Barbelith Underground > Comic Books > Regroup, Reread, Revisibile - Volume 1 - Dead Beatles / Down and Out in Heaven and Hell / Arcadia

Here's some stuff on the first issue of Arcadia:

Arcadia is a critical arc in the series’ run, introducing us to the characters within the cell and giving the reader a look at a ‘typical’ Invisibles mission. It also contains all the information you need to understand the rest of the series, right through the final issue, though on the initial read, that is far from apparent. It always surprises me to go back and see just how much is laid out here, things you could never pick up on the first go around, but see glaringly obvious on the reread. That’s part of what makes the series so rewarding, each time you play the game, it’s a little different.

The first page contains an explanation for virtually everything that happens in the series. The thematic grounding is all here, but it’s not until we’ve been through the series that we can understand the deeper meaning. The two sides are one, they only think that they are different. Does that make Grant the Dalang? While he has done the overt metafiction route in Animal Man, I don’t think that’s the intention here.

In the cosmology of The Invisibles, there are characters who exist outside of time, aware of the overall needs of the universe, and act to ensure that events occur as they should. John a Dreams is the most notable example of this, a character who transcends the Manichean reality and takes on a variety of guises to bring humanity into the supercontext. He plays both sides, inhabiting roles like a puppeteer, but all those suits he adopts have the same core. Barbelith, and the aliens that Dane sees, serve a similar function. They are beyond the conflict, aware of its false nature, and as a result able to make sure that we “laugh and cry,” as needed. The emotions we feel are real even though the conflict is an illusion.

And, that said, you can also read it as a comment on Grant himself. All these characters are drawn from his mind, just ink on a page, but they can make us laugh and cry. As Dane learned in the previous arc, the distinction between dream and reality is nebulous and unimportant, because these fictional characters make an impact on real people, they have a measure of reality themselves.

The initial conversation between Byron and Shelley further explores Grant’s role as author of the series. Shelley says “As poets, it is our duty to turn our faces from the mire, to look up and tell our fellow men that we have seen a better world than this.” That’s exactly what Grant is doing with the series, drawing “the maps of this new world , so that others may find their way there.” Grant is justifying the role of the writer in society, claiming that fiction can provide new models for behavior. This is why he writes superhero comics, through writing about the next generation of humans, he is able to provide the model for the new world we will eventually inherit. “A cannon fires only once but words detonate across centuries,” a sentiment Grant himself expressed when talking about how fictional characters like Superman outlive their creators.

The first time I read this arc, I remember being impatient with the Byron/Shelley sequences, this time I found them riveting. Once you’re grounded in the philosophy Grant is exploring here, it’s a lot easier to understand and enjoy their debate. I think one of the reasons this arc made a lot of people drop the book is that it’s functioning primarily on a higher level than the reader is at on their first journey through the series. ‘Down and Out in Heaven and Hell’ suffers some on the reread because we already know all the points that Tom is making. Here, I’m still trying to process everything, and there’s new layers on each read. It’s the most complex storyline Grant will attempt until Volume III, and without the promise of explanations to come, it could be tough to take. But I’m glad he wrote Arcadia as he did, it intrigued me on the first read and is still revealing new details as I continue forward.

One thing I find curious is the guy who says that King Mob is Christian. Is he referring to the fact that he’s from a Christian country, and maybe has a family background in Christianity, or is KM actually a practicing Christian? Nothing in the rest of the series would indicate that he is, but I suppose it’s possible.

The dialogue between Boy and Dane is full of interesting thematic stuff, the shadow motif in the art mimics the Dalang speech earlier, and their discussion reveals a lot about the mindset of the people in the cell vs. Dane. The cell seems to have accepted wholeheartedly what they’ve been told about the nature of the fight and their role in. There is this vast dark evil, the forces that want to control peoples’ lives, but nobody gives Dane a straight answer about who they are. This is because they’re not really sure, for most of the cells, it is the war that defines them, not the end. They are trapped in the role of rebel in the same way that Dane was at the beginning of the series.

The reason Dane is so critical is because he’s the only who’s able to see outside the game. As he goes through and gets more training, he’ll evolve beyond the conflict, and use his powers to help both sides. At the end of the scene, Jack asks Boy how he knows he’s joined the right side, if there’s so many deep cover agents. This line has much significance. On one level, it reinforces the lack of distinction between the Invisibles and their enemies, the arbitrarily chosen sides that are actually the same. However, it’s also a great bit of foreshadowing, since we’ll eventually find out that Boy is in fact a triple agent, working for an Invisibles cell who set her up with the enemy, who then implanted her in another cell. At that point, identity breaks down and loyalty becomes meaningless. Boy is just a pawn in this overall conflict, and by joining up and fighting, she has lost agency.

Does this mean that we should not fight? Not exactly, I think it means choosing a third path. Much of Seven Soldiers was concerned with breaking out of the oppressive tradition of ones parents and defining a role outside strict parameters of good/evil. I hadn’t connected that with what was going on here, but it fits perfectly. The characters are trapped in a tradition of fighting that goes all the way back to the 1700s, but some of the ideological interests have been lost, the present day Invisibles are not poets, their warriors, fighting with their fists, not their words. Dane is the only one who’s outside of things and able to question their actions.

