The Sopranos: Top Ten Episodes

By way of summarizing the series, I’m going to go through my top ten Sopranos episodes. It’s a lot tougher to do that with this show than with a lot of others, say Buffy or even Six Feet Under, since every episode is at such a consistently high level, and the show doesn’t usually use the build to a big mythology/finale episode structure of a lot of series. Every episode is so good that it’s only the weaker ones that stand out. But, there’s still better and worse episodes, and I shall delve into them.

Notably, there are no season one episodes. A lot of people will tell you season one is the show’s best season, and it is fantastic, but I don’t think it’s as layered and complex as the later years. Looking at that season now, none of the characters are as developed as they are in the later years. Adrianna is just a pretty girl, Chase didn’t know at this point what she’d become, and the same is true of Paulie and Pussy. From a plot level, it’s probably the tightest season, but it’s also the most “TV” in the sense that it’s got more obvious standalone stories and a clear arc throughout the season.

While the later seasons are messier, they feel more real and more character centered. It’s the character hooks that make the series so wonderful, and that’s the reason that season five is my favorite season of the entire series. There, they used less serial plotting than in the previous seasons, instead focusing in depth on one or two characters each episode. This meant that each episode gave us a ton of development and much to ponder and discuss.

Also, I watched the first four seasons on DVD, then watched the fifth and sixth as they aired. So, it’s harder for me to separate those early seasons into individual episodes, they all sort of bleed together, while the latter are separated in my mind. I’d stand by these picks regardless, but it’s possible if I’d watched those earlier seasons separately, they’d be more distinguished.

Anyway, on to the top ten, in chronological order…

D-Girl (2x07) – This episode is the culmination of Christopher’s first flirtation with the film business, putting him and Pussy at a crossroads between serving Tony and pursing their own best interest. I loved Christopher’s interest in film because it was a dream, a way out of the world. In him and Adrianna, I always saw hope, the chance to escape this world and not become like Tony. This episode plays that conflict, for a moment it seems that he can be successful and move on to something better, but, as with the Vito storyline, he finds out that it’s tough to play by civilian rules, to actually have to work for what you want, not just get it. It’s a prescient episode because it contains all the central themes of season six, the way that these people will give up what they really want for the easy life of the mafia.

We not only get this, we also get some of the most emotional scenes in the series, as Pussy is forced to restore AJ’s faith in his father even as he’s betraying him to the FBI. The best scene is Pussy upstairs in the bathroom, crying, aware that he will either have to leave this world or eventually die. On top of this, we get some really funny stuff with Jon Favreau, one of the few celebrity playing themselves cameos that doesn’t feel self indulgent or too inside.



Funhouse (2x13) – There’s a lot of good stuff in season two, the fantastic Robert Patrick arc, Christopher’s acting class, but this episode’s surreal journey to inevitability is the moment when the series established its rich dream mythology that would infuriate some fans and enrapture others, like myself. I love that they spend so much time with the weird dreams as a device to get Tony to face what he already knows, that Pussy is working for the feds. It’s crazy, exciting stuff with some of the series best visual moments.

And then we get the sad resolution of Pussy’s story as he’s gunned down and dumped in the ocean. This is a major turning point for Tony, and the series as a whole. We’d seen Tony kill before, but to kill a friend? It’s cast a shadow over the entire series, echoed in this season’s “Remember When.”



Pine Barrens (3x11) – If this episode wasn’t so good, I’d be mad it even existed because it’s led to five years of people asking when the Russian’s coming back. To that, I can only say you’re an idiot. People who consider the Russian a loose end completely miss the point, it’s like saying Pulp Fiction sucked because we never found out what was in the briefcase. The entire point of the character was the uncertainty of whether he was dead or alive, a menace out in the forest. To resolve that would strip the episode of a lot of its power, and particularly three seasons later, it’s not going to happen. Reading some online postings, you’d think it was satire, but people apparently really are furious he hasn’t come back and even spinning elaborate theories that involve the Russian coming back for the final episodes. Let it go.

Anyway, that aside, this is a brilliant episode. It’s the show’s funniest, as we witness Chris and Paulie go through all kinds of indignities in the woods, eating ketchup packets and making shoes out of rubber. Visually, it’s one of the show’s best, with the gorgeous snowscapes and seemingly endless woods. If nothing else, this episode is testament to the fact that the show can be incredibly funny when it wants to be.



Amour Fou (3x12) – The resolution of the Gloria Trillo arc is fantastic stuff, tying the season back to Tony’s now absent mother. While I’m obviously not happy that Nancy Marchand died, losing the character when they did worked in the show’s favor. They had pretty much exhausted Livia herself by the end of the second season and she becomes more interesting as a specter hanging over everyone. In this episode, Tony finally realizes the similarities between Gloria and Livia and, in an incredible, intense scene, leaves her. Earlier in the episode, we also get the great scene where Gloria drives Carmela home from the car dealership. The show can do tension like no other, and this episode was full of it. While I like the mob stuff, it’s really the personal drama that interests me, and where normally we’d get the season’s death in the penultimate episode, here we get the death of a relationship.



Whitecaps (4x13) – The long simmering drama surrounding Tony and Carmela’s marriage comes to a head here, as she finally rejects him and his philandering. The episode is full of incredible scenes between the two of them, moments that were building for four years and finally come spilling out here. Falco and Gandolfini have never been better. The episode is the series’ longest, at 75 minutes, and that extra time helps give things an epic scope as they march towards the separation, taking the family’s broken dreams in their wake, and setting up the brilliance of season five.




Irregular Around the Margins (5x05) – A brilliant episode at the time, and in retrospect, the critical turning point in Tony and Christopher’s relationship. This is what inspires Cleaver and starts the rift that will eventually lead to Christopher’s death. That accident is a replication of what happens here. Adrianna’s arc over the last couple of seasons was some of the best stuff the show ever did and this episode takes it to emotional, excruciating places. One thing you won’t see on another show, probably ever, is a character getting IBS, but they went there and it provided the impetus for Tony and Adrianna’s flirtation. There’s so much tension here, so much pettiness among the crew. I love the way their pettiness threatens to spill over into violence.




Long Term Parking (5x12) – Adrianna’s murder was something the series could never come back from. Writing abut the first part of season six, I said that the show had lost something when she died, the hope that maybe someone could get out and live a better life. When she died, that possibility disappeared. But, that was the whole point. As we see in season six, her death has forced everyone to either commit to the life or die. Those are the only options.

What happens here destroys Tony and Christopher’s relationship, largely because of Christopher’s own weakness. In a devastating scene, he is all set to run away with Adrianna, or at least I think he is, until he sees a white trash family at a gas station. Faced with the possibility of living a normal life, he decides to turn Adrianna over to Tony and Silvio, who kill her in the woods. The tension of this episode comes from the juxtaposition of the inevitable ending and the glimmer of hope we cling on to. Even when she’s in the car, I’m hoping that maybe they weren’t lying, that she’s off to a new life somewhere. But, she’s not and by episode’s end, she’s dead



Join the Club (6x02) – I love the series’ forays into metaphysical weirdness, and few were more satisfying than this trip to a parallel universe where Tony becomes Kevin Finnerty, businessman. The basic conceit of this episode, a man who switches briefcases and becomes someone else, is fascinating and could be a feature right there, but wrapped up in what we know about Tony, it becomes an exciting way to view the man he could have been. Few episode endings are as haunting as Tony sitting alone in his hotel room, looking out at the revolving lighthouse as Moby plays.

On top of that, we get the phenomenal hospital scenes, a showcase for Edie Falco. And, the episode’s importance to the series as a whole was confirmed during Tony’s peyote trip, at which point he realizes that there are other world than just this one. Did he remember the Kevin Finnerty experience in that moment? I think he did. The intensity and power of this episode wasn’t matched until the next episode on the top ten list.




Walk Like a Man (6x17) – Before this episode, we’d been in something of a holding pattern for eight or nine episodes. There were great moments, but there wasn’t any sense of urgency. I was thinking that the show would end in a leisurely manner, maybe some people would die, but things would go on as they always had. Then this episode happened and everything changed. As you’ve probably gathered, I’m a big Christopher fan and this is the episode that essentially seals his fate. He has struggled to be what Tony wants him to be, but he just can’t do it. If he’s with them and drinking, then he’s a disgrace, if he’s not, he’s also letting Tony down. It’s a conundrum and there really is no answer. There’s so many brilliant scenes with him here, including the shocking death of JT. Chris is going off the rails and it’s pretty clear he doesn’t have long to live by the end.

At the same time, we get the first major focus on AJ, who will come to dominate the rest of the season. He’s drawn into the world of the mob and for a moment it seems like he will follow his path. The happy family tableau at the end of the episode is all the more striking for the fact that after this, they can never be together in the same way again.



Kennedy and Heidi (6x18) – Any episode of this final run could easily be on this list, but I went with “Kennedy” for the ambition and sheer audacity of making an entire episode about Tony trying to make other people feel that Christopher’s death was a good thing. The pageantry of mourning seems so hollow to him, and we’re placed right there, disregarding common human decency, sadness at Chris’s death, to instead share Tony’s detached view. There’s not much emotion at Christopher’s death, that came in the previous episode, this is all about Tony and his struggle.

The peyote trip is the capper, as Tony tries to relive his Kevin Finnerty existence and winds up stumbling dazed through a casino, a virtual zombie. I love the way they depicted the trip, a strange emotional capper to a really surprising journey. It’s a fantastic hour that shows the series is much more than just a mob story.



Again, “The Second Coming” and “The Blue Comet” could both easily have made it on the list, but I wanted to give some variety. Perhaps I’m just enchanted by the new, but those episodes seemed as good as anything the show has ever done. Either way, hopefully the series finale will find a place on the list and be as strong as the past few episodes have been.

