that you stop feeling anything at all! Just that you stop feeling feelings that were once overwhelming and all-important. Like the crush you had in junior high. Can you imagine if, at forty, you still felt those feelings so intensely (among all the other ones you've felt across your life)? I understand that feelings must abate over time or we'd all be fucked up from not being able to get over our first crush while simultaneously not moving past the death of our closest grandparents. I get it. And some would say it's a mercy. But lately I've been wondering, "Is it?" Maybe I want to still feel those seemingly inexhaustible passions. I was reminded of wanting to discuss this because Tom says in this issue, "They made you forget how to feel, eh? Remember it now? Like everything new and the sun itself spinning behind your ribs, filling you up with silver. Like the way it was before they made robots of us, sentenced to a life behind bars we're trained to set in place ourselves."

Now, that Tom speech was more about the whole "we're the shepherd of our own sheepdom" thing but in a robot and prison analogy. But the other thing about feelings made me remember how I was recently lamenting not feeling all of the things I once felt. Like the basket case from The Breakfast Club says, "When you grow up, your heart dies." And while you can argue whether that's true in the sense that you just stop caring about things, I think it's absolutely true in that it just slowly winds down and isn't capable of feeling how it used to. It's like a rechargeable battery that can no longer keep a charge. When I was in my late teens and early twenties, every single one of my friends, at one time or another, wound up weeping in my basement apartment about something in their lives (usually a woman!). I can't even fucking imagine that now. Maybe they'd be a bit upset or hurt or depressed but hardly disconsolate. I thought I would never get over the sadness at the loss of my grandfather or (and this might sound ridiculous to some but others will understand) the loss of my first cat as an adult, my precious little Judas. And while I obviously won't ever "get over" them (my eyes tear as I write this), I am no longer destroyed by the mere thought of their non-existence. A week after my Judas died, I saw Guardians of the Galaxy in the theater. Judas was always my Raccoon Boy so I almost broke down near the end when one of the characters put their arm around Rocket to console him. I made it out of the theater before absolutely losing it and snot-crying all the way back to the car. And so I can see how retaining that level of feeling over anything would be counterproductive to actually living, I absolutely miss it. I profoundly miss it. I want to be kicked in the stomach until I can't breathe by my feelings. I want this every day even if I know it's the cursed wish of a Monkey's Paw. How can anybody feel everything so palpably for their entire lives? And yet, how can we not?!

The Invisibles #2

This cover isn't as catchy as the pop hand grenade.

It's probably appropriate that I'm reading a comic book about a rebellious group throwing as many wrenches as they can into the machinery of the status quo right now. Also I would have said spanners instead of wrenches but I don't want to confuse the people who don't watch thousands of hours of British panel shows on YouTube.

For no one particular reason but maybe a whole lot of them, I have an anecdote about the Santa Clara police. I've already told the story in my review of Batgirl #10 from July 2012 but I'll reprint it exactly as I did then because it's pertinent to understanding that cops are violent jerks.

"About fifteen years ago [twenty-three years ago now!], my friends Paul and Tony were coming home from a club. As Paul was dropping Tony off at his house, they noticed some kids breaking into Tony's car. Tony called the police and Paul gave chase tackling one of the kids. They were probably around fourteen or fifteen. Paul didn't do anything but hold the kid until the cops showed up. When the police did show, they told Paul that they'll take the kid in but guaranteed almost nothing would come of this. They even suggested that if Paul had roughed him up a bit, it might not have been so bad. So yeah, Batgirl. You're doing the work the police would love to do but can't because they'd lose their jobs. Rough up the car thieves, put them in the hospital, and they might decide crime has too high a price to pay. I'm not saying I agree with the violence that the cops are willing to overlook. But I am saying you're a tool of the system."

When I told it back in 2012, I got one small detail wrong: the hilarious assumption that the cops would lose their jobs if they did the violence themselves. Oh, I was so naive eight years ago! I mean, I still knew it was bullshit that the cops were suggesting one citizen do violence to another one! And I was also pretty facetious in my take because I was speaking directly to Batgirl for some reason! But I was encouraging her not to be violent like the cops! Don't do their immoral dirty work for them and also probably for that bastard Batman!

