My second—and very likely last—exposure to Grant Morrison's writing. I love Phil Jimenez's art and it was almost...almost...enough to help me forget a lot of the dumb stuff Morrison had the characters jabbering on about.

There's a story in here somewhere, but you have to hack at all the self-indulgent crap that Morrison throws in—pop psychology examination of movies, discussion about bleeding edge tech (he tries to out-Warren Ellis Warren Ellis and fails...no one talks tech like Ellis) and he populates the Invisibles with edgy characters (he tries to out-Garth Ennis Garth Ennis with out there characters and fails...no one writes edgy characters like Ennis).

Overall, for such a slim volume, despite the gorgeous art, I had far too many "get on with it" moments over the pages and pages of Morrison trying to show how clever he can be.

Decades ago, I read Morrison's Arkham Asylum and remember loving it at the time. This time around, not so much. ( )

Lovely!

Finally, we're getting more Ragged Robin. In this issue, we were introduced to the US portion of things. The AIDS virus being manufactured in a mysterious underground lab. We got LSD trips, the story of what crashed at Roswell, and hints of the future. The Archons were further explained, Quimper had a bigger part, and everything is moving faster than you'd expect.


Can't wait for more Rags, dear lord am I attached to that character. ( )

Now the body count *really* starts to climb. ( )

The jacket copy on this fourth collection of Morrison's The Invisibles suggests that readers might profitably start reading the series here. Perhaps that's so: it lacks the narrative hand-holding offered by the naive Jack Frost in the early issues centered on his recruitment, but readers likely to get much out of this series never really needed that in the first place. This shortish volume collects a free-standing plot sequence and showcases the principal characters without surplus exposition.

The four issues collected here are actually the beginning of the second Invisibles series as published in periodical comic book format. Although the trade paperback bears the title Bloody Hell in America, the individual parts are the commencement (and completion?) of the story arc "Black Science." The cinematic violence that is a mainstay of the series is on abundant display here, along with the themes of mind control and spiritual coercion. The conspiracy at stake is pretty humdrum for a post-X-Files readership, although Morrison raises the metaphysical stakes somewhat.

To the extent that there is character development in this volume, it is focused on Ragged Robin, but by the final page her backstory is still pretty opaque. (It does appear that she gets to encounter her childhood self very briefly.) A couple of new accessory "good guys" are added, in the form of Jolly Roger (a dour dyke who was King Mob's colleague in martial arts) and Mason (a rich American on a po-mo grail quest).

Kind of a misfire as far as this excellent series goes. CIA Area 51 shit with the occasional hint of shoggothery, and is Mr. Quimper just supposed to work as the creepiest villain because his face looks like a sex mask? I dunno, this seems like kind of a lull. ( )