Tag Archives: king mob

The Invisible Kingdom

Hermetic Library fellow T Polyphilus reviews The Invisibles Vol. 7: The Invisible Kingdom by Grant Morrison:

Grant Morrison's The Invisible Kingdom

 

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. [via]

 

 

The Hermetic Library Reading Room is an imaginary and speculative future reification of the library in the physical world, a place to experience a cabinet of curiosities offering a confabulation of curation, context and community that engages, archives and encourages a living Western Esoteric Tradition. If you would like to contribute to the Hermetic Library Reading Room, consider supporting the library or contact the librarian.

Kissing Mister Quimper

Hermetic Library fellow T Polyphilus reviews The Invisibles Vol. 6: Kissing Mister Quimper by Grant Morrison:

Grant Morrison's Invisibles Vol 6 Kissing Mister Quimper

 

This sixth collection of Morrison’s The Invisibles doesn’t introduce much in the way of new ideas (and no new characters), but plays deftly with the ones put in place by earlier sequences. The emphasis is all on mindfuckery, with lots of discontinuous psychedelic sequences. One way to read it is as King Mob in bed with Ragged Robin, letting his drug-addled fantasy run riot until the Fight Club ripoff ending. Still fun. [via]

 

 

The Hermetic Library Reading Room is an imaginary and speculative future reification of the library in the physical world, a place to experience a cabinet of curiosities offering a confabulation of curation, context and community that engages, archives and encourages a living Western Esoteric Tradition. If you would like to contribute to the Hermetic Library Reading Room, consider supporting the library or contact the librarian.

Bloody Hell in America

Hermetic Library fellow T Polyphilus reviews The Invisibles Vol. 4: Bloody Hell in America by Grant Morrison and Phil Jimenez:

Grant Morrison's The Invisibles 4: Bloody Hell in America from Vertigo

 

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]

 

 

The Hermetic Library Reading Room is an imaginary and speculative future reification of the library in the physical world, a place to experience a cabinet of curiosities offering a confabulation of curation, context and community that engages, archives and encourages a living Western Esoteric Tradition. If you would like to contribute to the Hermetic Library Reading Room, consider supporting the library or contact the librarian.