Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Comic Books >

Ultraviolence in The Invisibles: Why?

16:37 / 04.09.02

Remember, I'm new to the series. That scene where King Mob is shooting guards in the corridor - in their faces, their balls, and one of them mutters "This can't be happening" and all that...

Perhaos I'm too sensitive, but I thought that was a little bit... over the edge and... unnnecessary. Why so much graphic violence? Everytime I see that panels I feel bad... those guys with their faces disappearing in a cloud of blood and King Mob nancing around living his Bond fantasies. Go ahead, mock me. Or try to explain me how ultraviolence plays into Morrison's big scheme of things.

16:39 / 04.09.02

Because King Mob is the bad guy.
As even he eventually comes to understand.

16:40 / 04.09.02

SeriouslY; How far along in the series are you, Jade? Because as it moves along it pretty much expolains itself...

16:45 / 04.09.02

Tomorrow I'm buying issue 5. It has just begun being issued in Brazil. Agree with me: That was awful. Horrendous, really. Heart-breaking. C'mon, admit it.

Murray Hamhandler

17:32 / 04.09.02

I agree, Jade. And rest assured, Grant Morrison agrees, as well. Keep plugging on.

17:48 / 04.09.02

Jade, you've made the point yourself. The whole work makes that point also, rather explicitly, issues later. I also disapprove of gratuitious violence in comics. Point is if you get to read them in the fucking established standard 30 day schedule you don't get much clues for months.

I'll start a debunking campaign about this 30 day thing, really soon.

The Natural Way

17:58 / 04.09.02

Jade: it's not that anyone wants to mock you, it's that, TBH, you often seem to approach Morrison's texts from a position of "Hey, I'm much better than this guy, and all his technojabber shit..."

For all his psychedelic hyperbole, Morrison DOES care and, yeah, what Jack said: Mob IS the baddy. But the whole thing doesn't start to deconstruct itself until vol 2....so...patience.

18:18 / 04.09.02

Sorry if I sound like that, it's really not my intention. I couldn't do what he does the way he does it and I know it, I know he's one of the best writers around and all that. I like some of his work, I really do. Occasionaly his statements make me cringe, but hey.

19:06 / 04.09.02

Agree with me: That was awful. Horrendous, really. Heart-breaking. C'mon, admit it.

Heh. You want heart-breaking? You haven't seen anything yet. Just you wait 'til issue #12, which in English is called "Best Man Fall." It was the turning point of the whole series, for me.

22:53 / 04.09.02

Just because I know it'll make Flyboy a little jealous: issue 12 was my first one.

23:09 / 04.09.02

Please explain why King Mob is the 'baddie'? I've read the whole series, excepting v.2 #14-16.

'n I don't see it.

Apart from the ruthless murdering, of course.

23:14 / 04.09.02

You've pretty much just answered your own question there.

Motives? Fine (up to a point). Methods? Not so fine.

23:16 / 04.09.02

Spoiler Space

the point is they are all baddies cos they are all buying into a binary opposition reconising "sides" rather than working towards the "apocalypse" in 2012.

11:53 / 05.09.02

Um... spoiler space, maybe?

12:06 / 05.09.02

Is my last post a spoiler? The good/bad opposition is worried pretty consistantly throughout the series - starting in the arcadiea storyline in issue 5...

maybe knowing the nature of the "apocalypse" in 2012 is a spoiler - i will edit my previous post accordingly...

The Natural Way

17:24 / 05.09.02

Spoiler.

Sleaze: that's slightly wrong. They're all ingredients in the spell to hasten the apocalypse, but it takes until vol 3 for the majority of Mob's cell to realise this. It only looks like a war....but Jack and Fanny are dancing.

23:17 / 05.09.02

"How many sides does a string have?" - it's fascinating reading your interpretations (which I hadn't considered) of a parable partly about 'signal to noise' - the dissolution of facts/information.

Everyone hears what they want to hear, sees what they want to see.

I (currently) think 'the Invisibles' is living fiction/words - like Blake, or 'The Wasteland'. Or 'Naked Lunch'; it's different every time you read it.

