Hm.

This volume takes place in the future, and strangely, doesn't focus on the main characters of King Mob's Invisible cell, but rather on Division X for most of it. I didn't mind the switch to Division X - especially as it followed up on a few of the earlier storylines (Monster of Glamis, Orlando, John O'Dreams, etc.) but the art style entirely distracted me.

I wasn't crazy about the artwork of this album - the style just didn't speak to me, and somewhat pulled my focus away from the storyline entire. Unlike the earlier volumes, I found this one rather dense and left the story not entirely certain I understood it.

Dickensian, indeed, it did go full-circle in a rather nice way. The Time Machine plot, the earlier abduction plot, Sir Miles, all of it came to a rather firm conclusion. I didn't dislike this volume, per se, but it left me with questions.

I think I'll head over to Barbelith and give this some heavy thinking... ( )

This trade paper volume collects all twelve issues of the third and final Invisibles series. New characters are introduced, and the boundaries between the various conspiracies motivating the action become ever more porous as the eschaton is immanentized.

The closing series of the comic--especially its last issues--suffers from a surfeit of artists. It gets to the point where a single illustrator rarely has contributed more than two or three pages in sequence. In some cases, a shift of artistic style seems to be deliberately communicating a shift of perspective, but these seem to be the minority, and the visual idiolects are so divergent that the reader must struggle to identify characters and settings in panel after panel.

Once in a while, I would pause and try to bring "beginner's mind" to bear on the dialogue of the book (especially the pronouncements of "expert" protagonists like King Mob and Helga), and I found that it was mostly sesquipedalian gibberish. For better or for worse, though, it's the sort of gibberish that my conditioned mind understands and enjoys.

These comic books were originally issued in 1999 and 2000, and they are very much a product of their time. No one could or would write this sort of thing today. Even though the essential fears expressed here remain in force, our political context has rather dampened and shifted the corresponding hopes. Another book from the same period that has dated similarly is Hakim Bey's Millennium. I would contrast Morrsion's more concentrated and coherent effort in The Filth, which addresses many similar themes.

The first few volumes of this series was intriguing and playful. It reminded me of a fusion of some of Philip K. Dick work and the Illuminatus trilogy.

On the other hand as the series went on it got more disorganized and less and less interesting characters emerged. At some point I was just reading hoping to get to the ending and now I wish I hadn't. The ending itself was disappointing on many levels. Towards the end only one or two characters got introduced that I even cared to find more about. The actual ending felt more like they couldn't decide on an ending and just went for vagueness. Not even cool vagueness. Eh.

The series no longer has the humor or zaniness of Illuminatus nor none of the weirdness or fascinating characters of Dick. I can't figure out where it happened, but know I wish I had stopped reading somewhere after the ending of the story arches of Lord Fanny & Boy. ( )

Meh... ( )

I just read this backwards and didn't even know. What the hell, man? But it is pure dead style and the newest invisible is a linguist to boot. ( )