Imagine that the job description most commonly associated with your job is "to serve and protect" and you think it's okay to tell an adult male to beat up some kids? Just fucking imagine what kind of an asshole you'd have to be. Now imagine that you weren't the only asshole; everybody you worked with felt the same way. Or, at the extremely very least, felt like they couldn't reprimand you or disagree with your methods because it would be a risk to their lives.

Here's another thing to imagine! Imagine having a job and believing without a fucking doubt that everybody who has the same job as you should never be criticized for not simply doing a bad job but for murdering people while on the job. Just fucking imagine.

Here's one last thing to imagine: imagine purchasing my cribbage-based RPG. I know it's only available on Amazon but try to ignore that they're capitalist monsters this one time and support my first uneasy footsteps into the world of publishing. I promise I'll figure out a better way at some point. It's just I hate all the marketing and distribution and graphic design and business bullshit; I just want to write the fucking thing and somehow get it in the hands of people who might enjoy it.

Remember the good old days before Fox News when we thought mind control propaganda would have to be subliminal?!

Obviously the guy speaking is schizophrenic. His description of anxious, terrifying thoughts having to come from another source rather than your own mind is pure schizophrenia. It's why they're always obsessed with mind shielding or satellites on the moon or neighbors beaming microwaves into their living rooms. I can't imagine how terrifying it must be to be detached from your own thoughts, unable to recognize that it's your own internal monologue whispering terrible insults to you on a constant basis. At least when I hear a voice in my head say, "You're fat," I know it's my own mind reaching the conclusion that maybe I shouldn't have eaten the whole pint of Ben & Jerry's.

Having escaped from the young dystopian novel of a school system last issue, Dane McGowan is now living on the streets with herpes. It isn't long before he teams up with Mad Tom 'o Bedlam, an old homeless man who acts crazy and maybe is crazy but not as crazy as he acts, if you get what I'm saying. Do you? I sometimes don't get what I'm saying at all. But I keep saying things because sometimes I'll say something that makes me think, "Hey! You're not as stupid as your mother screamed you were every single day!"

Remember the good old days when the protagonist of a story could have multiple flaws and be really unlikeable without immediately calling into question the beliefs of the author?

Seriously though, this kid is a fucking cock. He's all bluster and anti-establishment and violent and homophobic and all because his mother withholds love and his dad is absent. He's trying so hard to be above the status quo and be this unique anarchic individual who does what he pleases and yet he's simply another lousy stereotype.

Tom and Dane see a young woman chased through the streets of London by some guys blowing trumpets and dressed as if they're on a fox hunt. Tom grabs Dane and they make a run for it because Tom knows all about the secret hazards of the hidden side of London. The huntsmen capture the young woman and presumably kill her since one of them also says to cut her breasts off. That's some of that old ultra-violence that we knew would have to show up in this book. It's sort of a cultural call back to the works that probably helped inspire this story.

Tom and Dane wind up in the secret catacombs of old London where they scrape some blue mold off of a wall and smoke it. Tom also gives some of that history you expect from Morrison, like how he made sure Gotham was understood to be the "Village of Goats." Man, that was the best thing he ever did for Batman continuity.

Dane believes he hallucinates a word on the wall — Barbelith — and some aliens coming for him. He passes out and regains consciousness above the streets back in London. But now he has a scar on the back of his head and he sees airships in the sky that weren't there before. Being that I spent my formative years watching The X-Files, I understand when somebody has been abducted and implanted with a chip that allows them to see the secret strings turning reality into some Other thing's puppet theater.

Tom shows Dane a few more magic tricks and Dane finally realizes the man is nuts in a way that makes a lot of sense to him. So he finally agrees to be an Invisible. That's when he wakes up with the Fox Hunters ready to give chase. But that's for next issue.

