Annotations


Cover: isn't the cover like "The holy grail or two faces"? Wasn't that a King Mob line in volume two I think?. [THX3811@aol.com]

o [page 1,2,3] [panel 6] Who's narrating here? Possibly a future Invisible (maybe even the girl on the last page) as evidenced by "This was fucking King Mob, man... They still talk about him" on p2 pan 1; but it also sounds like it was someone who was there, as the narrator says "Sometimes, I used to forget what he could actually do..." as if they were there and knew Jack. Maybe it's Jack or Mob in the future, after tehy've discarded their respective identities. [Antlerhead]

o [page 1] [panel 6] This smoke appears to be the descending form of the fifth archon, since it's going into the Shoggoth here and later attacks Jack. So there were 5 archons in ish 3, afterall. [Antlerhead]

o [page 2] FROM THE SCRIPT: The idea here is that the hair on KM's headdress has razorwire in it, and he's slashing open the soldier's face, "like a strike from a lethal cheerleader pom-pom." [Broad Arrow Jack]

o [page 3] Roy Lichtenstein was the painter who did blown-up comic panels and used comic iconography, including sound effects like "Whaaam!". You can find some of his stuff here. [Antlerhead]

o [page 4] [panel 2] The Killing of the King is a freemason ritual, as all Kennedy conspiracy theorists should know, so the three bullets may very well be symbolic. The ritual depends on all kinds of trinities, I think. [Antlerhead] [panel 5] This echoes the killing of Mr. Gelt in 1#1. [Antlerhead]

o [page 6/7] What is the yellow light that the words are coming from? The Invisible College? Anybody besides me want to drop Key 23 and bust out the Magnetic Poetry set. [Antlerhead]

o [page 6] FROM THE SCRIPT: Roger is trying to say "Suck my clit, asshole." [Broad Arrow Jack] [panel 3] Jolly Roger's arms are laying in the same up-down position as The Magician's arms in the Rider Waite, and most other tarot card decks. The notes laying on each arm reflect the meaning behind the respective arms position. The left arm points downwards and says 'LIFE' referring to the firmament and our earthly existence on it. The right arms points to the heavens and says 'TOMMOROW', referring to either our existence in the afterlife of whatever heaven you choose to believe in, or simply, and in keeping with the themes of the book, the future as opposed to the now or past where everything is like a heaven where everybody gets what they want, because after all, that's what King Mob's cell is here to ensure and is in the process of doing even as Roger dies. [uncle sham]

o [page 8] [panel 1,3,4,6] We see the 4d armor/universe surround Fanny just like it does in the future flash-forward in vol. 2. [Lionheart] [panel 5] John was Flint? Is John (and possibly by extension the Blind Chessman) actually the reader? Following what he says later in this issue, he dissapears into the time/fiction suit right before the series starts, and comes back at the end enlightened. Hmmmm.... [Antlerhead]

o [page 9] What happens to George, Fanny and John after page 9? I mean they're getting this lecture from John, right? Guys with guns. Very tense. And then nothing till after it's all over. It seemed as if John was getting to a vital point about how and why he allowed himself to be changed, but it stopped before the good part. Maybe I was expecting a meeting between him and KM. [creamedalbeeontoast] [panel 1] The 1st panel of p. 9 depicts the computer surveillance technicians, seen briefly last issue, as their equipment explodes from the pressure of the incoming Archon. Incidentally, I had originally drawn this panel as a Jack Kirby scene of chaos, huge screaming face in the foreground, frenzied panic in the background, but was asked to change it to how it now appears, which in my opinion is a far more boring layout. And again, those fucking colours didn't help any... [Broad Arrow Jack]

o [page 10] [panel 1] Is that the Queen lying dead in the pink? Better check the headlines tommorow... heee heee heee. Also, the smoke has taken a new form after the possession. [Antlerhead] [panel 4] Six and Helga have taken the place of the royal guard guys at the mirror, and also appear to be the Lovers from the tarot. [Antlerhead]

