[The eighth in our series of guest reviews on Grant Morrison's The Invisibles, a wrap-up by Zach King, who blogs about movies as The Cinema King]

"And so we return and begin again." For those of you just joining us, we've been looking at the seven-trade collection of Grant Morrison's The Invisibles since March. Now that I've reached the end of my seven reviews on a trade-by-trade basis, I'm left with the question -- what do I do with all of this?

Is The Invisibles a must read? It's a difficult question, but for the most part the answer is "No." It pains me to admit it (for reasons which will be made clear below), but The Invisibles isn't a groundbreaking landmark series that changed comics forever. If I were to draw up a list of the ten most important trades, I don't think The Invisibles would even crack the top 25. Morrison has said on several occasions that the entirety of The Invisibles was intended as a hypersigil to "create more Invisibles" and push the culture in a new direction post-2000, but he's admitted almost as frequently that the spell didn't produce the desired results.

Whether you believe in the magical underpinnings which Morrison has always claimed for his work -- from the infamous Kathmandu abduction scenario to the encounter with the "real" Superman outside a comics convention -- the gist is essentially undeniable: The Invisibles hasn't had the impact on comics that its contemporaries have. The Invisibles began in 1994; that same year, Metropolis was falling in the pages of Superman, Jack Kirby died, and Frank Miller's second "Sin City" storyline was just getting warmed up. Elsewhere in the Vertigo marketplace, The Invisibles had to compete with names like Neil Gaiman (The Sandman), Peter Milligan (Shade, the Changing Man), and Garth Ennis (Preacher), not to mention the whole Image Comics boom of the '90s. So for whatever reason -- poor sales, too much else going on, exponential weirdness by comparison -- The Invisibles never really took off, and it's almost never cited outside of Morrison 101. The Invisibles is inevitably going to be picked up by anyone who's enamored with Morrison after his recent work, but the average comic book fan unfortunately won't quite know what the series is and might not give it a try -- or might give up after being totally unprepared.

Which is a damn shame. It's not a "must read," but is it a "should read?" Absolutely. The Invisibles represents Grant Morrison's first major long-form work (Animal Man and Doom Patrol dabble with long-form but tend to be dominated more by smaller arcs than by one large story), and we can see from this first outing with the style that his work on New X-Men and Batman wasn't just a latter-day Morrison phase; it's been a style of his for many years now.

As far as writing goes, Morrison is doing good work here; although it's not perfect -- there are a few bumps, pacing issues, and moments of unadulterated confusion -- Morrison never drops the ball and never loses sight of his ultimate endgame. Not everything is answered, true, but no question is raised that isn't significant regardless of the possible answers. In the case of Ragged Robin, for example, whether or not The Invisibles exist in a story is not as important as what that metaphor means for us as readers -- which is about as genius as the ever-meta Morrison has been. Of course, I'm writing from the subjective position of someone who believes Grant Morrison is a better writer than Alan Moore (deliberately provocative statement), but I don't think that The Invisibles deserves the critical disregard that it's received thus far.

For one, The Invisibles is the first mainstream creator-owned work by Grant Morrison, at once wildly original, smartly crafted, and disarmingly entertaining -- dismantling the supposed disconnect between "serious" literature and "fun" literature. If it's entertaining, The Invisibles suggests, it can mean a whole heck of a lot, too. And after re-reading it one more time in a decade different from the one where I discovered the series, I realized that The Invisibles hasn't failed as much as it seemed. While it's true that we haven't heard anything about an Invisibles movie (seriously, DC, get on that!) and while the series hasn't been reprinted in more permanent hardcover (more on that later), I think The Invisibles has meant more than we recognize -- meaning it deserves another look. But if you don't have the time to read seven trades, take another look at 1999's The Matrix.

Now, I'm not the first to suggest a connection between The Invisibles and The Matrix -- Morrison himself has claimed that you can rearrange the panels of the first issue and come out with storyboards for The Matrix -- but if there is such an influence, what does that say about the wildfire appropriation of Matrix-esque iconography in the culture? If we idolize the bald, bespectacled, gun-toting, leather-garbed, philosophy-quoting Morpheus, aren't we the grandchildren of King Mob? Or if that's too much of a stretch, take a look at the latest volume of Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, in which the villains call themselves "an invisible college" and attempt to create a moonchild to end the world. Sound familiar?