The Sopranos - 'The Blue Comet' (6x20)

“The Blue Comet” is an interesting episode because it’s simultaneously exactly what you’d expect and totally unexpected. After Tony was shot I concluded that the show was not likely to go out with a bang, more likely we’d see Tony fade away, life go on. After the slow fade of last season’s finale, and even through the first couple of episodes of this season, I was still feeling that way, but starting with “Walk Like a Man,” everything changed and since that episode, we’ve been on a march to this point, with everything falling apart, to the point that this episode leaves Tony alone in a safehouse, all his close friends dead, separated from his family. It’s an apocalyptic episode and another masterpiece from Chase and his team.

The show has teased a New York/New Jersey war for a long time, from Tony’s betrayal of Johnny Sack in “Whitecaps” to the near war in last season’s “Kaisha,” and after the buildup last week, I was hoping that he wouldn’t stop things before they started again. This entire season has had a feeling of dread, and this episode took it to almost unbearable levels. The opening scene, with Silvio murdering Burt Gervasi set up that this was going to be a big episode, though I was a bit unclear who he was murdering.

Being near the end of a series makes every threat a bit more real. Last season, you’d never have thought that Phil really might take out the top guys in Tony’s crew, now, it’s a real possibility, and as Bobby walked into that train store, he was already dead, it was just about waiting for it to happen. Things were so bad after Silvio died that I legitimately thought Tony might go.

On a thematic level, the episode integrates a lot of things that have been going on under the surface for a while. Phil says that he needs to take out Tony Soprano’s “glorified crew” because they don’t really believe in the mythology of the mafia. It is the ritual that makes them more than gangsters, the ritual is the reason Phil spent time in prison, and if that’s meaningless, then so is his time in prison. That’s also why Tony isn’t a “real” gangster, Phil mentions his lack of jail time here and shut Tony down with it last episode with his already classic speech about compromising.

The entire show has been about Tony’s inability to live up to his father and cinema’s image of what a mobster should be. Now, Phil cracks on his team, marveling at the fact that Bobby is one of the top three guys. After the death of Sil and Bobby, Paulie is Tony’s only ally, and he’s constantly shown himself to be selfish, oblivious to the needs of others. Tony is left with basically no one, sitting alone in a room, holding a machine gun.

It’s almost surreal to have these murders actually happening. While I think Chase needed to pay off all this buildup, I do think it’s a bit of a resignation to go down this road. I had come to terms with the fact that the show wasn’t going to have a big ending, and it’s a surprise to see this happen. I would have liked to see Chase screw with people one final time and throw out a big dream sequence or something like that at the close, but this payoff is certainly better than something like “Kaisha.”

The dissolution of Tony’s crew fits with one of the central themes of the series, the decline of the mafia. Even if Tony survives and either kills Phil or negotiates a peace settlement, he’s got no one left. All his successors are dead. It’s just a bunch of random thugs left, no one to carry the legacy. Can Tony run things like this, how will it work? The only person I could see stepping up to follow him would be Meadow, but I don’t think protocol would allow that.

On a familial level, we see Tony pushing away from him. He’s too much of a target, and now the only way to protect his family is to leave them. It felt final when they left the house, like they’ll never be back there. I do like the implications of him abandoning his suburban mansion to go back to an old neighborhood style house.

This episode also sees AJ fail another test. I’m perhaps most curious to see how his story resolves. He seems completely incapable of dealing with the world, will this latest outburst from Tony get him back on track or push him completely away? His arc this season has been phenomenal, here we see Tony finally treating AJ like his parents treated him, harsh, stripping him of his autonomy. He clearly blames Carmela for what happened to him and he’s trying to reverse some of that now.

This comes up in the fantastic Melfi scene, where she finishes his sentences as he goes through a rote list of complaints. She’s so cold there, I was fearing for her. Tony respects her too much to hurt her, but he is hurt by her abandonment of him at such a low point. It is questionable of her to dump him so suddenly, but that study clearly pointed out what was always apparent, that her work was helping him be a better criminal. Does someone like Tony deserve to be helped? Wouldn’t ‘progress’ only make him worse? Melfi never seemed to think that she could save him, and she must have known that much of what she said led to violence. I always thought she was complicit in that, maybe she didn’t realize how much she was until Elliot told her.

I’m guessing that’s the last time we’ll see Melfi, barring some kind of closing montage with all the characters, and it’s a great way to go out. She realizes that her work isn’t going anywhere, and that by treating him, she is in some ways complicit in what he’s doing. She tried to help him, but he wound up saying the same things and not facing up to the basic morality of his life. Unable to do that, she has a right to let him go.

The scene with Janice and Bobby’s kids was heartbreaking because Janice wasn’t reacting how we’d expect her to. It was just quiet sadness, driving home that for all the over the top cool of his murder, what’s left is three kids who will be raised by someone who will resent them and hurt them. Bobby’s kids in particular will be scarred by these next few years. We’ve already seen Janice turning into her mother in “Soprano Home Movies,” this will only make things worse.

While that scene really got to me, the deaths themselves were curiously lacking in emotion. I think it’s because we were so aware of the impending death, it was almost a relief when it happened. Particularly in Bobby’s scene, the minute he walked into train shop, I knew he was gone, and it was excruciating sitting there, wondering when it would come. Christopher’s death was like that as well, he was on such a downward spiral, the death felt like an inevitability, not a surprise. There were moments of sadness surrounding all the deaths, but never in the traditional sappy way most TV shows do it.

Perhaps the best thing I can say about this episode is that it feels like a second to last episode. There’s a lot still up in the air, but this was the 84th piece of an 85 piece story. Ever since “Walk Like a Man,” the show has been as good as anything to ever air on TV or in the movies. It’s incredibly tense and perfectly focused on what matters. It’s hard to believe, but AJ has become one of the best characters on the show and Tony remains intensely fascinating. I really can’t wait to see what Chase does with the final chapter.

All Star Superman #2: 'Superman's Forbidden Room'

After reading three issues, what strikes me most about the series is the way Grant simultaneously manages to make it goofy fun and smart and emotional, all at the same time. It’s largely because he’s never condescending or giving a wink to the audience, he loves this material in all its ridiculousness and that makes it infectious. We get just as caught up in the world and totally believe in it.

One of the funniest running gags in the series is the fact that Lois just won’t believe that Superman is Clark Kent. It was always hard to buy that people wouldn’t recognize the similarity between the two characters, and you’d think playing off that would make it more believable. So, it’s ironic that her total disbelief actually makes you believe people could buy them as separate people. His acting as Clark so thoroughly sells people on this persona that it seems like there’s no way they could be the same.

I love Quitely’s Lois, you usually don’t think of Quitely’s people as being pretty, but she is, in a really modern way. I think there’s a tendency to stick to classic designs for these characters, but the update on Lois works great. I also really like the way he dresses her, very stylish clothes. Morrison and Quitely always place great emphasis on style and glamour, we saw it in New X-Men and we see it again here. There’s not much you can do with Superman’s outfit, but Quitely runs with it on the characters he can design.

I like how Superman walks into the Fortress with the greeting “Afternoon, robots.” Throughout the issue, we get the sense that Superman really enjoys showing Lois all his stuff, he’s proud of what he’s done and is happy to share it with someone. I particularly like the moment where he brings her the flowers from Alpha Centauri.

Superman describes the Fortress as a time capsule, capturing “how it felt to live at the dawn of the age of superheroes.” Morrison’s best superhero work taps into our own feelings about the future. In X-Men or Flex Mentallo, superheroes are presented as the next step in human evolution, a guide to move humanity forward. That concept is made literal here, with Superman offering this place as a guide and memorial of what humanity is and could be. It’s notable that so far in the series, Superman hasn’t done any violence, he’s just helped people.

I love the gritty deconstructionist superhero work Alan Moore did, and I’ve always been annoyed when he said stuff like all superhero books since are based on one bad mood he had twenty years ago. But, reading this book shows that you can do mature, smart superhero books without resorting to violence and deconstruction. This is just a straight ahead embrace of the Superman myth, that this is a guy who offers humanity a vision of what they could be, and our goal is to try to live up to that, to reach his level.

I had read that the series consisted entirely of standalones, and that’s true to some extent, but the overarching Superman is dying thread provides a great structural backbone and urgency to the tales. In this case, the entire tension of the issues comes from the fact that Superman can’t tell Lois what’s going on with him, leading to her paranoia. Why doesn’t he just come out and say it? I feel like it’s largely because he doesn’t want to admit it, that he has flaws, that he is, on some level human. Lois says she doesn’t want to believe that a part of him could be Clark Kent. So, one of the central questions of the series seems to be, if Superman is everything humanity could ever hope to be, what does it mean that he too is flawed?

The issue ends with Superman giving Lois the super serum, setting up the next issue. I like the way the issues flow into each other, so that even if they are essentially standalone tales, things seem to build and flow into each other. This issue also sets up some interesting future stories, during Lois’s encounter with the Unknown Superman. Some of the future Superman stuff seems like a retread of what Morrison did during JLA, but it was great then, so it’s ok to bring it back.

So, this issue works as a great fusion of crazy silver age fun with some real emotional stuff. The sequence where Lois’s typing is intercut with Superman looking at himself in the mirror reaches a real emotional place, and the ending is great. I just love spending time with Morrison’s Superman, he’s the coolest guy around, and I guess that’s the point.

All Star Superman #1: 'Faster'

Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely have arguably the best partnership in the history of comics, perfectly complimenting each other and producing consistently brilliant comics. Coming off the amazing We3, they dove into All Star Superman. I have to say, I wasn’t thrilled to hear that Quitely would be spending two years drawing the adventures of Superman. I’m glad that he’s working with Morrison, but the amount of time it takes Quitely to draw means each project he does must be amazing to justify the time spent. He is a precious resource and should not be wasted.