The Invisibles #2 Rating: A. This issue was better than the last issue which was already a good issue. You might have realized that because I gave last issue a "B" and this one an "A". That's sort of how the grades work. I don't really care about grading or rating the comic books I read. I just want a history of my thoughts on them so that when I'm 80, I have some way to entertain myself (assuming the Internet and electricity and leisure time are still extant things). And it's not like this is a review that would help sell this comic book anyway! Who's going to rush out and find old copies of The Invisibles just because I said I liked them? The most disappointing part of this whole project is that I don't have every issue of this series. I'm so fucking annoyed with 23 year old me right now.

The Invisibles #1

If I had to pretend to know anything about art, I'd say this cover represents how pop culture can kill. Or will blow your mind. Or feels dangerous but it's actually pretty safe because the pin is still in the grenade.

What the fuck do I know about art and why the fuck am I assuming this comic book is going to be about art anyway?! Just because Grant Morrison wrote it and I happen to think Grant Morrison has written some pretty smart comic books? Well, I'm pretty sure he's written some huge fucking turds too! It's just that I haven't read any of them that I remember. Apparently I've read a few issues of this but I don't really remember it. I don't like to tell people that I don't remember it when they talk about how great it was because that's admitting that 22 year old me wasn't a discerning critic of his entertainment. At least I also can't remember the truly garbage comic books I was reading in 1994 as well! So it's possible I read this and thought, "I'm so smart because I understand what's happening!" Now I'm terrified to read it because I'm absolutely certain I'll think, "What the hell is going on in this comic book? I'm such a stupid asshole!"

Oh boy. This comic book is forty pages long. Get ready for a review that explicates the first fifteen pages thoroughly while also digressing twelve separate times before quickly summarizing the last twenty-five pages so I can go play some Apex.

I can't say for certain this is a shot at Ann Nocenti but, thankfully, I can say it's definitely not a shot at me!

This guy is Elfayed. He's retrieved a mummified scarab from the desert believing it might be a sign for the mysterious bald man with too many face piercings and the endeavor he's currently on. Which is a mystery because Grant Morrison isn't going to let the reader understand the comic book on the first page! Sheesh!

The second page doesn't help explain things but it does place the word "synchronicity" burning in my brain like a buzzing, blinking neon sign.

Get it? Mummified beetle. Dead Beatles. Boy throwing a Molotov cocktail. Pop culture and violence. I think I intuitively understand this comic book so 70% of the rest of what I say will be dick jokes.

The kid throwing the explosive is one of three members of a gang called the Croxteth Posse. Every youth in Britain joins a gang no matter how stupid and lame they are. It just proves how hard they are even if they never throw one Molotov cocktail or ever even get their genitals touched. The gang members run off into the night, past some "King Mob" graffiti which will be important later, yelling, "We are the boys! We are the boys!" Is that a thing lame youth gangs in London did in the 80s and 90s? Because I remember Lister and his posse saying that shit about being the boys of the Dwarf when they thought they were acting hard on some adventure that probably involved Lister fucking a future version of himself.

The Croxteth gang are from Liverpool because Croxteth is a suburb of Liverpool. It shows how imaginative these youths are. I bet there are at least fifty different Croxteth Posses bumbling about at night destroying things.

The bald guy's name is Gideon (and possibly King Mob. Unless the antagonist is King Mob. I should probably keep reading to find out) and he's both young and old at the same time. He's probably some kind of spirit of the zeitgeist or something, Grant Morrison's Jenny Sparks. He's looking for a new recruit for his own gang since something happened to John-A-Dreams. He might have just died of old age because Gideon's other acquaintance, Edith, is now 95 years old and sulking in her mortality. He wants her to contact somebody named Tom to let him know he thinks he found their new recruit. I think it's probably the anarchist kid because I know how stories work.

I'm starting to think maybe The Invisibles are a bit like the Upright Citizens Brigade. Their only enemy is the status quo. Their only friend is chaos. Except there will be less skits with people wearing giant papier-mâché cat heads and more ultra-violence.

The arsonist kid's name is McGowan and he's smarter than he acts, according to his teacher who gives him the old "you're not fulfilling your potential and your friends are just dragging you down" speech. But what kind of an anarchist would McGowan be if he gave a shit about what his teacher thinks of him? Oh, that's right! He'd be a good anarchist if he really gave a shit and a bad anarchist if he didn't give a shit but he let the teacher's words affect him anyway. That's how anarchy works, right?

