Hermetic Library fellow T Polyphilus reviews The Invisibles Vol. 4: Bloody Hell in America by Grant Morrison and Phil Jimenez:
The jacket copy on this fourth collection of Morrison’s The Invisibles suggests that readers might profitably start reading the series here. Perhaps that’s so: it lacks the narrative hand-holding offered by the naive Jack Frost in the early issues centered on his recruitment, but readers likely to get much out of this series never really needed that in the first place. This shortish volume collects a free-standing plot sequence and showcases the principal characters without surplus exposition.
The four issues collected here are actually the beginning of the second Invisibles series as published in periodical comic book format. Although the trade paperback bears the title Bloody Hell in America, the individual parts are the commencement (and completion?) of the story arc “Black Science.” The cinematic violence that is a mainstay of the series is on abundant display here, along with the themes of mind control and spiritual coercion. The conspiracy at stake is pretty humdrum for a post-X-Files readership, although Morrison raises the metaphysical stakes somewhat.
To the extent that there is character development in this volume, it is focused on Ragged Robin, but by the final page her backstory is still pretty opaque. (It does appear that she gets to encounter her childhood self very briefly.) A couple of new accessory “good guys” are added, in the form of Jolly Roger (a dour dyke who was King Mob’s colleague in martial arts) and Mason (a rich American on a po-mo grail quest). [via]
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