o [page 11] [panel 2] About the Hylic Grail, briefly: In Gnostic theory, "Hylians" are people who only see the base, physical world. But you already knew that. [Antlerhead] [panel 4] Grant was talking about this in his Comics Journal interview, about how Christ told him during his illness that he had to break open his heart to let the light out. [Antlerhead]

o [pages 12-14] A return to the moment in Volume II when dane and the blind chessman/satan strolled through the UFO: Dane is not just remembering, it is not just being re-iterated, it is happening again because Dane is returning to this place that is outside time; these panels hadn't been shown before, though, since dane was in his "shamanic sickness" and all. they are no doubt the "most important" because this is where Grant lays out exactly the message he was given in his own "alien contact experience." In fact he explained all this stuff almost verbatim at the DisinoCon. [Mystery Gypt]

o [pages 12] FROM THE SCRIPT: [1] -bunch of preamble stressing the importance of these pages, and how they should look very special. Ha!- ...Jack is walking with Satan - as seen in V.2:20 - through the devastated London of the Outer Church.. [3] Jack and Satan walk across the dreadful wasteland past the girl with the baby. We follow them. Up ahead, there are huge grotesque Chris Weston bug-things glimpsed through a swirl of toxic mist. Beyond that, we see what could be towersm like Westminster in the haze of the bleached horizon. This is a world of endless repeating horror, defoliated and bombed and roamed by the monsters of the Outer Church. [5] Jack and Satan walk under the hideous flea-monstrosities. Jack looks up at the horrors which really don't seem so horrible after all. [Broad Arrow Jack]

o [page 13] [panel 2] FROM THE SCRIPT: "Jack and Satan. The great flea-things seen in background are reaching up to pluck fruit from luscious trees that grow here. Grass emerging from the cracks and ruin in the distance as the landscape subtly changes, flushing with life. Greenery beginning to appear between the cracks." [Broad Arrow Jack] One of the meanings I take from this issue is that we are finally being freed from the domination of the comic itself, that now that we have been "educated" by Lord Morrison, we can go forth into the world and get Whatever We Want. Those beetles are cool, too... and there's two of them. Ring any bells? [Antlerhead] [panel 3] FROM THE SCRIPT: "Longshot following Jack and Satan towards the Invisible College, alive with lights in the wonderful twilight. Three figures wait ahead, silhouetted by the green light of an eerie floating circle. We've never seen the Invisible College from here before. We're behind it and there's a river with a bridge and the general ambience is of dreaming spires and scholarly evenings" [Broad Arrow Jack] [panel 5] FROM THE SCRIPT: "Jack turns his head and we see the movement as a process through time, like a solid timelapse, bone merging to bone, the turning mouth like a yawning gash of teeth, the eyes repeated" [Broad Arrow Jack] [panel 6] "The body, decades long, billion eyed" -- that's how grant claims to have seen humanity when he himself was outside of time -- you look like some big long snake who is on one long line everywhere you ever were in time. [Mystery Gypt] The blind chessman makes Jack/Dane aware of his entire temporal body. Page 14, that pink tree is jack's body as seen from outside of time. A tree. A "finger" of the universe. A game piece growing out of the gameboard. [Lionheart]