The problem with anarchy is that it needs a few rules to make it work well but you can't enforce any rules or else you're not living an anarchic lifestyle. Here's my definition of anarchy from Places & Predators, my roller playing game: a philosophy where anybody can do anything they want without worrying about some stupid guard putting an axe in their head. But they have to worry about everyone else putting an axe in their head all the time because there are no guards.

I should probably read The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin instead of all these stupid Han Solo and Lando Calrissian adventure books.

Oh, well McGowan's mother withholds love and affection and blames him for all the ills in her life. I suppose I can now forgive him for torching the school library, right?

McGowan heads out to sit in the cold and watch John Lennon have a conversation with Stuart Sutcliffe. They joke about being dead and it's funny because they are dead. Stuart even says he wants to die young which is doubly funny because he does. Ha ha! McGowan doesn't laugh because maybe he doesn't find gallows humor funny. But some weird creature that speaks some German does laugh. He's all, "Ha ha! They're going to die young! Oh ho ho! Such jolly fun! Now join with me, you dumb kid." He also says some German stuff that I can't make sense of because I don't speak German and I don't want to ask the Non-Certified Spouse what it means. I could use Google but I'm being extra lazy right now.

McGowan tells the weird German tourist to fuck off because he doesn't care about anything. But you know what kind of people actually care a lot about everything? The kind who need to tell everybody that they don't care about anything. Only people whose feelings are super hurt say stuff like that. And maybe serial killers. Later McGowan decides to prove he doesn't care by suggesting he and his friends blow up the school. Not because he cares how they think they know everything and they want him to be just like them and all adults lack affection and sincerity. No, he just wants to blow it up because he doesn't give a shit about nothing, man.

The scene switches to the bald guy who might be King Mob on an LSD trip. It's nothing like taking LSD but I'll pretend it's all metaphor and analogy and spiritual nonsense.

In his trip, he sees a gigantic head of John Lennon. Mostly because the whole trip was to summon this head. It's a double page spread of psychedelic images and nonsense mixed with Beatles lyrics and album titles. Strange that Morrison fails to translate an acid trip involving The Beatles when The Beatles themselves have a song that I think most feels like and describes an acid trip. No, it's not "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"; it's "Strawberry Fields." If I had to state what my favorite Beatles song was right now, I'd say "Strawberry Fields" even though Magical Mystery Tour might be my least favorite (later) album (although now that I type it, I remember it contained "Penny Lane" and "The Fool on the Hill" and "All You Need is Love" and I guess I was wrong about Magical Mystery Tour being my least favorite album). I added the later because their early pop shit doesn't really resonate with me. I don't think I appreciate their music until after they've met Doctor Robert.

Just listened to "Strawberry Fields" and now I'm crying. Fucking great song.

While trying to burn down the school, McGowan is caught by his teacher. He gives his teacher a brutal beating and then answers a question he refused to answer in class, just to show he's both smart and violent.

McGowan's arrested and Hugh Laurie sentences him to hard juvenile labor.

I was speaking of acid earlier and I'd like to recommend the documentary on Netflix called Have a Good Trip, especially to people who have never done acid. It's enlightening. You might think that my favorite part was one of the crazier bits about hallucinations or one of the stories about how something odd always happens when on acid (it totally does) but I think my favorite bit is when the musician from Bikini Kill, Kathleen Hanna, tells the story about how acid made her realize that you didn't have to cross the street along the legs of the two triangles comprising the square intersection but can just cross along the hypotenuse. It's not that the idea is mind blowing or even close to an "A-ha!" shower thought; it's just that's the kind of mundane thought that seems like a fucking magic revelation when you're on acid. It's the epitome of the acid experience. LSD makes the mundane profound which is way more exciting than you might think. If you've never done acid, you might have fucked off to the comment section just now to point out that the universe is a wonderful and magical and profound place even without acid. And I fucking agree. But LSD makes everything profound. Every single thing you see or think combines with the fabric of the universe and it all becomes staring at the stars and wondering how it all fucking fits together. But you don't need space or infinity or philosophy; you just need LSD, a stapler, a bottle of water, and a Jack Kirby comic book from the early 70s.

