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Underground > Comic Books >

The Invisibles: what is your favourite bit?

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21:16 / 12.04.04

The best part for me would have to be when Dane completes his martial training and shit with Elfayed, and he joins Jolly roger in infiltrating and infecting / fucking up the cyphermen tanks in vol 3. I loved the whole Eurythmics dress sense thing.

05:16 / 13.04.04

Fanny vs. Orlando in the windmill, post-his slashing open her 'chest':

"...ah... What are you? What kind of thing are you?"

"I'm not half the woman I used to be. Thanks to you."

Jim Crow/Papa Guedhe taking revenge on the white businessmen

The "Royal Monsters" story

The "Boy & Ragged Robin" sidebars

Young Fanny looking at old Fanny and going "Is that me I see? I look like a tramp!"

17:03 / 13.04.04

mmmm, you cannot deny the fact that Grant writes the best one liners.... poignant and decadent.

my favorite part of the invisibles was fanny's redemption after she is raped in Rio. My favorite lines in the book happens when Fanny's totem, tlazolteotl, arrives in the bathroom where she is contemplating suicide.
I will crawl through shit.
I will take all the filth of the world and turn it into
the purest gold.
I will rise from darkness,
Shining like the morning star.

Haus of Mystery

17:10 / 13.04.04

Always liked Edith's 'death' scene. Truly a 3-d character.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

19:06 / 13.04.04

Edith in general, really. And the eerie sadness when she tells Gideon to be careful because he's the last of her lovers still alive - only in his frame of reference, they haven't coupled yet.

Other than that - Jack and Fanny's friendship. I'm still rather sad that we never got to see them go to Brazil in between v3 #2 and #1 and form their own cell. That was a brilliant bit.

08:25 / 15.04.04

in bloody hell in america tp, in the qovernment instillation when mob looks at the magic mirror and rmembers his cats and cries....

"they said you'd quote orwell

08:41 / 15.04.04

Phillip Bond drawing Division X

13:51 / 15.04.04

From "Entropy in the UK":

"How would you like it if I just took hold of your little head? And twisted."

and then when King Mob says:

"And that's not all. They taught me to do...THIS!"

and the scorrpion god "stings" Sir Miles.

14:39 / 15.04.04

Best Man Fall made me cry for a good ten minutes afterwards. There are no "bad guys".

"It's only a game. Try to remember."

And then the coda two volumes later, when Gideon gets saved by Audrey Murray.

14:24 / 16.04.04

Grant Morrison in Anarchy for the Masses says

"I believe THE INVISIBLES to be a work of great emotional depths, but I realise most people tend to concentrate first on the surfce glamour of the book, which is fine and pretty much as intended. Go back and read it again, concentrating not on the clothes, but on King Mob's attempt to get over the loss of his girlfriend and the death of his cats by turning himself into a pop god with a gun. Read it for Edith Manning's guilt, humour and unstoppable enthusiasm or most importantly, read it for the invisible backstory of Audrey Murray, the book's central character, and her refusal to let a shitty life turn her into a shitty person."

14:30 / 16.04.04

"Ever get the feeling you've been had?" from 2.19. Perhaps Grant's best swerve.

16:42 / 16.04.04

>> most importantly, read it for the invisible backstory of Audrey Murray, the book's central character, and her refusal to let a shitty life turn her into a shitty person." <<

Yeah.... Invisible backstory is right. Maybe I'm being thick, but does Audrey appear in any more than two issues? And if not, how is she the central character?

17:00 / 16.04.04

Yeah.... Invisible backstory is right. Maybe I'm being thick, but does Audrey appear in any more than two issues? And if not, how is she the central character?

no, she doesn't, but page count does not equal importance, which is kind of the point of Bobby and Audrey and Boy in Volume 3. KM is center stage, hogging all the attention, but he's not, in any real sense, important, or at least no more important than Bobby Murray, who only appears in one issue himself.

11:23 / 17.04.04

"That's me on the cover, covered in shit, spunk and Quaker's porridge oats."
"What exactly are we looking for, Darlings, a lump of charcoal that says "Fuck!" every five seconds?"
"Is that you, John Wayne? Is this me?"
"I've read The King In Yellow, and it's deriviatives."
And, of course...
Fanny: "We're going to dance for you."
Harlequin: "Dance? Why should your dancing entertain us?"
Fanny: "Because we're the best! Because you can tell all your friends that you sat on your toilet and watched Brazil's most gorgeous transvestite bruja and the coolest little shit from Liverpool dance their asses off while you took a crap - or whatever it is you think you're doing."

13:25 / 17.04.04

Well, i can't believe these aren't here already, but of course if they were, I wouldn't have anything to post.

Mr. Six:
"Police, stand perfectly still while I read your minds."

And this is the spookiest line, by Quimper:
"Once I was a little light."

And Helga shaving her entire body. I gotta try that sometime.

And of course the text when John and King Mob goes into the crypt:

"Honey
Sticky sweet
Golden and rotten
Honey"

It's sooo disgusting and I'm not even sure why.

20:45 / 17.04.04

The end of part two and king mob says to mason you are batman aren't you and he really is . (Batman never used a gun either) I love it

20:51 / 17.04.04

At the start of time machine go when KM is at Jacqui's . He is reading the invisibles and says 'Christ! He's making this bit too far fetched..."
That's classic invisibles

04:15 / 18.04.04

//Yeah.... Invisible backstory is right. Maybe I'm being thick, but does Audrey appear in any more than two issues? And if not, how is she the central character?//

The power and genius of Best Man Fall easily outweighs everything else that's happened in the series.

Audrey (and Bobby esp) engendered more sympathy in their brief appearances than the Invisibles managed in the fifty something issues. I really didn't care for any of the characters for a very long time because I think the series opened with one of it's strongest characters (Mad Tom) and those that followed seemed halfcooked conceptbeings.

