Wednesday, April 18, 2007

The Invisibles Vol. 2 #11: 'American Death Camp: Part 1: Counting to None'

This is an odd issue, and arc in general. A central theme of the series is the fallacy of individual identity, and the lack of distinction between the two sides in this war. So, on a thematic level, this is working at the heart of the series, but the constant succession of identities and cover stories becomes exhausting. I think that’s the intention, to baffle the reader in the same way that Boy is baffled, but it’s a tough arc to deal with....

I've taken down my posts on The Invisibles because they're all coming out in book form. The book, Our Sentence is Up, features revised and expanded versions of each blog post, covering every issue of The Invisibles, plus an extensive interview with Morrison himself. Visit your local comic store and order a copy now!

1 comment:

David Golding said...

The 64 letter alphabet is a nonsense that I've always felt a bit uncomfortable with. Here's a linguist's take. Put another way, this seems more suited to the idealist magical world of Alan Moore than the chaos magical world of Morrison.

Of course this all started way back in 1.19, with the demon Eybeesee-dee-ee-eff-geeaitcheye-jai-kayell-emenn-ohpeequeue-are-ess-tee-youveedouble-you-ex-wyezed, who sets limits on the possible thoughts of English-speakers. You talk about new possibilities of expression with a bigger alphabet, but even ignoring Goofy's objections, you could always simply learn Greek or Japanese. In fact, I sometimes think this whole thread is a joke about the English-centrism of DC and Marvel comics, which like to keep foreign language translated inside angle brackets and routinely use foreign languages as if they were a secret extra alphabet no one knew.

On the other hand, I do believe in the possibility of a sound that is a human off switch. Who knows how we've been programmed?