After two issues, my initial reluctance to the project has largely dissipated. While I’d still prefer to see them doing something original, this is a fantastic book, fun, exciting and the only book I’ve read that really understands Superman and is able to make him work in stories. The very nature of the character makes it nigh impossible to do ordinary stories with him. You can deconstruct him, as in Miracleman, mythologize him, as in Supreme, but is it possible to just do straight up Superman stories? Here, Morrison proves that it is, managing to fuse massive stories and personal drama to create something really special.

Morrison has previously written Superman during his run on JLA, and there he treated the character as the idol of all the superheroes, the model they aspire to, a pure, goodhearted true hero. The entire series was about treating the heroes as gods, battling the largest foes on an intergalactic stage. That made for some great storylines, but only in the stories of the lower level heroes did we get any really meaningful character development. Here, Morrison manages to make Superman a viable character, and the end of the first issue sets him off on a potentially very interesting arc.

The issue begins with a page that almost has to be read as a big middle finger to the Brian Bendis style endless retreading of a hero’s origin story. We all know the Superman myth, do we need to spend seven months getting off Krypton? While I liked Bendis’s take on Ultimate Spider-Man, in fact, the extended origin is easily the best arc in the book’s run, I love the jump right into the action style that Morrison takes. The All Star label is perfect for him because it allows him to pick all the best elements of the mythology, what people know about the character, and leave behind the excessive complication that can come from long term continuity. I really do feel this is a book you could confidently show a new reader, certainly a better take on the mythos than the generally unsuccessful Superman Returns.

So, Superman’s origin’s wrapped up in a page and we’re introduced to the man himself in a glorious two page spread. A lot of what makes Quitely’s Superman work is the facial expressions, you get the sense this is a guy who’s just on an entirely different mental plane than everyone else, he just loves what he does, and that’s great to see. I’ve frequently said that one of the primary differences between Moore and Morrison is that when Moore sets out to make a tribute to Silver Age comics, he tries to literally replicate them in all their datedness, what Morrison tries to do is replicate the impact they had on him as a child, recapture that pure excitement of seeing heroes in action in crazy universes. Moore doesn’t have the same love for this material that Morrison does, and in every page of this book, you can see his glee at having the chance to write Superman.

I love the odd look of green haired lady who speaks about Superman’s progress. I’m not sure who she is, but it doesn’t matter. I think that’s one of the great things about this book, I’m not that familiar with the Superman mythos, but I can still appreciate the vast weirdness of everything that’s happening. We know about the man himself, and that’s enough.

Morrison plays with the repeat conventions of superhero stories, having Lois write the headlines before they happen. They have that much confidence in Superman. A similar concept occurs in Luthor’s operation of the machine, sending all his directions to the sun nine minutes ahead of time. Luthor’s mission is to kill Superman, and he realizes that you can’t do that in the present, what he does to Superman here is more subtle, overcharging him to take away his immortality.

Superman’s appearance in the ship, saying “Not if I can help it” is another great moment. Quitely renders him as a guy who’s totally confident, he knows he can beat the exploding man, he’s just that powerful. That power is what makes it nearly impossible to write compelling Superman stories. This opening sequence isn’t tense in the traditional sense because we know that Superman will win, Lois has already written the headline.

By bringing in Superman’s imminent death, we change the nature of the stories. He’s forced to reassess his role in the world, he’s no longer above humanity, he too will eventually join them in death. I’m guessing that much of this arc will be about Superman becoming more human as a result of his imminent mortality. This is all told to us in a visually dazzling manner, with the Technicolor dreamcoat wearing Doctor Quantam operating in a cool floating blood void. What Quantum makes clear is that Superman is as important as an idea as he is as a man. He inspired Quantum to work harder because he wants to prepare for what the world would have to be without Superman.

One of Morrison’s central thematic ideas is that superheroes are the blueprint for our future. As we evolve, they are the myth we will turn to to understand our new abilities, and Superman is the ultimate model for humanity, what we one day hope we can be. We saw this at the end of Morrison’s JLA run, in the World War III arc, and also in Flex Mentallo. The logical end of this series would be for Superman to die, but in having lived, create a world where everyone can be like him.

Morrison’s Clark Kent is a guy who’s having fun pulling one over on the world, presenting this jokey parody of what he thinks humans are. Reading this page, it is hard to believe that he’s Superman, and the intercutting of him saving the kid with Clark’s goofiness is great.

Things end with Clark telling Lois he’s Superman, a revelation that’s not that powerful because we didn’t know if she already knew this. But, it’s an essential moment of the Superman mythos, and allows Morrison to go in a more personal direction for the next issue. I think Morrison’s goal with the series is to do the greatest hits of the mythos, create a twelve issue series that tells you everything you need to know about Superman, and this moment is a big part of that.

So, I was very impressed by this first issue. It makes Superman work, and that’s not an easy thing to do. The character feels mythic, but still human and accessible. Quitely’s art is phenomenal, and together, the two of them become something so much more. I go back on who the best artist in comics is, Quitely or JH Williams. The most reliable answer is the one I’ve read most recently. JH has incredible versatility, but Quitely has a singular elegance and emotion. We shouldn’t have to choose, and luckily they both spend most of their time working with Morrison and Moore, so we get the best writers and best artists creating the best comics.

!!! @ Studio B

I go to a lot of shows and most of them are entertaining enough, but a lot of the time, the audience seems disinterested in the goings on, standing in place and barely getting involved with what's going on. It's annoying to have more people taking pictures than getting into music. So, it was a relief to go to !!! and find a band that put on an incredible, high energy show, and an audience that was totally into it right from the start.

Setlist:
Myth Takes//All My Heroes Are Weirdos//Pardon My Freedom//Dear Can//A New Name//Yadnus//Must Be The Moon//Coke//Heart of Hearts//Intensify

The show opened with 'Myth Takes,' then kicked into high gear with 'All My Heroes Are Weirdos.' After the incendiary opening of the song, they abruptly cut for a moment, then brought things back. At this point, the audience was going nuts, the entire center of the floor was moving and dancing. I got shoved around in there, and it was a lot of fun to just jump around and get really into the show. I haven't seen this level of enthusiasm at a show since my younger days when I'd go to ska punk shows from bands like Goldfinger and Reel Big Fish. There, the show seemed to be an excuse to go and push people around. Here, there was the same level of energy, but it was less violent. People were just really into it.

After the first couple of songs, I was covered in sweat, most of it not my own, and wasn't sure if people would be able to keep going at this level for the entire show. I'm only really familiar with their new album, Myth Takes, so some of the songs in the middle bled together, until they got to the new stuff. But, the energy was so high, it didn't really matter. I love that they didn't play any slow songs or spend a long time talking, it was just consistently up tempo dance songs.

The highlight of the show was 'Weirdos' just because the crowd had so much energy, but 'Must Be the Moon' was pretty close. That's their best song, and they tore it up. There was a song, I believe it was 'Coke,' that went into a rave/trance style, and that worked great too. 'Heart of Hearts' was another great performance, featuring a crazy stage dive by their backup singer.

I'd heard that !!! were a band whose live shows far outdid their recorded work, and I found that hard to believe after listening to Myth Takes, but after seeing this concert, it's definitely true. There would be no way to capture the energy of what was happening on record, the experience was as much being a part of the crowd as it was about their playing. They were great, and Nic Offer had some fun rock star posturing, but they didn't any frills, the music alone was enough to make this a great show. It was really fun to go to a show where the crowd got completely absorbed, and at the end, I was almost relieved there wasn't an encore since there was really nowhere left to go.

Crusade: 'The Path of Sorrows' and 'Appearances and Other Deceits' (1x12-1x13)

The series comes to an end with its best episode and a decent one. 'The Path of Sorrows' is the first episode that really hints at a larger world of possibility within the show, an overarching narrative that extends beyond standalone episodes. The show always had elements of that, since it drew on the mythology built up over five years of Babylon 5. That's the show's greatest asset in a lot of respects, we know the details of the Shadows and the Psi Corps, and we can understand references that would just be cryptic babble on other sci-fi shows.

A work like Babylon 5 almost demands a plethora of spinoffs and ancillary material since the universe is so richly detailed. Right from the first episode, JMS seemed to know everything that was going on with the characters and their universe, and over the course of the five years, we learned a wealth of material. I know more about the history of the Centauri Republic than I do about a lot of real nations.

But, the fully developed nature of the universe can present difficulty when making a spinoff. How much can he rely on what already exists, and how much should be new, so that new viewers can pick up the show? Ultimately, I think he finds a workable balance, new viewers could easily watch this and not miss anything. Yet, as someone who's watched B5, I did find myself wishing for more ties to the mother show.

But, before getting into musings on the series as a whole, let me go through these last two episodes. 'Sorrows' wasn't quite at the level of 'Signs and Portents' in terms of redefining what the series could do, but it did give us some much appreciated character background and set up what would likely have been a major theme of the series, the search for forgiveness. All the characters here have some bad deeds in their background, something they need to atone for, and the creature they find tries to help them come to terms with those past trangressions. The episode reminded me a bit of the Firefly episode where we flashback to where all the characters were before they came to the ship. That was a great episode, the brief snippets told us all we needed to know in a more efficient way than Lost's neverending flashback parade.

I liked the way they used the text captions to communicate the creature's pure feeling in a way that couldn't be represented by speech. It reinforces the idea that this thing is just giving the people what they want, like the cave in Empire Strikes Back, you only see what you bring with you. My favorite flashback was Mathison's, which gave us a glimpse of the telepath war. That's a piece of history we skipped over and it was great to fill it in. I would have loved to see a Lyta Alexander cameo, or at least mention, but what we got was great. Galen and Gideon's flashback were a bit more expected, but still well done. In general, I love devices like this, that force the characters to assess themselves in some way. Buffy's 'gimmick' episodes were all on some level about forcing the characters to examine themselves, be it in dreams, music or conversations with dead people. Taking the characters to a more subjective mental place is a great way to get to know them better, to understand the facade they present to the world.