So maybe The Invisibles aren't as absent as they seem. Maybe, appropriately enough, we just can't always see them unless we're looking -- unless we too are wearing the white badge. And in a way, this is the perfect time to rediscover The Invisibles. With the publication of Supergods in July 2011, Morrison explained a bit more about what he meant behind the series. I won't spoil any of the fun, because the book is one of the most compelling prose pieces I've read in a long time, but suffice it to say that more of The Invisibles makes sense to me -- including, finally, the fiction-suit device.

And there are a wealth of resources available to help new inductees navigate the world of The Invisibles -- on this last outing, I had a copy of Anarchy for the Masses (a book of annotations by Patrick Neighly and Kereth Cowe-Spigai) handy and found it to be a major help, assisting me in connecting a lot of the pieces where the text gets a little murky and pointing out recurring symbols that have an unconscious effect on the reader (especially the "universal stop light" which is never fully explicated in the series proper).

Indeed, with December 2012 -- and the advent of the Supercontext, whatever that really is -- just around the corner, we're only missing one more important piece of the puzzle: beautiful hardcovers of the original series. It's eminently doable -- three hardcovers collecting two trades a piece, with the brief volume four (Bloody Hell in America) collected in the second hardcover. Given the right treatment, republished with new introductions and afterwords that make clear the influence The Invisibles has actually had on culture, and tossing together all the bits and pieces of the series that didn't make it into the first trades (including the final page of Bloody Hell in America and the original Ashley Wood pages from The Invisible Kingdom), The Invisibles might finally take its place as the great "undiscovered" Grant Morrison text.

Who knows? With the Flex Mentallo trade finally emerging from the ether in February 2012, The Invisibles may be right around the corner. And what better ad copy than "DECEMBER 2012 -- THE SUPERCONTEXT IS UPON US!!! FIND OUT HOW IT ALL BEGAN -- IN THREE TITANIC HARDCOVERS!" Slap a "From the writer of All-Star Superman and Batman and Robin" onto the trade dress, and we might have a hot seller. I know I need a new edition, because the glue on the later trades isn't spectacular.

That's the end of the road, loyal readers. There have been whole books written on The Invisibles, but I won't take up more of your time. Now that I've said my piece about the series and drafted the fan letter I could never send to Grant Morrison (mostly because I'm not cognizant of his address), I've reached my own personal Barbelith and am ready to move on. But as I enter the Supercontext, don't be surprised if you hear from me again. If this site is willing, I have a few more reviews up my sleeve. [Any time, Zach!]

"And so we return and begin again."

Round of applause for Zach for an excellent series! Read Zach's full Invisibles review series at the link. See you next week for a Halloween treat -- and more collection news as it breaks!

Cancelled Trade Cavalcade -- where the Collected Editions blog looks back at some trades that never quite made print. You were going to see a different Cancelled Trade Cavalcade today, but in light of the fact that Suicide Squad Vol. 2: The Nightshade Odyssey suddenly disappeared from DC Comics's release list, we interrupt your regularly scheduled cavalcade.

The 1980s Suicide Squad series has had a long, strange collection history of late. In 2009 or earlier, DC solicited a black-and-white Showcase Presents Suicide Squad that would have collected the series' first eighteen issues plus some crossovers; they cancelled this (twice, I believe) and ultimately released the color Suicide Squad: Trial By Fire, collecting the series' first six issues.

I, for one, considered getting the collecting of the Suicide Squad series in color to be a victory, and I was excited to hear about the forthcoming second volume, collecting issues seven through twelve plus more crossovers.

Except, the week that DC had scheduled the release of Suicide Squad Vol. 2: The Nightshade Odyssey, the book disappeared both from DC's site and from Amazon, at least. There's no cancellation notice so far in DC's release lists, but the book didn't come out as planned.

This is a disappointment, first, for those of use eager to read this Suicide Squad series. It's a disappointment also, however, because each successive Suicide Squad trade would have moved us closer to a collection that included Suicide Squad #23 -- the first appearance of Barbara Gordon as Oracle.

Suicide Squad Vol. 2: The Nightshade Odyssey is only the latest in a string of trades that have recently been cancelled by DC: Doom Patrol: Fire Away, JSA All-Stars: Puzzle Men, and brand new -- Supergirl: Good-Looking Corpse, the collection of final pre-Flashpoint Supergirl issues by Nick Spencer, James Peaty, and Kelly Sue DeCconnick, now appears cancelled.