King Mob hops through the dimensional shortcut, a moment that feels a bit showoffy to me. I think most of the series is grounded in a somewhat believable magick reality. While you may not be able to project yourself into eighteenth century France, it is possible to use similar techniques as the crew does here and move into a thought based facsimile of eighteenth century France. Of course, as Mad Tom tells us, there is no difference between the reality of a thing and the dream of it, so you can really travel in that way. But, you can’t move your physical body through a nuclear wasteland to get from India to England. Going to The Invisible College works fine in arcs where it’s motivated by a catalyst that ruptures the space-time continuum, such as Dane taking the blue mold, but here it just happens because it can, and that feels a bit removed from believability. But, I feel like it’s an example of Grant defining the rules of the world, using devices that won’t necessarily return later in the series.

Back with the cell, we start to get an idea of the characters’ personalities. Fanny is pretty well defined, though a bit harsh. I suppose we’re seeing things from Jack’s perspective, and he hasn’t really warmed to her, so neither have we. And I have to question the fashion choice with that dress, is it a deliberately ironic adoption of 50s femininity or just outdated? I don’t know, but either way, she isn’t at her Volume II level of glam. Robin isn’t defined yet, and Morrison struggles with her until she gets reinvented in Volume II. Boy is pretty much like she will be right from the start here.

The moment when King Mob returns and takes off his coat with a checkerboard and random patterns in the background is one of the first examples of the series valuing image over narrative sense. They could have had him against a regular background, but having the shapes is cooler, and therefore it was a good choice to include it. I think Jill Thompson’s art is a big improvement over Steve Yeowell. She conveys the characters’ emotions better, and is aesthetically superior. She defines the look of these characters for the rest of the volume.

The crew then goes to a windmill to travel through time. The first time I read this I was sort of confused on the nature of their time travel, and how it was different from Ragged Robin’s time travel in Volume II. Reading the series prompted me to explore various types of magic, and this one is closest to astral projection. In reality, I don’t think you’d be able to work as quickly or get such flashy results as they do here, but similar things can be done. That’s another example of how the series serves to reshape the reader into an Invisible.

The Shelley stuff ends with a guy saying that he has been in chains all his life, but no one else could see them. This Is a perfect thematic summary of what The Invisibles are trying to do, open peoples’ eyes and expose them to the potential of humanity. We are all trapped by our stubborn clinging to individuality, and should we transcend that, we would be free to move to a higher plane of existence.

Blake Head

15:11 / 13.02.07

[Sorry, I was working on this when I fucked up my keyboard, so it’s a little less edited and more repetitive of Patrick’s points than it would be otherwise, I don’t have a great deal of time on this pc so I’ll be back to engage with specific points when I get the chance.]

Well, moving onto Arcadia:

The bloke in France was called Etienne.

I love that the art (which we’ve not talked about much yet) in the pages where Boy is teaching Dane to fight makes such use of shadows immediately after we’ve had the introduction to shadow puppetry as a form of false conflict; it would of course be impossible to tell the difference between real and fake violence were one only able to look at the shadows. The naivety of some of Boy’s responses to Dane’s questions are either Morrison finding his feet or designed to show that Boy, or the cell, have a fairly credulous foundation for their war on authority. “We’re fighting the other side; the forces that want to control people’s lives and keep us asleep forever” goes deep into Matrix Warrior territory, while refusing to actually name an organisation or individuals or define their reasoning. Even when Dane just wants to know who the baddies are, Fanny tells him about the Myrmidons, and then in a bit you have the Cyphermen who are almost characterless, and faceless in a related way to Orlando. You even have the Archons lacking a distinct personality or motives, other than a basic mask of attributes. Setting up the conflict as a duality, fighting those they are opposed to, opposition becomes a condition dependent on remembering your side, not what you stand for, and it’s exactly what iamus highlights above: the invisibles are or become everything they are fighting against.

In Byron and Shelley we’ve got the first formulation of the struggle between the ideals of a perfect world for everyone and everyone getting their own perfect world (and the inkling that those might be the same thing), and within that another quieter theme of the series regarding whether bloody revolutionary action is more useful or more beneficial than leaving the current world as it is, letting it develop as it will.