'Appearances' was a less successful episode, one that, while entertaining, contains a lot of JMS's consistent writing problems. For one, the episode didn't have much tension. No one we actually knew was infected, and it was fairly obvious they'd find a way to resolve things in an easy way. That's because JMS almost always gives his characters, at least the heroes, an easy way out. People like Sheridan and Gideon always find some trick or tactic that will let them save the day without hurting anyone. Only occasionally will he force characters to make hard choices, and those are the most memorable moments of the series, the Londo arc or even the standalone in B5's first season where the kid dies. That was a bold call, this is the obvious ending. Because it's so easy, we don't get any satisfaction from the victory. It just goes by as expected. It would have been a more powerful ending to have to kill all the infected people to save the ship.

Another thing that bothered me about this episode was the use of the guy who played Neroon on B5. He looked similar and talked the same way, how can we buy him as a different character? This problem cropped up on B5 too, when they used Wayne Alexander in countless roles. That's fine if he's random alien every week, but once he played Lorien, he became too recognizable to be believable in a different role. I can understand wanting to be loyal to your actors, but it was distracting.

The biggest problem with this episode, and countless others, is that it's tough to make the audience get invested in a standalone hour of TV. The thing I love about the medium is the possibility to tell massive stories, developing characters' lives over years and years. That's what JMS did in the later years of Babylon 5, and even though you do need to set the groundwork, it's possible to have arcs right from the first year. The Sopranos managed to keep running plots going over the first season, and even if there were more standalone stories, they didn't feel as disconnected as these do. JMS should have learned from the first year of B5, that standalones just don't work as well. Even if you're doing a five year arc, put a mini arc in the front of the series to hook people.

Ultimately, the series, while entertaining, is futile viewing. It doesn't lead anywhere, and the characters don't go through much growth. While it's more rewarding on an episode by episode basis than early B5, that doesn't make it particularly worthwhile. I thought Dureena was a great character, and Galen had a lot of potential, but that's pretty much all the show was, potential. It works best as a dessert after B5, giving you a final jaunt through the universe before moving on.

That said, the Lost Tales film could change that. Some of the elements here will likely return there, and maybe that film will tie this series closer to the mythology. I'm eager to see Galen back, and I'd love to see Dureena or Gideon appear in a future film. Though, there's a bunch of B5 characters I'd prefer to see first.

B5 succeeded because of its scope, watching all the pieces of this elaborately constructed narrative fall into place. It was never a show that was about the moment, it was all about the big picture. Yet, with Crusade, all we have is moments, and that's not enough to satisfy.

Next up, I'll finally reach the end of the Babylon 5 universe, with Legend of the Rangers, leaving me all caught up for the imminent arrival of new material. Look for that review soon.

Summer Movie Preview 2007

You may say, the three biggest films of summer have already been released, isn't it a little late for a preview? Well, yes, but I forgot about it and didn't realize until yesterday that I should do one, so here it is: the 2007 Summer Movie Preview.

May 4
Spider-Man 3 - I saw this and it was alright. The script had too many elements to cohere into a satisfying whole, but I still think it was a stronger film than the first one, and some of the odd emo Spider-Man stuff worked well. If they had cut out Sandman, it would have been a much stronger and tighter film. I would have also liked more Gwen Stacey since Bryce Dallas Howard was really hot and had a great energy, certainly more than Kirsten Dunst, who should only act in Sofia Coppola films.

Away From Her - Julie Christie always does interesting stuff, and Sarah Polley's been great at choosing interesting projects, so her direction should be worth seeing. I don't know if I'll make it to this in the theater, but it'll certainly be DVDed.

Paris, je t'aime - Anthology films are rarely satisfying, usually the uneven nature results in you leaving not particularly satisfied. But, the talent involved here is unparalleled and from what I hear, it's worth your time for the Tom Tykwer film alone.

Civic Duty - I saw this a while back, and reviewed it for Blog Critics. While I wanted to like it for Peter Krause's sake, it's just not a very good film. It's got a totally cliched thriller video style and the characters aren't particularly likable, so it's not worth your time. Just watch Six Feet Under instead.

May 11
28 Weeks Later - Another one I've already seen. While it lacks the digital grit of the original, it's still a wonderfully constructued, tense and exciting zombie film. The score is phenomenal and it manages to keep the feel of the original without feeling like a retread. I'd be up for the threequel hinted at by this film's finale.

May 18
Fay Grim - I'm not a huge Hal Hartley fan, and I haven't seen Henry Fool, but Parker Posey as a spy in his quirky universe sounds like a perfect match. I believe this is already out on DVD, so I'll be checking it out soon. This image sold me on the film, the glove, the coat, the boots, so stylish:



Once - A modern day indie musical set to the music of The Frames? Sounds good. I love musicals, for me, film is about the fusion of visuals and music, and no genre does that on a purer level than the musical. The trailer was so good, I stopped watching it halfway through because I didn't want to spoil the film. I'll be seeing this one soon.

May 25
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End - I'm hearing mixed things, but I like Dead Man's Chest well enough. You got to the film for the Johnny Depp, and considering it's three hours, we should get plenty of that in this film. However, it's not something I'm rushing out to see, and I could see this one slipping to DVD.

Angel-A - The new Luc Besson hasn't been getting great reviews, but I've been looking forward to this one a long time. Leon is one of the greatest movies ever made, and I loved Besson's Joan of Arc, so I at least owe him a viewing on this.

The Boss of It All - New Lars Von Trier is always worth a look, though this one doesn't have me as intrigued as Manderlay or Dogville. Again, I'd guess this will get a DVD viewing down the line.

June 1
Knocked Up - Apatow's Freaks and Geeks is one of the all time great TV series and The 40 Year Old Virgin was one of the best comedies to come out of Hollywood in a long time. Rogen was great in F&G and the buzz on this one is really strong, making it a must see.

June 8
Ocean's Thirteen - Unlike a lot of people, I think Ocean's Twelve was a superior film to the original. Soderbergh may have been picking up the check, but he still had enough energy in the cinematography and editing to keep things interesting. There was no need for this film to exist, but it will probably still be fun.

June 20
Sunshine - I've been waiting for this one for a long time. Boyle's made some great films and intelligent sci-fi is always welcome. It's a top notch cast and buzz coming out of England is pretty strong. I'm curious to see how this one turns out.

August 10
Stardust - It's based on a Neil Gaiman story, and the trailer has some of the wonderful fantasy vibe of his best work. However, it also seems to have a bunch of annoying fantasy cliches. But, it's a great cast and should be worth a look.

August 17
The Invasion - This is a troubled film, but the premise is strong and the cast is great. Craig owned as Bond and Kidman has done a good job of choosing interesting, challeging projects. Hopefully this isn't just a check pick up for the two of them. Even if it is a trainwreck, there will probably be a lot of interesting stuff.

Superbad - Seth Rogen writing, Judd Apatow producing and Michael Cera starring, that is a nasty combination. Cera gave one of the all time great comedy performances as George Michael on Arrested Development and the trailer looks like it's funny and smart enough to avoid teen movie cliches. That said, the Cera film I'm really looking forward to is Juno.

So, there's a lot of interesting stuff out this month, after that, not so much. Hopefully some good indie films will turn up. I'll be working in New York so there's no longer the annoyingness of having to travel to go see an indie movie in the city. Perhaps I can finally move on from bad blockbuster movies and really embrace quality stuff in the theater.

Meeting Joss

I graduated from college yesterday, and as part of the festivities, they had a series of talks from alumni and such, including one by Joss Whedon on "The Importance of Being Keanu." His basic point with this talk was that Keanu had chosen roles that presented a specific agenda, one of nonviolent problem solving. I'm not sure how this jives with the shootouts of The Matrix and such, but he sold it well and told a bunch of interesting anecdotes about working with Keanu on Speed. I saw Keanu speak last year at a screening of A Scanner Darkly and he seemed like a smart, thoughtful guy. He said that Neo was the perfect role for Keanu because he has a kind of inhuman beauty, a perfect mix of racial characteristics to be the sort of generic ideal of humanity. So, he could serve as the BuddhaChrist in The Matrix. I'd be curious to see what Joss would say about the possible casting of Keanu as Dr. Manhattan in the Watchmen film.

After that, there was a Q&A where he talked a lot about the subjugation of women in Hollywood, similar themes as his recent Whedonesque blog posting. His points are definitely valid, and I try to bring out females who aren't defined by their relationship to men in my work. It's weird to watch people make films where all the women are girlfriends or wives.

He talked about his experience directing The Office, how they shoot double the amount they use in an episode, and will frequently try five or six different versions of a joke, and do an improv take, then use the best one. He said that Veronica Mars was the first show he was happy to have called "The next Buffy." Charmed, not so much. He also said that Battlestar Galactica was the best thing ever on TV, and The Matrix was the best movie ever. Also, The Body was the best thing he ever did.

My favorite thing he talked about was a meeting with Eliza Dushku where he asked her "Why do you keep making these shitty movies?" And, she replied they don't try to make them shitty. This was in reference to finding good roles for women, and he said that she needed to seek out the best directors and try to work with them.

This was a good event, after I walked down, and the line for signings was ridiculous, so I left and went on with my day. Later, I went over and watched some fireworks then wandered down towards this party in a tent for alumni and graduates, and who should be milling about but Joss himself.

He went over to talk to some people and I went over to my friend Vanessa and was like “It’s Joss!” So, we went over to talk to him, and talked for 15 minutes or so about a bunch of things. I asked him why he couldn’t get the Buffy movies made, considering studios are all about creating branded franchises they can go back to time after time. He said that the studios felt he could get people to work cheap because they’re his friends, and they refused to budge on the funding. He said they didn’t see a precedent for what he was trying to do, so I mentioned that perhaps the new Babylon 5 movies would do that. He hadn’t seen any of the show. During the Q&A, he said he hasn't seen Heroes and has only seen the first episode of The Sopranos, but thought it was one of the best things he'd ever seen on TV.