o [page 14] [panel 1] FROM THE SCRIPT: "With the head of the creature in the foreground, the time maggot that is Jack Frost stretches towards us" [Broad Arrow Jack] [panel 2] FROM THE SCRIPT "Pull back from the moment, Jack extends into the future also and the future is seen as a steaming amniotic information broth in which potential forms are curled in wait" [Broad Arrow Jack] Binary code is the mechanical notation of the universe created by Light/Dark, Mirror/Anti-mirror. See, everything does rise from duality. Puts a new spin on The Matrix. [Antlerhead] The nature of language as a system of binaries is also a concern of deconstructive and postmodern philosophy - which the Invisibles is drenched in. [TEC] [panel 3] FROM THE SCRIPT: "And back in a great knotted life cast - the shape we make in the surrounding space as we progress through time" [Broad Arrow Jack][panel 4] FROM THE SCRIPT: "And back - a huge centipedal tree of time, human lives extended back - the whole thing glimpsed through the smoky red light of the seething crystal sphere in which the whole monstrous anenome of all life on Earth and all the failed branches...a great timetrack expressed back to the mitochondrial roots. The trues shape of life on Earth. The spheres interset and swallow one another like hungry sphincters, collapsing and whorling tunnel vortices across the structure of the time solid - the universe as a single entity" [Broad Arrow Jack] "Time is soil and for nourish larvae and grown in" Again, as Grant said in his speach, humanity is larvae, planted here by the being outside of time. They put us in this time world because they want us to grow, and nothing grows outside of time. [Mystery Gypt] Grant did not say that humanity is a larvae. He said that the universe is a larvae. [Lionheart] [panel 5] FROM THE SCRIPT: "And a final glimpse of the beyond - the time crystal itself with its great and monstrous coiled, twitching anenome of life is growing into whorling electric-coloured infospace. The crystal is attended by glowing silver blobs, metamorphic magic mirror entities of the 5th dimension - our true selves - the adult form of which we and all our ancestry are but the larva" [Broad Arrow Jack]

o [page 15] FROM THE SCRIPT: "Helga looks up off panel - a final word falls, dislodged by someone high in the vaulting. We can read 'Murderer.'" [Broad Arrow Jack] [panel 2/3] THere's an extract of the script, regarding the strange backgrounds on page 15: ...The Harlequinade are still behind Jack but they've changed and are in their traditional costumes. Pierrot and Columbine make hand shapes. More images vibrate off them - Edith, Tom, Robin, King Mob... Now they are the King In Yellow and his dwarves, making hand movements. Behind them, a whole crowd seethes - everyone who's ever appeared in the series... So, looks like Ridgeway didn't draw the crowd of characters (Jimenez would have), which seems like a pretty important part of the story, if you ask me, and it completely confirms October Ghost's earlier theory that the Harlequinade was, in fact, anyone and everyone... [Broad Arrow Jack]

o [page 16] [panel 5] Helga is collecting the shit and spunk of Sir Miles, as he hangs, into the Black Grail. [Lionheart] This (of course) mirrors the Holy Grail and Christ (only without the shit and spunk). [TEC] FROM THE SCRIPT: Helga is collecting Miles' urine in the cup. [Broad Arrow Jack]

o [page 17] [panel 1] FROM THE SCRIPT: "The eclipse passes and for a moment the sun and moon cross one another in the shape of the Vescica Pisces." [Broad Arrow Jack] [panel 5] FROM THE SCRIPT: "That's KM, off to find a phonebooth.." [Broad Arrow Jack]

o [page 18] [panel 4] FROM THE SCRIPT: "Supposed to be Audrey Murray on the left, passing the cafe..." [Broad Arrow Jack]

o [page 19] [panel 4] FROM THE SCRIPT: Audrey Murray again, though thanks once again to mister Vozzo she's coloured incorrectly. She looks like Jacqui, but for anyone who dares make a connection between the two, there is none. [Broad Arrow Jack]

o [page 20] [panel 4] FROM THE SCRIPT: The police are there looking for KM. [Broad Arrow Jack]

o [page 22] DESCRIPTION OF THE "FUCK YOU" GIRL FROM THE SCRIPT: As far as the appearance of the Fuck U girl goes, fashion-wise, I'd like to remind everyone that I merely inked this page. Grant came up with the bizarro clothes which he described in a long rambling note to me as "Straight Edge/Stepford wife/New Romantic/Early 80s Ladi Di/Blouse and Jodhpurs/Midwich Cuckoos/Cute handbag on table/Avon Lady/Straight Edge X on hand. Happy face Nazi armband (NOTE: again fucked up by the colours). Badge: SEX DRINK DRUGS MEDIA (then a little drawing of the badge with the line through it with a note: "also Barbelith."). [Broad Arrow Jack]