Shelley’s comment on forgetting one’s own divinity, where "we forget who made our burden and set it upon us" is quite literally the condition Urizen is in, this coming just a panel before the Blake quote on “mind forg’d manacles”. The madman the pair meet later will repeat this idea of ghostly spiritual chains whose movement simulates art, or whose imagining simulates imprisonment. I’m getting interested in what the theme of false imprisonment and mental oppression actually translates into in real life. It’s a question I think we’ll find again and again, but, what does it mean (in the Invisibles) to be imprisoned by oneself? If it framed in terms of a fall from grace, it begs the questions of why fall? Fair enough we make institutions to protect us when we’re not powerful ourselves, but I think it’s worth questioning the way the comic presents individuals, and which ones, shutting that larger and truer reality out. A key theme of Blake’s was that both pity and tyranny arise out of believing oneself to be better than others, forms of looking down on them, and indeed that one leads to the other, which I think you see in some of the attitudes towards the “unawakened” ones. So at least part of what’s being said seems to be that by limiting oneself, one accepts a place in a hierarchy, and from within a hierarchy there’s a difference between wanting to raise others up within it and helping them develop the tools for escaping from their prisons, and as in the examples above I suppose it’s less a condition of a fixed idea of class than it is one of class mobility. It’s ok to be have a class origin if you transcend it, move beyond it, recognise it for what it is: a temporary construct. There are numerous examples of people who occupy class based “suits”, like the Division X lads, but less of positive examples of those who would appear to remain within a fixed identity. The two other examples I’m thinking of now are King Mob’s ex and, later on, Boy. So to be fair I’m not so much talking about class now as a division between those who are awake to the revolution and those that are “regular” for want of a better term. But at the same time, I think there’s almost a sense of pity for those who aren’t able to do that, who’re stuck in the suits they were born with, the soil that they grew up in.

Which, in a roundabout and possibly not very precise way brings us to the political aspect of whatever it is the Invisibles stand for. On a personal level, recognising one’s demons/fears as the bits of not-you is fine, but that act of recognition is itself dependent on creating the space and conditions for such reflection, which some people never get on their own, Gaz for one, so really what I’m asking is what that does that philosophy mean on an interpersonal level? What makes this evolved awareness possible; is it personal responsibility, an interpersonal transmission of better karmic ways to treat others, or is it politically revolutionary? And what sort of attitude is to be adopted to those who aren't given the chance, or choose not to accept enlightenment? Which I think is very much relevant to the incoherent idea of a world where everyone gets what they want, because the very first problem with that of course is that it would mean some people wanting others, directly or indirectly, to not get what they want, so there’s always going to be a hierarchy of wants. Meaning: exactly what kind of utopia are we talking about and who does it belong to and rely upon?

Interesting that King Mob is, accurately or otherwise, addressed as a Christian by Agus, even as one with many gods.

The “stage” of 120 Days of Sod All, the place where those in attendance are in chains, are themselves in a world whose boundaries are defined by others, repeats the above themes, and continues to develop the idea of the Invisibles as revealing “exits”. Christ is mentioned by the young couple in the context of finding an escape, then repudiated. An alternate reading would be that the Christ the actors name refers to the aspect of Christianity as a religion which is oppressive, which convinces its believers to be smaller than they really are; the idea of praying to a “deaf and blind god” would fit with the above reading of an embryonic demiurge who’s world of reason. The idea that “reason will make mother nature a whore bound for our pleasure” within the tint of this story suggests that oppression in this era is specifically characterised by an imbalance between reason and other human forces. Reason as something that mistakes this world for a perfect or perfectible one again.

Interesting that the gimp who sums up the real life cost of revolution as ”from free love to safe sex” and who King Mob criticises for his lack of taking responsibility in the revolutionary conflict, does, in fact, have his own perfect world. From believing in what he was told revolution was, and failing to change the world, he is now in a world where his speech and movement is controlled by others in a self-chosen environment where he has attained the level of responsibility he must have been looking for. Which is a less extreme version of the Cyphermen who want to hear nothing but instructions and commands and do.

In terms of the arc’s conclusion, Byron and Robin recognise that utopias are things that can be left to one side, that life comes first, while Shelley and King Mob maintain that a blueprint needs to be constructed and that the utopia must be built if the sun is to rise on a better world. Also, the “This is the Invisibles… weird stuff happens all the time” paranoid sci-fi conspiracy vibe faces off to the real life consequences of Jack losing some of his finger and getting off the revolutionary bus.

What I think I like most about these issues is the humour, both in the asides and the expressions, as the premise, or the mix of the two settings, is heavily in need of levity; King Mob looks endearingly human at this point, he looks like someone you might know, even if his features haven’t quite stabilised yet. A point that’s maybe easy to miss with this analysis is how charming the comic can be, especially when it’s willing to poke fun at itself.

I like these issues, though as has been pointed out they’re derivative in some ways. I think you can make the argument that this arc still contains most of the basic ideas of the series as a basic holograph, seen through the filter of the historical interaction between Romanticism and the Age of Reason and their real-life political consequences. It’s certainly understandable why these issues feel almost tangential to what’s really going on, but that’s also mirrored in a work which seems full of unanswered questions about what is relevant, what the struggle should be about, and in those terms the story of the Shelleys’ art and life doesn’t seem any more or less valid than time-travel jaunts and fighting gas-mask goons with dream guns, just another iteration on a theme or gaming environment.

The balancing act of the Invisibles as a “revolutionary comic”, as I believe it was so titled recently, with the theme characterised by the Blind Chessman as “Radical reformers must never forget the price that is so often paid by those who seek to change the world”, is much more evident and impressive on a second reading. It gets to the point of how much the visions of freedom cost, and how the questionable the methods of achieving them are, which will be picked up again and again as we continue.