Dane McGowan is sentenced to ten weeks in a juvenile facility called Harmony House. It's where violent teenage boys aren't taught to stop being violent; it's where they're taught to use their violence to benefit the government! At least that's my guess. I like to pretend I know what's happening in the comic book as I write the review and then later I delete the wrong assumptions I made and replace them with lies to make me look like a Grandmaster Comic Book Reviewer!

Actually, that last sentence was a lie. Normally if I get something wrong, I just write "Oops!" later and then tell readers to forget the terrible mistake I made.

This is the plot to every young adult dystopian book ever written: "Society says conformity is good. But one young spunky individual with weird hair won't submit and will save the world!"

Sometimes I feel the only people touched by stories about the individual refusing to be a sheep of the status quo are people who tend to be sheep of the status quo. To really identify with the hero in one of these stories, the reader needs to have thought of themselves as part of the status quo and felt the need to participate in some activity that would prove that they weren't. Instead of, you know, just being themselves and never actually giving their place in society a second thought. I find odd people who are inspired by a story that tells the reader to be themselves. How is that inspiring unless you never really knew that was an option? And how could you fucking not know it?! But then again, Heathers is one of my all-time favorite movies and I suppose that's got a similar message about being oneself. But it also has murder and some seriously great lines of dialogue and Christian Slater blowing himself to bits.

Oh, remember where I mentioned this comic book was basically screaming "synchronicity" at me and that I understood it on an instinctual level after page two? Grandmaster Comic Book Reader!

The leader of The Invisibles (man, I wish the comic book would just tell me that the bald guy with piercings is actually King Mob already) decides to infiltrate Harmony House to make sure their soon-to-be new recruit, McGowan, is doing okay. I'm sure he'll find he's fine because he's not buying into the whole "be a soldier of the status quo" bullshit being fed to the young boys at the institution. It's easy to be against a Headmaster who thinks arguments like "Liberals love freedom but do they want people to be so free that they can steal their VCRs." But will he be able to stand up against the techno-brainwashing and the influence of the mystical creature running things from behind the scenes?! Probably but only with help from the Upright Citizens Brigade. I mean The Invisibles.

It's surreal that this is the way we thought of controlling the populace in the 90s: turn them into content sheep without any anger or frustration. And yet the exact opposite of that is true: control them by making them angry and frustrated at as many lies and half-truths as you can.

The big twist reveal isn't that the boys' brains are cut up and messed with; it's that the boys genitals are removed as well. Yeesh! Now I'm angry and frustrated! I'm totally against this Harmony House bullshit. Is this actually happening in red states?! Horrific!

King Mob (yes, they finally reveal that's the bald guy's name) rescues Dane from Harmony House while shooting a bunch of people (including the Headmaster) and blowing the building to bits. It's a good thing we learned the real antagonist was some dick-eating creature called the King of Chains. Dane McGowan isn't ready to join The Invisibles which King Mob was ready for. He had a tarot reading earlier that said the kid was going to have to be put through the wringer first. So he leaves the kid in London and disappears, just so we all know why they're called The Invisibles. I guess Batman is a member?

The Invisibles #1 Rating: B+. This issue was forty pages long and it felt like it used every page to move the story along. It's insane that that's one of the greatest compliments I can give a comic book. Way too many writers just fill their scripts with nonsense because they don't have a real plan for their story. I know everybody espouses the idea that a good comic book story should teach the reader something new about the character. But unless learning that Superman can punch something harder than he previously thought he could, or Batman is super resilient and can take a ton of punishment for five issues before rising to the occasion through pure force of will, most comic book writers really don't put a lot of thought into themes. Sure, sure. This sort of feels like the mystic super hero version of Catcher in the Rye which might be why I stopped purchasing it after six issues. Although it's just as likely that I stopped purchasing it at six issues because my infrequent visits to the comic book store made me miss Issue #7 and I just gave up on it. It's not bad and it's put together well and as a young 48 year old who thinks the man can go fuck himself, I'm totally into it's message about being a unique individual! Anarchy rules!