Annotations [Karmageddon Part 4: Smile]


o [page 1] [panel 1] That's the Millennium dome, right?; Gratuitious Scooby-Doo reference, just in case anyone wasn't paying attention. [Chip] [panel 2] KM in Edith's apartment, overlooking the Eiffel tower [Chip]

o [page 2] [panel 1] One more Macintosh. You've gotta love that apple motif. [Chip]

o [page 3] [panel 1] Throughout the issue, play "Spot the KALI Acronym!" [Chip] [panel 2] There's one--"Kill All Little Innocents" [Chip] [panel 3] Lila is a sanskrit term which means "divine play" (so the phrase "play of lila" is a little redundant). Refer to English equivalent in Shakespeare: "as flies to wanton boys, so are we to the gods -- they use us for their sport." That's a bit bleaker than the Hindu idea. Think more along the idea of the Dance of Shiva - or the Divine Embrace of Shiva and Parvati and you're closer. I draw a correspondence between this idea and the Two of Coins in the Tarot. Life is a game... sometimes it's Twister, sometimes it's Monopoly... and sometimes it's CHESS. [grant]

o [page 5] [panel 1] The Foom! is the surveillance camera exploding. You can just see it in the upper left-hand corner of page 4 last panel. No one shoots it - is Jack demonstrating telekinesis? [Topper]

o [page 7] [panel 1] Another KALI [Chip]

o [page 9] [panel 4] For those not in the know, the Stepford Wives was a film in which normally argumentative and interesting women were killed and replaced with subservient identical robots. [TEC] "The Midwich Cuckoos" was a novel by John Wyndham (I believe), which was later turned into the lassic English SF movie VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED. Synopsis: all the citizens of this small, isolated English village (Midwich, natch) experience "missing time." Many of the women are found to be pregnant shortly afterwards. All the children of these pregnancies have blond-white hair and piercing blue eyes... oh, and did I mention that they're a malevolent alien group-mind with big-time psionic abilities? The cuckoo, of course, is a bird that leaves its eggs in the nests of other birds, allowing its young to be hatched and reared by another species... [Jack Fear]

o [page 12] [panel 1] Has anyone noticed the phrase used twice (?) in this issue, "Everything is true, nothing is permitted", is actually an inversion of a phrase I've usually heard as "Nothing is true, everything is permitted"? I've seen it before, attributed to Hassan i Sabbah, "the old man of the mountain," in some of William Burrough's novels. He was the leader of a Persian (?) cult of assassins who used, among other things, hash to indoctrinate his followers with the belief that anything that happens to them in this life is inconsequential since they had a get-in-free pass to paradise (our word "hashish" comes from the Persian word for assassin, "ashishin" I think). [ElHombreInvisible] [panel 5] Notice Mister Six's smoke rings! [Loz]

o [page 14] [panel 2] Download--reminiscent of VALIS to me... [Chip]

o [page 15] I'm getting definite 2001 overtones here. [Chip] [panel 1] At the time of printing, Terrence McKenna did indeed have cancer. [TEC] [panel 3] Another KALI. Barbelith=VALIS (Philip K Dick) again? [Chip]

o [page 16] [panel 1] This is a reference to that jolly old optical illusion featured in Doom Patrol #54, which turned into Barbelith, I believe. You can see a classic version. [Zephir]

o [page 19] [panel 1] Cluedo is the British version of the game known in America as Clue. [TEC]

o [page 21] [panel 3] The bald chap with the Hindu-like red dot may be Thierro. He/She is a Non - a genderless being. [TEC] Thierro repeats a prophet's warning that Paris will be destroyed on August 11; way back in the very first issue, Gideon said Paris would soon be picturesque ruins. [Jackie Susann]

o [page 22] [panel 1] Note that August 11 was (will be in Invisibles timeline) the date of the first total eclipse of the sun to be seen in Britain and parts of Europe for 70-odd years or so. [Citizen Smith]