To be sure, pre-ordering is your friend, to create order numbers such that DC will actually print any given trade, but frankly I'm not sure what could save some of these, these days.

Next week, another Cancelled Trade Cavalcade, and new reviews tomorrow! Don't miss our great discussion going on about the merits of continuity, and also breaking news about the DC Retroactive collections. Thanks for reading!

Number 1041


Al Fago's Atomic Rodent


Alfred "Al" Fago was a comic book editor, writer and cartoonist. The earliest strip I have attributed to him is from EC Comics Animated Comics from 1946, when EC was about kiddie comics and not walking corpses. I showed it in Pappy's #824. A little over a decade later, after spending much of his time at Charlton, Fago founded his own comic book line, which was comprised of ten issues of five different comics. Easy come, easy go...I showed you stories by Dick Ayers from one of Fago's comic books, Tense Suspense, in Pappy's #972.

Fago's most famous creation (for me, anyway) was Atomic Mouse.* Fago created the character in 1953 for Charlton. Atomic Mouse joined the ranks of other superhero cartoon mice: Supermouse and Mighty Mouse. Supermouse ate super cheese, and Atomic Mouse popped Uranium-235 pills. (The inset panel of A.M., with crazed expression, on the final page of this posting exclaiming "Gosh! I'll have to take a couple more pills!" should have disturbed Dr. Wertham.)

I wonder why mice became the good guys in animated cartoons and comics and cats were the bad guys? I depend on my cats to keep mice away, since I don't want them in my house. It saves me the humiliation of standing on a chair shrieking like a girl while a mouse does figure eights on my kitchen floor. I guess maybe it's the David and Goliath thing, the little guy prevailing over the big guy? I'm all for that, but mice? Vermin. Ugh.

Atomic Mouse's nemesis was Count Gatto, a cat of course. These two stories are from Atomic Mouse #4, 1953:














*He also created Atomic Rabbit.

**********

In 2007 I showed the first issue of Dell's Yak-Yak, illustrated completely by Jack Davis. Yak-Yak is a very oddball comic which is numbered as part of the Four Color series, at #1186. You can find it in Pappy's #200.

There were at least two editions of this issue, one with an ad on the back cover, and one without. Jim Gray has found the non-ad edition and has kindly shared a scan of the back cover. For you completists out there, and for all of us Jack Davis lovers, it's really nice of him to go to the trouble. Thanks, Jim!

While we're talking continuity, I'll close out the day mentioning how pleased I am to see DC soliciting collections of the Superman Retroactive and Wonder Woman Retroactive specials, with Batman, Green Lantern, Justice League, and Flash collections certainly on the way.

Given that each main story in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s specials was only 26 pages, we can guess that these books will include more than just the three specials themselves, but also the backup stories. That would put each trade at about 168 pages, or about the size of an ordinary paperback trade. If we could get some of the digital-only back-up stories as well, interviews with the creators from those eras, or sketchbook or other bonus material, that'd just be icing on the cake.

I had only grabbed the ones of these whose eras I enjoyed the most and hoped I could find the rest in a back-issue bin some time, figuring the disparate specials of this type probably wouldn't see trade. I'm quite pleased to have been incorrect in this instance, and even better -- if these volumes do contain the backup reprints, it's going to be a blast getting them situated on the DC Universe Trade Paperback Timeline.

Will you be grabbing all the volumes, or picking and choosing? What was your favorite Retroactive?

UPDATE: You can still see where these were solicited online, but it does not look at this point like DC will be releasing them. Oh, well -- would've been fun!

I care about continuity.

... Seems like almost a shameful admission, doesn't it?

I read an "Ask Chris" column by Chris Sims on Comics Alliance the other day (not realizing the column was from January!) and it stuck with me. A reader asks, "Are there any great Superman Stories that are actually part of current DC continuity?" Chris goes on to discuss, in an entirely fair way, that while he's a fan of continuity himself, the fact that a story isn't in continuity shouldn't be a reason to avoid it. Chris rightly says that continuity is "a tool, just like anything else. The problem is when it stops being a tool and starts being a shackle. Not for the creators, but for the reader."

Absolutely right.

