THE INVISIBLES VOL. 1 - GRANT MORRISON et. al.

Normally, I try to credit the illustrators as well when I review a comic as a small effort to push back against this “comics are really just novels” idea that elevates the script-writer to an auteur position. This is a silly mistake, if you wanted to read (or write) a normal book, do so. Normally, I would say the “script” is, at best, the third most important aspect of a comic. I’m partial to the story or concept first (the same way I read horror/sci-fi books), art second, “script” or what’s being said panel to panel third. But the Invisibles series doesn’t have a stable artist, it’s a carousel of dudes (plus Jill Thompson) all of whom are pretty good. I read this whole series maybe a decade ago, in college. I read them in Firestorm, an anarchist bookstore  that had a great comics selection and didn’t care if just sat and read the books. A more useful and effective example of anarchy than what’s found in this book. A few things jumped out at me this time: there’s an Aztec themed villain as well as a whole subplot that takes places in a Voodoo/African-American roots religion milieu. Well, now all these years later, I know a little more about these topics and this knowledge on my part has made the comics a little more disappointing. The “references” don’t seem to go deeper than, I know the name of this deity. For instance, we meet Xipe Totec (or rather we meet someone pretending to be Xipe Totec, but let’s not get bogged down in pedantism) but the only “quality” that this character shares with the mezoamerican god is an association with flaying. Even if he wanted to pick an Aztec god that has some creepy or morbid practice associated with it, there are other choices. Xipe Totec is associated with fertility and corn (hence the flaying) but we don’t get that. Likewise, the Voodoo stuff is laregely set-dressing, a shorthand way to get witchy pagan vibes. They made reference to an aspect of Baron Samedi I hadn’t heard of before so I looked into it and most of the “voodoo” stuff seems to come from this seminal underground text called “The Voudon Gnostic Workbook” which sounds intriguing but (predictably) does not have very accurate information about Voodoo as it exists in Haiti (or anywhere). Just reading the first pages on google book, he’s already given a bad definition of hoodoo and voodoo and claimed that Atlantis connected Africa and Haiti and explains their religious similarities, not say, the Atlantic Slavetrade. So, it’s a little disappointing to see something that’s so interesting be reduced to window-dressing. However, I had forgotten that this collection contains the story about the nameless guard. I remember very vividly reading this story the first time I read through the invisibles and being really blown away by it. In my memory, it came later in the run, towards the very end, but I was wrong, here it is. It follows the life arch and story of a nameless guard that King Mob guns down while storming a building. It’s sort of like that Rick and Morty where they play the Roy video game. I found it moving as a young man and do so still. I was expecting this to be cringier, I ended up liking it more than I thought. Imma read through the rest of ‘em. 7 Invisibles.