I actually just bought and re-read 'Say You Want A Revolution'. I'm buying and reading my way through the trades as my original issues are on the wrong side of the Atlantic somewhere. A couple things struck me:
(i) Despite having more writing, I'm not sure that volume I did have better writing. Bits of it were incredibly good, but I actually think the stripped down work that Morrison did in Vols II & III was much more effective. Those volumes felt pop. The felt like The Invisibles. Vol I feels a lot like Another Vertigo Book, albeit one with some good ideas to offer. Having the Shellys and Byron in it is awfully similar to Milligan's 'Ernest and Jim' story where Shade wanders round '20's Paris with Hemmingway and Joyce.
(ii) Having read the rest of the series, there's little about 'Arcadia' that doesn't make sense any more. But it was clearly a much harder story than 'Down & Out...' or the wreckless carnage of the first issue. I think when I was first reading it, aged 18 or so, I was a bit perturbed that the characters didn't attempt to intervene in either the Revolution or the brutality of the Marquis' satire. (Is "satire" the right word -- what about "satiriporn"?) Re-reading it, I was more concerned with a sense of the degree to which the plot was forced - Orlando sends them the postcard of Arcadia which KM happens to use for the group's psychic fix, rather than, eg. any other object that they have with them, which maybe wasn't sent by their arch enemy, etc. Not a big quibble, but things definitely aren't as smooth as later work.
(iii) Despite being thematically on the money, it's also clear that in many ways The Invisibles was going to be a very different book at the time of Arcadia than it turned out being. The whole sub-plot with John-A-Dreams going over to the Enemy is introduced here (with Orlando hacking the time travel codes of the windmill etc), and there's a different take on it, more like Morrison was going to play it straight. Boy bitches and moans about "hating this time-travel shit," as if the group regularly time-hop, and no-one seems nearly as perturbed as they do by the time travelling in vol II and III. Hm. Dammit. Reading the book, I noticed lots of little discrepancies which showed it was cut from a different cloth, but right now that's all I can remember.
(iv) Finally, the one thing I still don't really understand is the Blind Chessman. Presumably the people who think he's Satan are referring to the apple he offers Mary Shelly. But mightn't this also connect to the apple symbolism from the first arc. (John Lennon gives KM an apple which he passes on to Rags. We never see if she eats it.) (* Inspiration! *) Let's assume that she does eat it and that answers the question I was about to pose: How come Robin ends up at Chateaux Head anyways? KM and Boy getting stuck in the card makes sense, Jack and Fanny waking up makes sense. But I never really understood why Rags ended up on that side mission.
(v) Nasty bit: To be honest, I think maybe part of what this book suffered from in losing readers was Jill Thompson's art. Sorry, to Thompson fans out there. Personally, I think she developed much better work later in the series (eg. the 'Sheman' story or her work on vol III) and I am a big fan of Scary Godmother. But, particularly after Yeowell's work on the first 4 issues I think the art in 5-9 is unappealing and static. It certainly doesn't provide the kind of sugarcoating for a complex message that, eg, Phil Jimenez would later give us.
(vi) Clearly the Planet Glossalalia stuff is intended to try and foreshadow the essence of The Invisibles' struggle. As is "There is no struggle, there is only the [pupeteer]". But the trouble with Arcadia is a lack of narrative drive. We wander through a tour of different metaphoric "points" related to notions of liberty but the dissipated themes never really coalesce. The only notion of story is Orlando being the booga-booga (complete with requisite Vertigo Cod Horror face-stealing) and lopping off Jack's fingertip, thus plunging the heroes into the dark part of their quest. But since this *doesn't* relate to any of the thematic work it doesn't serve to tie the story together into a package. I think this is why it feels like an overture - no resolution. (And, indeed, I wonder what genius at Vertigo decided to package '23:Things Fall Apart' as the first story in the next trade, rather than putting it in its rightful place at the end of 'Say You Want...'.)
Just my 2 golden apple-pits worth. |