Given that I agree with this, however -- and I've enjoyed DC: New Frontier and All-Star Superman and Fables and Y: The Last Man and Ultimate Spider-Man and other sub-continuity or non-continuity comics -- I still find myself feeling a tad ashamed sometimes to say I'll probably pick up all of DC's New 52 collections except All-Star Western because it's not as "tied in" as other titles, or that I picked up the Magog trade even though I didn't have high hopes for it mainly because I thought it was connected to Flashpoint. As if having as continuity one of your primary interests in comics-reading makes you a less pure fan or a "zombie" picking up whatever a publisher produces.

Except I think I finally worked out a paradigm that explains it better.

I mainly collect just one title, I realized, and that title's called DC Universe. Not DC Universe Presents, mind you, but DC Universe, the ongoing story of the DC Comics superheroes. That series is published in a couple of volumes every week (never mind the different names on the books), and the books often look at different corners of the DC Universe more or less simultaneously.

To put it another way, what I enjoy reading about is the DC Universe in its entirety. It's not always a cohesive story -- sometimes Captain Atom's doing his thing over here and Flash is doing his thing over there, but then other times Flash is in Captain Atom's book, or Frankenstein and OMAC are in each others' books, or all the heroes from all the books are in the same book called Blackest Night or Final Crisis or such. As the DC Universe became increasingly interconnected after Identity Crisis and in the lead-up to Infinite Crisis, what I began reading was more or less all the titles, because together they formed a tapestry telling different parts of the same story.

So if I were to forgo All-Star Western for the moment, it's not so much that the book is outside continuity that's important to me (though, from what I hear, there may be continuity ties there, too), so much as the fact that it's just not part of the series that I read, arbitrarily defined as that is. And if I were to pick up the Magog trade even if I hadn't heard great things about it (and then had the gall to be disappointed), I justify that decision in part because that book is a little aspect of the tapestry of my "series."

Certainly, continuity shouldn't keep you from enjoying a good book. But I'd like to see some of the stigma fall away from enjoying continuity, too.

Grant Morrison's JLA was what it claimed -- one couldn't read that title without thinking, "This is the Justice League of America." I felt more tentative about Joe Kelly's JLA run that followed, but somewhere in the middle of The Obsidian Age's time-traveling craziness, I again thought to myself, "This is the Justice League."

Writer James Robinson sets out to accomplish the same in Justice League of America: Omega, and it works. Omega is a superheroic romp of the best kind, a frenetic, messy story stuffed with years of obscurity and continuity and esoteric guest-stars, that sizzles in its conclusion when the heroes snatch victory from defeat. Robinson embodies the characters in a manner different from any of DC Comics's other team book writers at present, and creates a model for what team books can be in more ways than one.

[Contains spoilers]

To be sure, Robinson's Omega is a heady mash-up of a dozen other DC Comics. The alternate-Earth Crime Syndicate of America (a conflation of Grant Morrison's JLA: Earth-2 graphic novel and Kurt Busiek's Trinity miniseries) have infected their own and the Tangent universe (from DC's Tangent fifth week events) with a deadly dark matter, and need to resurrect Alexander Luthor (killed in Infinite Crisis) to reverse the damage (no one acknowledges that the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths Luthor is not actually the Luthor of their world). Aiding the Syndicate is a band of Apokolips-enhanced villains lead by Dr. Impossible, who instead betrays the Syndicate and tries to resurrect Darkseid (late of Final Crisis). The story involves a number of double-crossed, flashes back to the Countdown to Final Crisis and Day of Vengeance miniseries at least, and even includes the "dark" Supergirl not seen since the early days of the Supergirl series some six years ago.

If it sounds confusing, it is -- gleefully so. Consider the conversation between the title characters at the beginning of the Starman/Congorilla one-shot included here; there's a remarkably text-heavy two-page spread where Congorilla references Green Arrow, Sirroco (briefly of Superman: Camelot Falls) the Shade, and elements of Justice League: Team History and Cry for Justice, and that's all before Animal Man and Rex the Wonder Dog show up. And yet, it's exactly the kind of conversation one might expect two superheroes to have discussing a mission, if there weren't a writer who needed to be concerned what the reader might or might not understand. We've established already that Robinson writes like an Aaron Sorkin screenplay, with enough interruptions and deviations to drive any reader to madness, but in Omega it's elevated to a kind of devil-may-care continuity free-for-all, true to the characters even if the reader gets left behind.