11:31 / 08.09.02

king mob's the hero as far as i'm concerned. without those faces flying apart, bullets in balls and the beautiful exploding library the seventeen year old me wouldn't have been half as into the comic as he was. i like the violence. it looks cool. its comics. we enjoy violence in comics precisely because we don't like it in real life. get girl, kill baddies, save planet.

21:26 / 12.09.02

the point is they are all baddies cos they are all buying into a binary opposition reconising "sides" rather than working towards the "apocalypse" in 2012.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS...

Um.... How, then, are they all the "baddies"? I think the glory of The Invisibles is that you can never quite tell. How much is just the GM fantasy persona surrounding itself with the fantasies it wants. When does Fanny start having breasts while dressed as a woman? When do we really see KM depicted in a negative light by the narrative? (I would say not until Vol II #5 when he shoots the Buddha.) How do the Invisibles hasten the Apocalypse/Infocalypse?

And, finally: If a bunch of pro-free-will anarchists are fighting a bunch of pro-control-freak militants, how does creating a world where "Everybody gets what they want. Even the enemy," work? Because surely what the enemy wants is that everybody else *does not* get what they want...?

I can ask these questions all day. Which is why 'The Invisibles' is better than 'Sandman'.

05:01 / 13.09.02

Perspective, my dear Watson. It's all about perspective.

*Spoilers if you haven't read all of the Invisibles. And if you haven't by now, shame on you!*

Mason's bit of misdirection with the time machine technology is just one way the enemy gets what they want, while the good guys get what they want (a backdoor).

Our Lady of The Two Towers

09:33 / 13.09.02

Houdini- I'm not sure if the Supercontext IS where everyone get's what they want, it might just be a place where such wants become unimportant.

My take on the 'they are all baddies' POV. Everyone is arguably a baddy because, up to volume 3 issue 2, they are using force, and trying to force their point of view on others, regardless of whether they want what's best or to dominate. The people that are willing to use maximum force, to kill others, end up dead, such as Jolly Roger. Those that use less lethal force, such as King Mob, escape with a bullet in the gut. By the last issue they've pretty much all converted to peaceful means of struggle, so get to go into whatever happens after 2012.

13:18 / 13.09.02

a zen facist is still a facist.

13:48 / 13.09.02

Fascist, even.

Or maybe just prejudiced against faces?

12:46 / 14.09.02

Zen fascism is good for you.

17:49 / 14.09.02

... and we want everybody to get what they want, even the bad guys.
If it's misery and self-centered hell they want, that's what they are likely to get.
Ditto total destruction.

Charity begins at home.

00:07 / 15.09.02

Yeah, read some Freud or something...

Most people just want to die (or e.e.cummings' "mostpeople".) Really.

21:33 / 28.11.02

I found the violence, torture, etc. to be quite jarring when I began reading The Invisibles. I mean, the books made a serious impression, because they came on like a punch in the jaw that left me spitting out teeth. I have to admit that my revulsion turned to fascination. I think I went a little kill-crazy watching King Mob go kill-crazy.

I can't think of another comic that provoked that much of a gut reaction from me. I think the violence was there to help keep the reader off-balance so the revelations within revelations of the plot would have that much more impact.

MAN, was that a comic with impact!

19:45 / 16.04.03

**SPOILING AHOY**
Bear with me. Just trawling the site for Invis stuff.
The first thought I had was that well, the violence doesn't really matter given the nature of the universe where since all things are really the same thing (see 3.2), any violence done will be revisited (or has already been visited) on the perpetrator when it's their turn to wear that suit. SO, KM will eventually be (has been) that guard and see it from the other side.
This sparked off, natch, the one character(s) who has risen above the general level, the continuum that is John-a-Dreams/Quimper/Satan/Harper. This is a brief rising and falling of a character who gains understanding of how the fictionsuit works. A set of (mainly) "bad" guys who are in some way enlightened and usher in the 2012 event. Good thing.
KM, however, is initially striving towards preventing the supercontext incursion. He does bad things to get there.
Damn, I had a really good argument to go with this a minute ago.
I'll let you know if it comes back, but it was something to do with JAD and KM being interesting opposing waves based on their knowledge/ignorance of their own archetypes.
Damn.

11:17 / 24.04.13

Invisible Bump