Vanessa asked him if he’d seen the thesis films this year, and he said no. I told him about mine, the nature of the plot and how it was inspired by him and Grant Morrison. He said that Morrison was great, the reason that he decided to write X-Men, but sometimes Grant had issues with story structure. I asked if he’d read The Invisibles, and he said that, like a lot of people, he had read some and really liked it, but never finished the series.

I asked him if he’d ever want to do an original musical, and he said that’s his dream project. He talked about how the Buffy musical was so easy to write because he tailored it to what he knew his people could do, and it’d be tougher to do something original. I told him that season six was my favorite season, and he said there was a small group of people who felt that way. I asked him if he ever thought of doing some kind of coda episode after ‘Chosen,’ but he said that the show was always going to end with the slayers being activated, because that was the thematic finale he wanted. I’d still argue that a little more character time was needed, but I guess we’re getting that with the comic. He said that by the end of season seven they knew it was time to go and were feeling a bit burnt out, but they were thinking about doing either a Faith or Slayers show, but that didn’t happen.

Then, I asked him if I could send him my thesis film to get his reaction to it and he said he could do that, but to give it to the head of the film department and say he really said yes because she gets people who want to send him 900 page fanfic. Vanessa asked him how he felt about people writing fanfic with the characters he made in his head, and he said that it was weird because they were writing about people he knew, like Willow wasn’t just Willow, it was Aly. But, he was happy that people were writing it, even if it was erotic fanfiction, since he wanted to inspire passion, and sexual passion was just as good as any other kind.

So, this was an amazing chance to talk to one of my idols one on one, and hopefully he'll send me a critique of the film at some point in the future. That would be just incredibly cool.

The Sopranos: 'The Second Coming' (6x19)

I’m running a bit behind with this review, but that’s in no way a comment on the episode’s quality. This was another amazing episode, each week I feel privileged to have work of this quality. I don’t think there’s been a run this good since Six Feet Under post Nate’s death. In each case, the death of a major character has forced the others to reevaluate their attitudes towards life. This week was just an incredible hour, as the series narrows its thematic focus for this final run.

I take issue with people who have nothing but bad things to say about the show’s last season. There were some issues with the first half of season six, but the Kevin Finnerty episodes were among the most imaginative and challenging things the show has done. After that, there was a somewhat meandering narrative, but once you’re aware of what Chase is trying to do on a thematic level, it makes a lot more sense. The entire season is about addiction, not so much to drugs, though that does figure in, rather to the lifestyle that has all these people hooked on an easy life outside the bounds of traditional work.

It’s difficult to watch the show sometimes because the characters constantly make inexplicable choices, the first time through the Vito arc, I was so frustrated when he abandoned his life up in New Hampshire to go back to Jersey. On some level, he knew he was going to be killed, but he’d rather take that fate than actually do a day’s labor. The sequence where he tries to work and gives up by 10:30 AM is both funny and deeply sad, the best demonstration of what failures these people are at working within the rules. They cannot escape this life, even if they want to, largely because everyone around them are enablers. That’s what we saw made literal in Christopher’s arc, he was unable to break out of the addiction cycle because the world he lived in required the use of substance. Yes, it’s something of a narrative dead end to show a character try to quit then relapse again and again, but it’s also realistic.

This last season has been all about puncturing the fantasies that the show unconsciously perpetuated during the earlier seasons. Much could be written about the relationship between Chase and his audience, a relationship in which each side frequently seems to hate the other, but they’re still caught up in a cycle of dependence. There’s so many attacks on the fanbase, or at least one segment of it, within the show, and Chase’s comments in the media add more. The show began as kind of a fantasy for middle aged men, that you could have a loving wife and great kids, yet still be able to sleep with anyone you want, hurt people who disagree with you and work out of a strip club. I think Chase began to recognize that people were identifying too strongly with the characters, looking at them as role models, and put a series of increasingly violent incidents in to try to break the fantasy. A notable example of this is Ralphie killing Tracee in “University.” Paulie killing Min Matrone in season four is another example, but nothing he did could break the fact that people still admired these characters.

So, he spent the first half of the season trying to show the ways their world is losing the allure it once had, as boredom sets in around Tony. This year, he’s been bringing to the fore Tony’s total lack of morality, creating a really interesting juxtaposition between our lingering affection for the character and the fact that he’s doing really awful stuff. For the first time, people really seem to be recognizing just how much of a bastard he is.

Yet, the brilliance of the show is that we always understand why he does what he does, and are still able to remain sympathetic. I generally prefer characters who are fascinating to ones who are likable in traditional ways, characters like Spike or Magneto, and Tony is one of the greatest antiheroes ever created, a mess of contradictions and lax morality.

Anyway, this episode sees Tony struggling with the aftermath of his peyote trip, and his son’s suicide trip. The first four episodes of this season were strong, but starting with “Walk Like a Man,” there’s been an intense focus on very specific themes, and it’s produced one of the best runs of the entire series. The focus has been on Tony and his two sons, AJ, his real son, and Christopher, the man he’s treated as a son and who was groomed to be his successor. Last week saw the end of Christopher’s journey, as Tony killed him. Tony remained completely unrepentant about what he did this week, enraptured more with what was going on back at home.

I love the scene where Tony talks about taking peyote with his crew. He’s always had more intelligence and intellectual curiosity than any of them. They joke about it, but don’t understand how deeply meaningful the experience was for him.

But, the core of the episode’s first half was the final steps in AJ’s descent into depression. AJ has deep issues with the world he comes from, unable to deal with all his privilege after being made aware of just how poor other people are. A lot of this ties in to what happened with Blanca, but it’s also symptomatic of the expansion of his worldview. He doesn’t fit in anywhere, making his suicide feel inevitable.

Yet, it’s still surprising. If you’d told me that Tony would kill Christopher one week and AJ would try to kill himself the next, I wouldn’t have believed you because it sounds like the kind of over the top melodramatic storytelling Chase usually avoids. However, he does it in such a way that it feels totally organic to the universe. AJ’s suicide is played cold, you observe it and can do nothing. His inability to actually do the deed is both a relief and darkly funny. Tony rescues him in a gutwrenching scene that lets us see Tony totally unguarded for perhaps the first time in the series. In this moment, he just wants AJ to live and it almost feels like we shouldn’t be watching this, it’s too intimate a moment.

The cut from the pool to AJ in the wheelchair, looking completely braindead, is one of the most powerful in the entire series. That jump tells us everything we need to know. Robert Iler has kicked up his game this season, having become essentially the second lead of the series. While the lengthy hiatuses between seasons may have hurt the series in some respects, it did give us the opportunity to see AJ go through this, he’s been brought to an age when he can have a legitimate crossroads in his life, and that’s riveting to watch.

There is no escape from the family, and AJ is the only character who seems to have faced up to the morality of what they’re doing. Meadow always seemed to be the smarter one, but in this episode we see her slipping back, dating Patrick Parisi, who may be a lawyer, but is still part of the world she belongs to. We haven’t seen much of her this season, but this development was a great way of subtly drawing her back in. We’ve always seen that she has a deep love for her family and places that above any objective moral judgments of what they do.

AJ’s suicide attempt brings up a lot of bad feelings. Tony, on some level, hates his son and feels that Carmela is the one who messed him up, made him soft. We see that come out in the Melfi scene, which also features Tony’s revelation about what he realized on the peyote, that our mothers are the bus drivers and we spend all our lives trying to get back on the bus. This is an interesting tie in to what Janice said back in “Soprano Home Movies,” that their mother was unable to accept the fact that her children were growing up and away from her. It’s a mess of trouble that is a perfect conundrum for Tony. He simultaneously hated what his mother was and hates Carmela for not being like her with AJ. And, with all his repeating of “poor you,” he’s becoming Livia.

This episode was really intense, and emotionally wrenching. The show is so tightly focused, pondering Tony’s legacy as he ends his reign. Things seem to be going to hell all around, Phil is out to get him, AJ is not doing well and Tony himself continues to burn his bridges. Two episodes out, I still have no idea how it’s going to end. Will AJ be Tony’s salvation, or just another failure? Will they actually war with New York or will it be averted yet again? Only one more week to get some answers.

Time: An Agent of Change in Fictional Reality

This was a paper I wrote for a class called "It's About Time." The class was pretty bad, but the paper assignment was write about something that involves time, so I got to do this piece. Enjoy...

In works of fiction, the passage of time can change a character’s life, and travel through time can alter the world the characters live in. However, few works examine the nature of time itself. The Invisibles by Grant Morrison and Watchmen by Alan Moore, use their fictional universes to explore the implications of the idea that time is not a uni-directional arrow, rather all times, past and present, exist simultaneously.

All works of fiction allow the viewer to experience time from a 4-D perspective, free of the linear flow of time that binds us in our real lives. The first read or viewing of a work is analogous to three-dimensional time perception. We are not aware of what will happen to the characters, and experience the work in a linear fashion, moving from beginning to end, much like we live our lives.

However, after this first viewing/reading, the reader can return to the work and view it with foreknowledge of what will happen to the characters. You can open a book to whatever page you want, or fast-forward a film to a specific moment, traveling freely though the time continuum. In doing so, you are able to experience time from a 4-D perspective, viewing all of time as one pre-existing continuum, with no past or future, just the present one chooses to experience.

There are works that deliberately alter the linear passage of time, such as the film Irreversible. In this film, events unfold backward, starting with what is chronologically the last event and eventually ending up at the earliest. Irreversible is the story of a woman who is raped, prompting her boyfriend to seek revenge. Revenge drama such as this has been the subject of countless films, however in reversing the sequence of events, director Gaspar Noe is able to alter the audience’s perception of the events that occur. The film opens with two men beating someone to death with a fire extinguisher, the brutality of the violence instantly disturbing. As we move back in time, we see the catalyst for their actions, the rape of Alex, and are able to understand why they murdered that man. But because we viewed the event out of the emotional context, we can understand that seeking revenge has only succeeded in destroying even more lives, the violence begetting more violence.