Robinson, however, demonstrates he's cognizant of the weight of all this continuity. I've mentioned before that Robinson's Donna seems "off" in a way, angrier than we think of her in the classic Marv Wolfman New Teen Titans stories. Robinson addresses that here, as Donna considers her own rage, borne from a sadness and tiredness from numerous tragedies, including the death and gross resurrection of her own son during Blackest Night. Donna's anger, however, seems as much directed as her circumstances as it does the architects of those tragedies, the comics writers -- she calls her past "convoluted ... to such a degree that I've long since decided to ignore it, when I'm able." Donna's rage must reflect how daunted Robinson and other writers feel to use this character given how much baggage she carries; in Donna, Robinson gives outlet to the lost reader, simultaneously giving Donna Troy an awareness of the continuity puzzles she poses and also giving her license to ignore them entirely.

Indeed, Robinson's League becomes something of a home for wayward heroes, especially those mistreated by other writers. At the forefront are Donna Troy and Jade, each who have been at times more the foils for male characters of their titles than characters in their own right; in the book's first self-contained chapter, the two agree to a partnership built on their own merits. With Congorilla and Starman on their own for most of the book, Robinson presents a League that is predominantly female, likely a first for the team. Robinson also uses three gay characters -- three is not a lot necessarily, but it's more than one finds in other titles, and it's unlikely Robinson fosters all of this inclusiveness accidentally. Robinson makes strides for diversity in a Justice League title (probably not since Gerard Jones has the League been this diverse) but also this goes again toward how "normal" Robinson's League is, in a way -- just as it's likely superheroes would have continuity-rich discussions, it's just as likely not every hero on a team would be male or straight, and Robinson's League becomes more "realistic" in its difference from the standard fare.

Justice League of America: Omega is the first solo adventure for this League (and, with the DC Relaunch, actually also the penultimate one) and Robinson makes no secret his desire to "legitimize" the team's incarnation in this book. In the previous volume, Dark Things, Starman and Congorilla wonder aloud when they'll be recognized as the Justice League; here, the "Omega" storyline is just underway when Superman himself assures other heroes that this team, the Justice League, will save the day. It's too quick, and with no basis for Superman to believe so, but the story of Washington D.C.'s residents trapped in a dome with only this team of heroes to save them from the villains is very compelling (especially Jesse Quick's underrated role constantly moving the people from spot to spot for three days). In the final pages, a seemingly defeated Batman reveals that his plan to stop the rampaging Omega Man has been in play all along, and it's a twist worthy of Morrison's JLA adventures. This may not have been the Justice League when the Omega started, but it feels that way when they announce themselves in the end.

[Contains original and variant covers. Printed on glossy paper.]

James Robinson has one more volume of Justice League, The Rise of Eclipso, before the title gives way to the DC Relaunch, after which he turns to a new Shade miniseries. I can't really feel disappointed by James Robinson working with the Starman characters again, but Robinson on Shade feels like playing it safe, the writer working with characters he knows and can do with as he pleases. I'd be happy to see Robinson again on a team book, and a mainstream one at that -- his Justice League is out of the ordinary just in the way the comics expanse probably needs.

Coming up this week, new reviews and another entry in our new series, Cancelled Trade Cavalcade. See you then!

Number 1040


From the depths of Hades to Der Fuehrer's face


We have in this Destroyer tale from All-Winners Comics the arch villains of all time: Hitler, Attila the Hun, Madame Satan and her husband, Satan himself.

Well, hard to beat all of those characters for sheer evil.

The Destroyer story isn't credited in the Grand Comics Database, except for a guess the inking is by Al Gabriele. It's very well drawn, full of action. Over the years Hitler has appeared in more comics than most fictional villains. It was a sort of wish-dream to get at him, but as we now know, that was all fantasy. Since this is fantasy might as well load it up with all the bad guys you can fit into a panel. I wonder if Madame Satan ever showed up again? She's very sexy, in a crazy-eyes sort of way.

The story appeared in a 2006 reprint from Marvel Comics, but what I'm showing you is from the original All-Winners Comics #8, 1943:













There's a joke in one panel about Der Fuehrer's Face, which was a popular hit of the day. Here's Spike Jones in a Movietone Newsreel doing a shortened version of the song: