Invisibles 2,10
From Barbelith
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Credits
Grant Morrison (Writer) Phil Jiminez (Penciller) John Stokes (Inker) Daniel Vozzo (Colors) Heroic Age (Separations) Todd Klein (Letterer) Shelly Roeberg (Editor)
The Invisibles created by Grant Morrison
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Summary
The Invisible cell in 1924 has performed the ritual, and the Hand of Glory is active. Time and space go insane. Edith finds herself looking at herself as an old woman, the first King Mob moves through peoples' lives and watches Edith cry as she looks at Picasso's Guernica. The following day, they go to St. Dunstan's In The East church. Edith and Freddie (Tom O'Bedlam) enter to meet the Harlequin. The two King Mobs wait outside when time collapses around them. Edith meets the Harlequin and he tells her how to operate the Hand. She takes the young King Mob to bed to anoint the Hand. They take a photograph of the whole group, and as the young King Mob fades, something grows from one of the meta-universes. He wakes with a shock into 1997. Finding out about Boy's disappearance, Robin declared a full Invisibles alert - the word is out....
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Characters
Billy Chang Tom O'Bedlam King Mob King Mob (1) Lady Edith Manning Queen Mab Jack Frost The Harlequin Sir Miles Delacourt Ragged Robin Mason Lang Lord Fanny Bobby Murray
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Analysis
Time & Time Travel
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Annotations
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PAGE 3
Swirls of magic metal or dissolving vases? You decide [RD] The weird sled-like thing behind King Mob can be seen in one of the bubbles in the Outer Church in Invisibles 2,3, page 14 [L]
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PAGE 4
Panel 3 Is this Beryl appearing to her lover Ronald Tolliver (a/k/a first King Mob) as he dies at Guernica in 1937, as described on page 22, panel 4? [JB] Panels 4-5 This scene "quotes" Invisibles 1,12, page 7. Why young Bobby refers to "Edith" is still unexplained....[JB] There seems to be a lot more to Bobby than meets the eye, doesn't there? Notice that the fellow dying in Invisibles 2,4, page 13, panel 1 seems to have the same childhood fear of the gas mask that Bobby does [TF]
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PAGE 5
Panels 1-2 This looks like a late-'50s Beryl viewing Picasso's Guernica, which he painted in 1937 [JB] Beryl is crying because Picasso's Guernica reminds her of the first King Mob who, as we find out later in this issue, died in Guernica. The piece of dialogue in panel 2 might also allude to Beryl's thoughts of the late King Mob. [TTA] Last panel The red sphere looks like our often-seen Invisibles gate, last seen, and first explained, in Invisibles 2,7 [TF]
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PAGE 6
Panel 5 This scene quotes from Invisibles 1,3, page 15, panel 2 [JB]
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PAGE 7
Panels 1-4 ...continues the quote from Invisibles 1,3, page 15, with a bit of extra dialogue from Edith [JB]
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PAGE 8
Panel 2 I've just noticed a similarity between Mr Joseph Conrad, whose text 'Heart of Darkness' I'm sure everyone knows, and the Golden Age King Mob. A picture to prove at [[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Conrad)] [Mr. White]
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PAGE 9
Panel 3 The modern building that suddenly appears to Tolliver is Canary Wharf, which was first pictured in Invisibles 1,4, page 7, panel 1. It is the building that Tom O'Bedlam brings Dane to during Dane's initiation [JB]
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PAGE 10-11
In this sequence Edith disappears while she is communicating with the Harlequin. The Harlequin, when he appeared in English and French pantomime, was invisible to all but Columbine. Edith appears to be "Columbine" (a "shrewd, vivacious and coquettish maidservant...the daugther of Pantaloon and the sweetheart of Harlequin" according to Benet's Readers Encyclopedia) here, just as Freddy is Pierrot (the "clown lover...a tall thin young man...an artist-lover of soaring imagination, who grimly hides his real passions behind a comic mask," again according to Benet's) [JB] Harlequin is really a stylized descendant of the Arlecchino character in Italian commedia dell'arte. Like the English and French pantomimes, commedia used a small stable of stock characters (including Pantalone/Pantaloon) but Arlecchino was more earthy and less colorful than Harlequin -- he tended to be an ingenious bum in the Chaplin mode, mainly trying to avoid starvation, but managing to get other characters horribly abused for comic effect meanwhile. So Harlequin is sort of Arlecchino elevated from the human level. I mention all this because of the speculations that certain Invisibles may be destined to step into new roles in the Harlequinade [EB] Harlequin as well is based off of another Doom Patrol storyline. In this one, the Doom Patrol go to another planet and get involved in between two factions, one called the Anathematicians and another led by a being called Huss (I forget the faction's name). Huss and his followers lived in a dimension without space called the Kaladioscape. You wouldn't move to things in this place; everything is already there; instead things come to you. Huss and his followers easily travel through space. But otherwise, the two are disimilar [R]
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PAGE 11
Panel 3 The Harlequin of theatre and opera never removes his mask: is that why Edith cannot look at his face? [JB] This is in a reference to the face of God, which it is said that none can see without being destroyed, as he says to Moses when he appears as a burning bush. Harlequin is saying that Edith cannot understand what he is [R]
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PAGE 11
Panels 4-5 Edith has glimpsed the true nature of spacetime, where everything happens at once in an eternal now. Harlequin may have showed Edith 'his face' anyway, but she could only make sense of a little of it. It's impossible to tell really how much 'time' passes between panels 3 and 4. Notice also that Edith appears instantly into panel 5 [R] What happens here with the "snow" is something we've seen before: in Invisibles 1,23, page 1. Liverpool, December 22nd, 2012: "Look, it's snowing", "That's not Snow. That's it starting." "It" seems to be the apocalypse [MV]
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PAGE 12
Panel 2 The concept of a Holy Guardian Angel, or HGA, is found in "The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage", and figures into Golden Dawn and Thelemite traditions. The HGA is supposed to be contacted by the mage, who the uses it as a vehicle for greater magickal acts and is taught knowledge by. It is literally an extension of the mage's greater/divine nature [R] Edith is implying that Harlequin may be her 'magickal, spiritual mentor', much like Jack Frost does with Dane. The HGA is a very personal being, however, and that does not fit with Harlequin's motif, although he has had the most contact with her [R] Perhaps Invisible HGAs are assigned by Barbelith [R] Panel 3 Billy Chang is implying that Harlequin or the Shining Ones may be a gestalt being. Grant has used gestalt characters in the past in Doom Patrol, notably Rebis and the Candlemaker (who is an egregore of fear of nuclear annihilation) [R] Panel 5 Chang may be implying that he has the Spirit role of the cell. I theorize that Edith is Fire, Fred Earth, King Mob Air, and Queen Mab water [R]
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PAGES 14-16
This scene "quotes" from Invisibles 1,18, pages 20-21. The Tantric sex skills that Edith apparently uses here may have been learned from "Mr. Reddy" in India, as shown in Invisibles 2,8, page 13 [JB] Compare pages 15, panel 4 and 16, panel 5 with Invisibles 2,21, page 14, panel 2 and see annotation [Jess]
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PAGE 17
Panel 5 The '90s King Mob refers to Benares, India as the place where he and Edith will meet in 1988; KM's travel to this location is shown in Invisibles 1,19, page 3, panels 3-4. Edith and Freddie already visited there in Invisibles 2,8, pages 11-13 (I'm sure there are other references to Benares that I haven't found yet...) [JB]
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PAGE 18
Panel 5 Speculation: If Freddie and Edie are cousins, and are meant to be representations of the thetrical/operatic duo of Peirrot and Columbine...then perhaps Freddie's father might be Pantaloon (who is usually Columbine's father), since Freddie's father has been shown giving advice to a younger person, Freddie, regarding his choice of the name 'Tom O'Bedlam' in Invisibles 2,8 page 19. According to Benet's, Pantaloon is "always an emaciated old man in slippers...[who] could give sound advice to the young and at the same time fall in love like an adolescent..." [JB] No Golden Dawn magus corresponds to Freddie's father, though three magi died in 1923: Dr. Edward Berridge, who studied sexual magicks, and was quite a controversial character within the order; Allan Bennet, friend/mentor of Crowley and who moved to India in 1900, and J.W. Brodie-Innes, who looks the most like Freddie's father, but who resided in Edinburgh, and wasn't particularly a good occultist [R]
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PAGE 19
This sequence shows the photo previously shown in Invisibles 2,8, page 9, panel 2 being taken [JB]
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PAGE 20
Panel 3 Reminescent of the celestial traffic signal. Did this experience drive Freddie mad? [RD] Panel 4 The starfish-shape appeared before: see Invisibles 2,4, top of page 22; that is a shape associated with "the Invasion. The Armageddon." [JB] Panel 5 The "I/You" globe was previously shown in Invisibles 2,3 page 15 when the general was taking an injured Quimper to the other side. It's more than just the globe, too. You can see the "Loser" and "The Doctors Say Its Cancer" graffiti as well as the base of the statue that means total control. Which means that we can precisely state that Tom was looking at Rut 7, subgrid 0, Hive Tesseract A, Cell 10310. :-) [TF] The "Tom's a-cold" balloon quotes in this panel refer to Tom's first appearances in Invisibles 1,2, and the "Through the sharp Hawthorne, blow the winds" quote was "first" spoken by Tom in Invisibles 1,2 page 9, panel 5 [JB] And, of course, Tom's quotes here and elsewhere are from King Lear. Particularly interesting is the "Through the sharp Hawthorne, blow the winds" quote, which is only Edgar's second line as Tom in King Lear (Act 3, Scene 4) [TF]
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PAGE 22
Panel 4 Freddie "opened the door to Hell, and later, to Heaven." Is Freddie opening the door to Hell when he sees the opening to Rut 7, Subgrid 0, etc.? [RM]
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