The film ends and begins with a title reading ‘Time Destroys All,’ and in the case of this film that’s certainly true. By the end (the events at the beginning) the lives of three main characters are completely shattered, a disturbing contrast from their happy, hopeful existences before these things occurred. The structure of the film encourages us to view these events outside of a traditional linear time continuum, the knowledge of what will happen in the future coloring our view of the past. Notably, though the narrative progresses backwards, there is no indication that the events occur in flashback, rather every moment is the present, we’re just shown things outside of the linear continuum.

If time destroys all, and certainly we are all headed for death eventually, the only way to overcome this destruction is to exist outside of time. Transcending the idea of time as an inevitable projection forward, we get to the idea that there is no past or future, instead all moments exist simultaneously, so that the past and future all already exist, and every moment that ever happened is happening now. This conception of time is explored in the works of two graphic novelists, Alan Moore and Grant Morrison.

It is appropriate that they have chosen the comic book as the medium in which to explore this view of time. Assuming all time exists simultaneously, the physical comic book serves a perfect representation of this. We can flip through the book and see each moment, frozen in time as a single panel, existing independently of the time progression that one experiences when reading the book. It is easy to go from the end of the book to the beginning, and travel back through time in the process. This means that even if a character dies at the end of the book, they still exist, we just flip to an earlier page and they are alive again. The reality is dependent on which moment one chooses to experience.

With The Invisibles, Morrison set out to make a series that would reveal the secrets of the universe, taking on material with a very broad scope. While working on the first volume, he had an “abduction experience,” in which he claims to have been taken outside of time and shown the nature of the universe. Morrison claimed “it was like Shakespeare’s just over there, and the dinosaurs are around the corner from him, but you can see them.” (Neighly, 241) This conception of time became central to the series’ cosmology, and Morrison used the book as a way to process the abduction experience.

Obviously, it’s impossible to verify whether this experience is a legitimate peak behind the curtain at the workings of time, a hallucination, or a story designed to build his image and sell more books. However, for the purposes of this analysis, it is useful in the context of how it influences the fictional universe he creates.

The abduction experience is the model for a sequence from the book’s second to last chapter, in which one of the characters, Jack, is taken outside of the linear time continuum. Removed from the limits of three-dimensional perception, Jack sees himself as a ‘timeworm,’ his motion represented by a trail of himselfs existing simultaneously at all moments in the past. This image is designed to simulate 4-D perception for the reader. If every moment is simultaneous, that would mean that a version of every person exists at all those moments in time, so one’s entire life could be seen on this line, a progression from childhood to adulthood to death.

The next panel depicts what Morrison claims to have seen, people from different eras of time pass each other in the same space. Essentially what these images show is one space at all times. So, we see someone from the present as well as someone from World War I and others, all represented as ‘timeworms,’ their past actions receding off into the background.

These panels also contain the crucial philosophical idea of the series, the notion that time exists to allow humanity to grow and better itself. Time is change and without the passage of time we would have no opportunity to improve ourselves. Time may destroy all things, but at the same time, it is only through the passage of time and destruction of the old that we can grow. This idea is conveyed in skewed 4-D speech, “Time is soil and for nourish larvae and grown in,” essentially humanity is in a larval state and it is only through the passage of time that we can evolve into something greater. (Morrison, 254) According to the series, the entirety of human existence is one time continuum designed to bring us to the point where we can make an evolutionary jump.

As a result, much of the series became concerned with issues surrounding time and perception, most notably the segments of volume two concerning the building of a time suit. At this point, we learn that one of the series’ main characters, Robin, has actually traveled back in time from 2012, using a timesuit constructed by Takashi, a scientist whose younger self she meets in the present. We see her in 2012, speaking to older versions of characters we know from the present, before she is sent back on her mission. They assure Robin that she will do well. Her mission is guaranteed to be a success because it has already happened.

So, in this conception of time travel, events can never be changed. Robin’s actions in our present will not alter the future because in the future they have already happened. This is different than something like The Terminator films or Back to the Future, where the use of time travel devices rewrites the present, essentially wiping out the world that the characters traveled from. In the cosmology Morrison constructed, this is not possible. Robin’s actions cannot alter the future because she is living in a future built through her actions. Since all time exists simultaneously, her actions in the past have already occurred.

This presents a question inherent in 4-D time theory. It has been a conundrum since the dawn of thought: do we have free will or our actions already decided? This is addressed in the final page of the series when Jack speaks directly to the reader refuting the entire question of free will. He says “there’s no difference between fate and free will. Here I am; put here, come here. No difference, same thing.” (Morrison, 285) Even if all of time is written, at some point, we make every choice and that means that when we pass through time, we are not following a plan, we are inventing reality with every decision. If all time is simultaneous, every action we take has already created a new world.

For Jack, the issue of free will is resolved there, but for Jon a.k.a Dr. Manhattan in Alan Moore’s Watchmen, the power of 4-D perception alienates him from a linear world. Jon was an ordinary person transformed into a god-like being through a lab accident. Jack claims that fate and free will are the same thing, yet this would not be true if one was able to vie the future events. This is what John can do, he perceives all time simultaneously, so whatever moment he’s in the time continuum, he’s aware of the actions that he and others will take in the future. This locks him into a fatalistic worldview, summed up when he says “We’re all puppets, I’m just a puppet who sees the strings,” implying that no one has choice, we’re all just playing out a predetermined sequence of events.

Forced to live life with this perspective, he grows increasingly distanced from humanity. After Kennedy’s assassination, people ask him why he didn’t stop it. They cannot understand his perception. He does not see future events in the sense of something that has not yet occurred, he sees events that have occurred already and he has no choice but to enact the role that has been laid out for him. So, the very fact that Jon knows Kennedy will be assassinated means he is powerless to stop it
The most striking representation of Jon’s perception occurs in the fourth chapter. The chapter begins after Jon flees Earth for sanctuary on Mars. He sits staring at a photograph of himself before the transformation and though the chapter takes place over only a few minutes, Jon’s perception in these moments encompasses his entire life. Staring at the photo, he returns to the moment when it was taken, not the memory of the moment, but the moment itself. At the same time he is sitting on Mars, he is a child dreaming of being a watchmaker, he’s a physicist doing an experiment and he’s in Vietnam, fighting for the army. All the moments are the same for him, an infinity of simultaneous presents. Holding the photograph he counts down in his head to the moment when the photograph will fall and he will move on. He knows it will happen because it has already happened; his life is devoted to acting out predetermined events.

The storytelling here is striking because the interweaving of different times makes the reader experience the same sense of time out of joint. The moments blend together, all of them carrying a stark inevitability. Seeing Jon walk into the reactor, we know that it will result in him being transformed, and yet are powerless to stop it. So, the reader observes these events of the past in the same way that Jon lives the present. It is this feeling of imprisonment in time that distances Jon from humanity. He is more interested in the grandeur of Mars’ landscapes, in the stunning construction that brought them to life than in the insignificant tribulations of humanity.

The frustration that one could feel interacting with Jon is apparent in chapter nine, when Laurie is taken to Mars. Jon goes to her and says that they have an appointment, essentially he has seen in the future that at this moment they will come together to talk, and as a result, he goes to Earth to find Laurie so the conversation can occur. Similarly, he already knows what they will talk about, and tells her, and she commits to not fulfilling his plan, proving him wrong. Yet, unintentionally she does end up saying exactly what he said she would, foreknowledge of what she will do does not prevent her from still doing it. Speaking with someone so distant is difficult for her, his coldness a stark contrast to her emotional vulnerability at that moment. She rails at Jon, but he coldly tells her that this is just what happens, what she was always going to do, and the implication that she has no choice in the matter is an affront to her humanity. Existing outside of the uncertainty of human existence, Jon finds it difficult to connect with ordinary people.

The end of their discussion causes a major change in Jon. Laurie breaks down upon realizing that the man who raped her mother years earlier is actually her father and in this moment, Jon realizes that though humans may be trapped in these linear patterns, the series of events that must occur to create any given person are extraordinary. He imagines all the generations of people who would have had to meet at a specific time to bring about Laurie’s conception. He concludes that each human being takes such an improbable confluence of forces to exist that they are all miracles, and it is only the fact that there are five billion miracles walking around that makes us forget this fact.

So, Manhattan takes a renewed interest in humanity, recognizing, much like Jack, that even though everything is already written, with each moment we live we still write it. That’s the essential paradox of 4-D time theory, if all time exists simultaneously, that would imply that all our decisions have already been made, yet at the same, because there is no past or future, that means that every moment is now and every decision is critical. With each moment we have the chance to choose a new future, and it is these decisions to break from the expected and do something novel that can allow someone to reinvent their own reality.

At the end of the book, a tachyon generator causes John’s perception of the future to become unclear. Tachyons are objects that travel faster than the speed of light. According to special relativity, objects moving faster than the speed of light experience time distortion, so it’s logical that a prevalence of these objects would alter Jon’s perception of the future. (Encyclopedia Britannica) As a result, for the first time in years he experiences uncertainty, and exults in the fact that he does not know what will happen to him next.

This joy gets to the core of one of the major issues concerning the idea that all time exists and we just view it in a linear fashion. If this is true, that means that were we able to view everything simultaneously, as Jon did, we would lose the mystery and uncertainty of life. Jack is taken outside of time and shown how time functions, but he is not shown his own future. When he returns to linear time, he is aware of the fallacy of temporal perception, but is not able to perceive outside of it. For Jon, the fact that he can perceive all time is a curse, he is unable to be emotionally present in any particular moment, because he is always existing simultaneously in the future and past.