But I do get the feeling that Grant might be bullshitting me when he spent rest of the series concentrating on ideas rather than characters and just using them as megaphones for his theories and ideas. The story of Audrey Murray is just one more story in a story that has hundreds of stories within it and she's as central as anyone else. One perspective amongst hundreds.

As much as Grant tries to add layers to his stories and as much as we love it...

Try to remember...

It's only a comic.

01:39 / 22.04.04

heh the old abbo guy:

'Its a clever white man knows his dreaming. An even cleverer one knows his arse.'

;0p

22:36 / 27.04.07

Division X. Get the fucker in the back.

and

Fanny and Jack on that park bench with the dynamite.

Sorry, I had a horrible urge to re-share some class scenes with people. Also, I was wondering if the reread ever finished, and if by finished, we mean people posted threads of material covering all the way to the end of volume three, or if people just stopped doing it, like I did.

I'm prepping to do a one-day sit and reread with a few friends of the whole thing, and just got to thinking about those threads.

fish confusion errata

00:24 / 28.04.07

Gideon Stargrave.

fish confusion errata

00:27 / 28.04.07

...and my favourite story is We're all policemen.

05:17 / 28.04.07

Why? It's good to provide a little more information othewise this thread is likely to get rather boring

05:43 / 28.04.07

Boboss is right.

With that in mind:

"Division X. Get the fucker in the back."
Because it's a great entrance to the volume, where we're playing roving voyeur eyes with some voice over (that, to echo later events, I at least, read in my head in my own voice, even now that I now it's not really narration, but dialogue), and then, with a bit of swerve, we see our boys, and then the van and the line, and it's almost like we're Division X. Or one of the fanclub.

and

Fanny and Jack on that park bench with the dynamite.
Because it's a great reminder of the dangerousness of both characters and they're playful qualities. Jack's playing again, which is lovely, and all smiles and goofiness, but he's also playing with a very dangerous thing, which then Fanny's got total control over. Because Fanny is lovely and playing and smiling and she's just sitting there. It's the same scene as them dancing together for the Harlequinade, and yet, they're just sitting there.

08:31 / 28.04.07

I always liked The Last Temptation of Jack Frost, er... whatever it was called... the issue toward the end of volume one where he takes on the king of all tears. I just love the idea of beating this big five dimensional alien monster thingy by sitting in front of him and letting him fuck up. Good stuff.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

08:51 / 28.04.07

Of course the main influence for Jack Flint was Regan in The Sweeney, and the Sweeney was a strong influence for Life on Mars, but do people think that Flint looks more like Gene Hunt in LoM than he does Regan in The Sweeney?

Oh fuck, I can't believe I just brought that up, I'm so ashamed of myself...

08:59 / 28.04.07

I was just doing that Sweeney/Life on Mars thing in my head, this morning. So, yes, basically. In many ways, yes. But Life on Mars basically boils down and polishes up the seventies shitkicker nametaker cop drama, in the same way Morrison was doing with that part of The Invisibles, so there's the similar drive.

09:54 / 30.04.07

Always thought "Last Man Fall" was tha shit.

Loved the bigger arcs as well, probably more, but as far as a stand-alone issue of a massive series goes, may be my favorite. I mean Christ, condensing a whole life that you can feel so deeply into what? 20 pages? Pretty sharp, pretty moving.

Letting the balloon play the fireworks, the walk on the beach with Audrey and the chips, and of course the ending "It's only a game... Try to remember." Solid solid stuff.

09:00 / 01.05.07

I think, for me, it was the moments away from the 5D monsters and magic that I liked best. The team hanging out and partying, or just chatting. The conversation over breakfast in the truckstop at the start of Volume 2 just before they rumble with Teh Intolerant Humatons.

Pretty much any conversation between Dane and Fanny as well. The development of their friendship over the course of the comic was great. Out of all of the main characters it was those two who I would have liked to have followed into another story (ie what their cell was doing in the run up to 2012).

11:14 / 01.05.07

Dane rejecting the temptation of Sir Miles:

'So if I join you, I can have money and cars and stuff? I can have birds like that Pamela Anderson, yeah?'

'That's right, Dane. If you join us...'

*Dane kicks Sir Miles in the bollocks*

'POOFY WANKER!'

11:48 / 01.05.07

The end of the "Sensetive Criminals" story arc where Edith gets a surreptitious note that says "EDIE-- IT'S TIME." and she replies, in a darkened room, "Isn't it always, dear?"

That's my favorite bit.

Apart from the last page of the vol.3 issue1, of course.

22:10 / 01.05.07

"They SAID you'd quote Orwell..."

03:05 / 02.05.07

I can't be bothered thinking of any lines that jump out at me (there were so many - though 'Your sentence is up' is a total gut-punch every time...) so instead I'll share a panel sequence.

In Volume 2 when Quimper has infected Ragged Robin, and we zoom in bit by bit revealing the design of Quimper's mask embedded on her pupil.
I love that piece of art so much I actually have those final two frames tattooed on my (mostly) Invisibles sleeve.

Actually, I was about to say that I don't have access to a picture of the panels I'm talking about, but I do have pictures of my tattoo up somewhere... Uhhh, here.
The photo isn't great, but it will give people with a terrible memory an idea of what I'm talking about.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

03:22 / 02.05.07

The very last issue (#1) of the very last volume. Specifically, Jack and Reynard up on the video-wall. Beautiful Quitely art and some tight super-spy action.

That and the scene where Fanny gets laid while Boy & Jack try to talk about their "relationship." For a number of reasons.

10:09 / 02.05.07

I like it when King Mob totally shoots that guy in his own face. With no consequences!

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