Existing in this timeless state would result in an inability to grow. It is only through experience that we can change, to already possess all experience and be aware of it at once would mean being a constant being, set in a specific mode of thought, as Jon was. But is there a way to have this long form view of time and also be connected to the world, able to alter events through choices?

This question is addressed in the events surrounding John a Dreams from The Invisibles. John was a regular person living a life in the linear continuum until he encountered a timesuit and was turned into a 5-D being. What is a 5-D being? To consider this hypothetical, we must first look at Morrison’s conceptions of reality. The characters in the book are two dimensional, but we exist in a three dimensional reality, and have the power to manipulate their time, see their entire lives in one moment. So, imagining that we are in the book’s reality, which exists as a 3-D space, a 4-D being would be one who had full temporal perception and the ability to shift between moments on the continuum.

So, when Robin wears the time suit, she is able to shift from a version of herself in 2012 to a version of herself in 1988. From her perspective, time begins with her birth in 1988 and proceeds until 2012, at which point she is sent back in time to 1988 as an adult, and then lives until 1998, at which point she is thrown past the end of 3-D time in 2012 and her consciousness is raised to a new level of awareness. However, viewing things from a 4-D perspective, Robin never actually travels through time, it’s essentially that two versions of her exist from 1988 to 1998. The original, child version of her is still there, growing up, moving towards 2012, but there’s also the older version. In New Mexico in 1996, Robin sees the younger version of herself from a distance, while Robin at 8 sees the woman who she would one day become. So, it’s not like she moved to the future then came back to alter the present, it’s that she was always there.

Anyway, this 4-D perspective would afford us the luxury to view things from outside of time. What would a 5-D perspective do? According to the book, it would allow someone to alter both time and space. When Robin goes into the timesuit in 1998, she is thrown into the future, beyond time, and the suit is refracted back to the Philadelphia church, in the form of a 5-D being, which John and King Mob come across in 1993. John is taken into the suit and is missing for most of the book.

Touching the suit, he became a 5-D being, someone who exists outside the context of individual identity.
One of the critical tenets of Morrison’s philosophy is the idea that humanity is in actuality one large organism, with each human being like a cell. However, because the cells have separate identities we are unable to function at their higher level, held down by the human weakness that keeps us separate. The entire purpose of our existence on Earth, of the existence of every person who has ever lived, is to move us closer to unification into this one larger organism, moving to a mass higher consciousness. Much like our body is composed of individual cells, which work together to create the person, each human would be part of a larger global entity.

Regardless of the validity of this idea, this goal is crucial to understanding Morrison’s construction of John as a being outside of time and space. When he goes into the timesuit, his identity as an individual is destroyed and he becomes essentially an agent of progress that exists as pure consciousness. John takes on a number of guises to interact with the characters and move them to the point where they will make the decision that will lead to humanity forward. The idea is that existence is a game with an ultimate objective, and John exists as someone who can manipulate the pieces to ensure that the objective is achieved. So, John shows Jack the structure of time in the guise of the blind chessmen, and this is what allows Jack to make the leap in consciousness that ultimately contributes to the 2012 event, and at the same time, John is wearing the guise of George Harper fighting alongside Jack a year later for the same goal.

So, unlike Manhattan, John a Dreams is not a prisoner in time, instead he is an agent taking on various personalities at different points in the continuum to bring about a desired end. He can see and experience all, but it does not contain him. He shapes how events will proceed through his actions. John actually has the ability to alter the future by moving freely through 4-D space, influencing the characters to bring about a desired goal. The best metaphor is to use is that of a writer. If a gun is needed in the third act of a play, it’s easy to revise the start and place a gun on the wall in the first act. John has the ability to move through time and ensure that the gun is present beforehand so it can fire when needed.

This leads us to the question of intelligent design, something that Jon also ponders. If all time already exists, was it shaped by some higher hand to bring about the world we live in now? Is time really soil for humanity to grow and flourish in, or does it just exist, our actions essentially meaningless. For Morrison, our actions do have a higher meaning; the suffering of humanity is a necessary step to make us stronger on our journey towards the jump forward. Moore’s view, at least in Watchmen, is that humanity is subject to time and as a result, we must simply enjoy the moments that we do have, the uncertain future proving our humanity

These works of fiction both explore the scientific and philosophical questions that arise from the idea that all time is simultaneous. Through the characters, the authors are able to convey their own philosophical musings on the nature of time and humanity’s place within it. While both work within contemporary scientific paradigms, they are each more concerned with the effect of theoretical physics concepts on individual characters. By choosing to present their philosophy within the medium of serial graphic fiction, each of the writers has chosen a medium that is uniquely capable of illustrating the points they seek to illustrate, and gives the audience an idea of what it would be like to exist outside of the linear time continuum.

Crusade: 1x09-1x11

Crusade continues in much the manner as it was going, with a mix of strong and okay episodes. However, I’m starting to lose patience with it, a few arcs keep me interested, but the fact that it isn’t going anywhere does affect the viewing experience. I’d imagine it was different for first time viewers, who had gone a year without Babylon 5, an episode like ‘The Rules of the Game’ must have been positively ecstatic, at last returning to the station where it all started. However, now, I was there a couple of months ago, and while it’s nice to be back, the nostalgia factor isn’t quite enough to make all the episodes work.

‘Each Night I Dreamt of Home’ does have an ace up its sleeve in terms of nostalgia factor, the return of Doctor Stephen Franklin, whose dramatic entrance is spoiled a bit by seeing his name in the credits. Still, it’s nice to have him back even if he is stuck behind glass the entire episode. His presence brings to the fore one of the issues with the series, we know that the Drakh plague won’t actually destroy Earth, we’ve already seen Stephen twenty years in the future in ‘Sleeping in Light.’ This doesn’t kill the tension, but it’s an out for the audience, we know the happy ending is coming, it’s just a matter of getting there.

The episode itself is pretty good, particularly the climax which cuts between a space battle and Franklin’s attempt to save the other guy. That said, the Drakh still look goofy here, not matching the darkness of their appearance in the latter days of Babylon 5. That guy who stuck the keeper in Londo was a scary dude, these ones, not so much.

I want to take a second to address the uniform issue. With this viewing order, they switch frequently, and it’s baffling to me that people seem to prefer the grey and red ones to the blank uniforms. The grey and red ones don’t look good, and even if the black ones were TNT imposed, they were a good choice. Maybe I’m confused with the different episode orders and people actually like the black ones, I know I do.

Anyway, ‘Patterns of the Soul’ is up next, an episode that reunites Dureena with some more of her people and gives us a guest appearance from Brian Thompson, a.k.a The X-Files’ Alien Bounty Hunter. This episode doesn’t work so well. They try to do good work with the planets, but ultimately they wind up feeling stagy, Battlestar Galactica’s tact of going out into the woods creates more convincing alien worlds. But, I don’t think there’s one shot in the entire Babylon 5 universe that was actually taken outside the studio.

I don’t really have too much to say about this one, these episodes all sort of blend together, even moreso than early B5 did. That’s largely because the plots are very similar, go to an alien planet that might have a cure for the plague, find out they don’t, move on. That’s the problem with the series, and even if they would cure the plague in season two, we’ve still got a bunch of similar ones here.

The final episode features that aforementioned return to Babylon 5. This was a fun episode, largely because we actually get some strong character moments, for both Lochley and Gideon and for Max. Lochley and Gideon are a lot of fun together, both totally committed to the job, but secretly wanting each other. Their relationship is a lot more believable than much of what we saw on B5, and it helps to humanize both characters. I’m assuming this would have been a major thread in the series, considering Tracy Scoggins place in the opening credits.

It’s good to be back on B5, even if this does end up feeling a lost Babylon 5 episode. That’s not a bad thing though, obviously it wouldn’t work long term, but checking in for an episode is great. I’d have liked to seen Dureena off ship, but the limited cast does allow for a closer focus on the characters who are in each episode.

So, with two episodes to go, I’m not expecting any sort of resolution. The show has a lot of potential, but being cut down so early meant that none of these episodes are leading anywhere. JMS is a writer who’s all about buildup, it’s possible stuff we saw here would pay off in great, unexpected ways. Certainly I wouldn’t have expected all the elements of B5 season to come back like they did, but we’ll never know. It’s not the fault of the people making the show, but it comes off as a kind of pointless viewing experience. But, as a way to ease out of B5, it’s nice. And, perhaps the Lost Tales stuff will bring back some lost Crusade plots. The issue isn’t so much a lack of resolution, it’s that we didn’t even get to the point where there’s plot points to be resolved.

Weekend Update

A New Blog Order

Well, as you might have noticed, The Invisibles blog series has concluded. I think it was successful, I learned a lot about the series, and had a lot of fun reading it through again. I was looking up some Invisibles stuff on Google and kept finding my own posts, so hopefully it will stand as a long term resource for people reading through the series. I'm going to make an index page for easy linking. Along with the end of The Invisibles, we're approaching the end of another long term project, the Babylon 5 blog series. I've got two more on Crusade and then one on Legend of the Rangers, then that's over. And, for the first time since November, I'll have no long term blog project. What this means is I can write up more films and general stuff, get back to the way things were before 2007. I know I have some people who haven't read The Invisibles or watched B5, and all I can say is keep the RSS feed, we'll be getting some more stuff of general interest coming up.

Concerts

Part of that will be a lot more concerts. I'll be back in New York starting next week, and have a bunch of shows lined up for the next couple of weeks. I can get into a bunch of shows free due to my Blog Critics writing, so I'll be able to go to even more than I normally would. Here's my upcoming agenda...

5/31 - !!! @ Studio B
6/1 - Cansei de Ser Sexy @ Irving Plaza
6/5 - The Pipettes @ Highline Ballroom
7/1 - The Polyphonic Spree @ Warsaw
7/4 - The New Pornographers @ Battery Park
7/20 - DJ Tiesto @ Hammerstein
8/9 - Daft Punk @ Coney Island

And I'm sure there'll be a bunch more in there as stuff comes up.

Series Enders

Two series that I've blogged about here in the past have come to an end, Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars, both have fallen from my esteem this season. Veronica never actually had that much of my esteem, I watched the first two seasons on DVD, where they flowed smoothly and had enough momentum to bring me to the conclusion. But, this year I lost track of things and stopped watching around midseason. I have no particular desire to see the rest, and am not sad to see the show cancelled. Honestly, you can't say they didn't give a chance. Any show that makes it to three seasons and doesn't catch on can probably go. And, this isn't a case like Arrested Development where it got awful time slot shuffling. They put it after the highest rated show on the network and it still didn't make it.

As for Gilmore Girls, I've seen through episode 16 of the season, and will likely finish it soon. But, it just doesn't feel like the same show without the Palladinos, and as such, the show I knew ended last season. I'm one of the few people who loved season six of the show, and I'd have loved to see where the Palladinos planned to take things. Oh well, at least the show had a good run. When I do finish it up, I'll write up the last couple and give some reflections on the series as a whole.

The Invisibles: Our Sentence is Up.

May 2002: I am seventeen, a junior in high school, I buy the first Invisibles trade, Say You Want a Revolution. I read it, and buy the next one soon after. In chemistry class, I look up reviews of the series from when it was released. ‘Best Man Fall’ hooks me, this series is something special.

November 2002: I finish the series, six issues in one night. I will spend the next six months processing what I read, spreading the series around and figuring it out.

May 17, 2003: I am with my friends Brian, Jon and Jordan. We have just seen The Matrix: Reloaded, and stay up late talking about the film and how it relates to The Invisibles. I have just finished high school, just read From Hell, I am full of ideas.

November 2003: We meet again, first time I’ve seen them since going off to school. We meditate, trance. It’s the closest I’ve ever been to experiencing something genuinely magical and profound. We talk about the series and life until 5 AM. This marks the end of the series’ possession of my consciousness. I still love it, and it impacts on me, but not in the way it did for a year after finishing it.

May 17, 2007: I finish reading the series for the third time. Those final pages still have a mystery about them, I am once again awed by what Grant has done with the series.

May 19, 2007: It’s my birthday. I am twenty-two years old. In ten days, I will graduate from college. I am writing the final post in my sixty post long analysis of The Invisibles. It goes like this…

Understanding The Invisibles requires a different approach than most texts, one that I don’t think most people are prepared for. I certainly wasn’t ready for what it would do to me, the way it would dominate my thoughts. I thought of fiction as entertainment, it can inspire you, but I never thought it could change you. This one did, but it also taught me that a lot of fiction is about what you put into it. The deeper you dig, the more layers you reveal. The first time through, I had to dig deep just to understand the series, to fit all the pieces together.

The second time I read the whole series, it didn’t make as big an impact. Part of it was that I had mythologized it in my mind, built it up as the greatest thing ever, and no book could live up to that, even the greatest thing ever. That’s why I chose to blog each issue this time through, so that I would reinterrogate the series, examine the pieces that baffled me the first time, and look at it close, like a first time reader. It’s been a lot of fun to do, and I think it’s helped me get a better understanding of the series, and its relation to who I am at this moment in time.

To wrap things up, I’ll take a quick jaunt through ‘And We’re All Policemen,” the short story that follows King Mob into the supercontext. This isn’t my favorite piece of The Invisibles, it’s basically an extended Gideon Stargrave fantasy, but one that lacks the condensed cool of the ‘Entropy in the UK’ stuff.

The entire universe we see here is generated in the moments between King Mob’s embrace of Robin and his submersion into the collective reality of the supercontext. This is what he paints onto his blank canvas for the farewell to his own individuality. In ‘Arcadia,’ King Mob claimed that their goal is to make it so that everyone gets the world they want. This is what that’s all about, everyone passes to the same supercontext, but they do it in a way that’s pleasing to them.

For King Mob, that fantasy is a hyperpop sci-fi world of beautiful women who can do anything he wants, media saturated in a liberated hypersexuality, total freedom to be pop and fun. Here, the authority figures are pompous and absurd, weird stuff happens and no one particularly cares. That’s just the way things are. And, as the world ends, giant models stalk the city and the world adores him, flashbulbs bringing about an apocalypse that ushers him into the supercontext, but not before one more moment with Robin.

It’s got some fun moments, but ultimately is a bit too media saturated to be enjoyable. You spend so much time reading these captions that you never get to settle into reality. Of course, that could be a reflection of what King Mob wants, and in that respect, more power to him. If King Mob’s fantasy ends in these flashbulbs, it’s likely that what we see at the end of 3.1 is actually Jack’s entry into the supercontext, just blank, snow falling and a return to Barbelith. He doesn’t have the same shallow desires as everyone else, he just wants to return home.

That’s where all the characters end, wherever you want them to, at least until the possible Invisibles followup book Grant’s mentioned a couple of time. I’d love to see all the characters one more time, in something along the line of Sandman’s Endless Nights. That book was ultimately not that satisfying, primarily because we didn’t know the Endless that well, so it was just a bunch of short stories. Those kind of reunion projects work best with developed characters, and there’s countless people in The Invisibles I’d love to see again. I’d love to see more of Jack and Fanny making their cell, I’d love to see more with Edith, particularly between the 20s and her old age, I’d love to see some Division X, some stuff with Mason and Robin in 2009. There’s a lot of stuff there that he could fill in, and from a meta level, it’d be interesting to consider the impact of the series on the world as a whole.

I think the great difficulty with applying the series to reality is the intrusion of 9/11 into our culture. That brought about this period of conservatism and us/them logic that we’re still struggling to overcome. Look at Bush, nearly everything he says is Archon rhetoric. Doesn’t he know that there is no war, those terrorists, they’re us, and the only way to beat them is to love them and make it so they’re not our enemies anymore. Look at the other perspective and try to change things, not erase them.

Much of Morrison’s post Invisibles work is concerned with exploring the post 9/11 world. The day glo optimism of this series and Flex Mentallo is replaced by the overwhelming confusion and trauma of The Filth. But, after the tremulous odyssey through The Filth, we find out that what we have to do is take the shit and spread it on our flowers. All that cultural pain can help us grow, that’s the message that’s always been in The Invisibles. And, even if we don’t make it there by 2012, we still are moving closer to the oneness of the supercontext.

Morrison’s two major works post Invisibles are New X-Men and Seven Soldiers. New X-Men is basically The Invisibles set in the Marvel universe, with the cutting edge people guiding society into a new, better world. Jean Grey is the Marvel version of Robin, and like Robin, she merges into a larger ultradimensional entity, the Phoenix force. New X-Men shows us another group that isn’t about war, it’s about rescuing the enemy, and everything concludes with a vast attack against old world order, clearing the slate for something new.

Seven Soldiers is a work that’s dazzling in its scope and ambition. It takes a lot of the meta exploration of The Invisibles, and filters it through various aspects of the DCU. The Invisibles was critical because it set up a framework to view Morrison’s work through. The concepts of The Invisibles help us understand everything that comes after, and in general, his post Invisibles work is more ambitious and challenging than what came before. Animal Man, while great, is fairly simple in its fiction/reality dichotomy. His world is written by Morrison, and Morrison saves him in the end. In Zatanna, she breaks through to this element of reality, but it’s only one piece of a much larger canvas. Seven Soldiers is brilliant, and features some of Grant’s best writing. It continues to refine his themes, clarifying the nature of the third path between two extremes, and keeping with the parent/child issues of The Invisibles. Every generation can choose its own way.

It’s amazing to think about just how much work Grant has done. Someone like Joss Whedon did three TV series, a huge body of work, but Grant has done seven significant ongoing series, and countless other minis. He’s putting out three new books a month, and rarely repeats himself. David Lynch makes one movie every five years, and uses the same themes and settings again and again. Morrison uses similar stuff, but filters it through so many different worldviews and genres. Seven Soldiers alone has more ideas than other writers have in their entire career. The sheer amount of new Grant work we have kind of spoils the audience, and it’s good to step back and appreciate the scope and ambition of his career as a whole.

One day, Morrison will be recognized as the brilliant writer and philosopher that he is. In the same way that Philip K. Dick has been given a critical reevaluation, people will look at Morrison’s body of work and see the best writing ever done in the medium. Not only is he a great storyteller, he’s also exploring philosophy and magic in a totally groundbreaking way. After reading The Invisibles, it’s impossible to read something like Nausea because Sartre isn’t giving us the pop cool to help the philosophy go down. His stuff isn’t going to stand next to Morrison’s shiny imagery and cool, progressive concepts.

Ultimately, the thing I love about The Invisibles is its positive creative energy. So much of our world is doom and gloom, people constantly complaining about the work they have to do, that their job sucks, etc. I say I have to go edit my movie, and people are like oh, that sucks. No it doesn’t! I love editing my movie, and I try to love everything I do. Stop bitching about your life, if you don’t enjoy what you do, stop doing it. Our world has so much wonder in it, and The Invisibles helped me to appreciate that. There is no value in knee-jerk cynicism. We can create any world we like, so take responsibility for yourself and start inventing something great.

The world as a whole might go to shit, but you can change the world around you, and spread that change. It’s what Grant did with the book, he invented the world he wanted and found himself living in it. Was he deluding himself, was there real magic at work? It doesn’t matter, magic is just a way of seeing things, of giving your life meaning rather than viewing it as a disconnected series of meaningless events. Everything has meaning because we can imbue it with meaning, and it’s only the oppressive old social order that can deprive you of that. But, they have no sway over you. Our world is open for the taking, we can invent anything we want and live it if we just believe and act to that end. They can’t hold us, our sentence is up.

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!