The Invisibles Vol. 2 - The Invisible Community College Book Club

We're back this week to finally return to our Invisible Community College Book Club series, where Tomi and Eri are covering The Invisibles by Grant Morrison one volume at a time!

We'll be covering issues #13-25, as found in the second collected edition of the series. We also be discuss some of Grant Morrison's Substack essays that get into the writing process for the series, as well as their real-life experiences that inspired the events of these issues!

It's a trippy conversation on an even trippier book, that leads us through musings on our own experiences of gender exploration, as well as the magic of storytelling!

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Music.

(00:16):
Welcome to Transcending Comics, a podcast dedicated to trans representation
in comic books, manga, and webtoons, both on panel and behind the scenes.
I'm your host, Tommy, and I'm joined once again by my literary expert,
fashion consultant, and girlfriend, Aerie.
Welcome back to the show, Aerie. Hey, y'all. Thank you for having me back.
Of course. Now, we're finally returning to our Invisible Community College Book

(00:41):
Club series, where Today, we're going to be discussing the second collected
volume of The Invisibles by Grant Morrison.
Now, Ari, since our last episode together, I know you've taken in some more
Grant Morrison media, some of which I've not even read yet.
So tell us a bit about what you've been reading and your thoughts so far.
Have I? Yeah, Wonder Woman Earth One.

(01:03):
Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. Sorry about that.
So far, I've read Wonder Woman Earth One.
The first two parts of that, I haven't finished it yet. I haven't gotten to
the third part, but I really liked it.
It's very, it's a lot.

(01:24):
I get why people wouldn't like it. I can see why people would think it was problematic.
Again, same thing with his other stuff is he's just generally edgy.
But the thing I liked about Wonder Woman Earth 1 is that it is really true to the source material.
Love it or hate it, it pays a lot of homage to the William Marston stuff, which is out there.

(01:50):
You know, he's got the all the bondage stuff. He's got the strong women.
And it's just weird, you know. And another thing I really like about it is what he did with Dr.
Psycho. I'm still very kind of new to a lot of comic stuff.
And so I'm used to the Dr. Psycho on Harley Quinn.

(02:12):
So the fact that they made Dr. Psycho kind of like an actual doctor and psychiatrist
who just like thinks he can fuck with Wonder Woman's head.
It's it's really fun, you know,
and that's what I really like about it is just really trashy and fun.
And I think that's the the origins of Wonder Woman.

(02:33):
And there's plenty of other Wonder Woman, you know, girl power,
awesome feminist message stuff out there.
You can read but if you want some good old marston trashiness then earth one
is really good yeah it was kind of fun because right as you were reading that
grant was posting about their experience writing wonder woman earth one on their

(02:55):
sub stack and even they say it's like the most.
Controversial or like most hated work that they've
written but i know that they do a really good job of
like taking any of the major superheroes and putting
like their entire history even the weird parts into their
stories like with batman they were able to
take like the adam west weird 70s stuff and

(03:16):
make that canon in a way that worked or like take
something as ridiculous as batmite the little like kazoo
looking tiny imaginary batman and
make him like an endearing character and like kind
of explore what that's like to be a character from like the fifth
dimension and with wonder woman that included
going back to like the weird character origins that

(03:38):
people have largely left left behind but even they
admit in their writing they're like yeah it's probably for the best that the
like incontinuity stuff is going a
different direction but like they asked me to write wonder woman and of course
it's going to be weird it's grant morrison and yeah give me kanga and i'm happy
but i will say as i was reading it i just would constantly like oh wow and you've

(04:03):
also been with me as we've been watching Brave New World,
which they worked on as a show writer.
Along with a few other people. And for me, it's been a good exercise in expanding
my literary knowledge, because before going into the show, I wanted to read Brave New World.
And I've also been wanting to learn a little bit more about Algeus Huxley.

(04:24):
So this is kind of helping me research both Grant Morrison and him at the same time.
And I've got to say, I'm really liking the Brave New World series.
It does a really good job making the book
a lot less problematic and also interesting and
like pretty much every woman character in it is much
better in the show so like they

(04:45):
take a lot of liberties but yeah no one would watch a show that's accurate to
that book so it's fine and in contrast to wonder woman earth one that we were
just talking about brave new world does one of the best taking something that's
problematic which is is the Savage Lands in Brave New World.
And really, like, not just like sanitizing it and kind of like Disney-fying,

(05:11):
you know, doing what Disney does and just censoring it or, you know,
sanitizing it or whatever,
but really taking it and turning it into something that is really applicable to now.
And I really like that. I really like what they did with the Savage Lands and
turning it into a theme park.

(05:31):
Like oh this is what people used to
be like i i thought that was brilliant writing yeah
i forgot it's not just the women that are better they really did
good job taking the racist undertones out of brave
new world so good job grant and the other
writers yes good job y'all very very
much needed king kong needs to

(05:54):
maybe they should start writing for king kong because
they still haven't to figure it out i don't even know if you
can't but getting more into the subject at hand
here this being a trans comic
book podcast i'd be remiss if we didn't at least
touch on some of the themes of gender that are played not just in the comic
but in the writing of the book itself grant morrison is pretty well known as

(06:18):
a writer that's challenged the borders of gender or challenged the limits of
gender throughout their career they've introduced a lot of characters that at cross-gender norms,
even going back before the invisibles and their doom patrol run.
And through other works of theirs. And Grant was labeled as non-binary by a
news piece a few years ago, and we touched upon this in our last episode,

(06:41):
but Grant's never championed that label themselves.
And they've said as much in interviews and their own Substack blog posts that
they don't necessarily accept that label and that they use any pronoun.
Though that they and them is probably what fits best.
They don't begrudge the use of he or she, because
they say them and call it a lot worse that said

(07:02):
i have a lot of people even including trans
creators that still come at me sometimes of
like actually grants non-binary and
they use they them pronouns like okay don't transplain
to me here one i'm the trans comic book person this
is my domain two i'm a former grant
like i'm gonna keep a close eye on these things when there's

(07:25):
actual news around a famous grant that loves comics
i would just merely say if talking to
another trans person or anyone really and you
think they get someone's pronouns wrong i think
the correct way to go about that is to
just be like oh really i thought they used
blah blah blah blah blah rather than calling someone

(07:47):
out you always have to assume you might be wrong
as well you know just check you know like
everyone comes from this place of
ultimate knowledge and none of us are sure
of anything honestly so i wanted to take an excerpt from one of their essays
from their sub stack this is part two of me myself and they that'll be very

(08:09):
abbreviated but indulge us for a moment as we do kind of a selected reading
to expand on their own musings about their own gender and pronouns.
So Grant begins with,

(08:47):
The older you get, the more transparently useless any label becomes.
Grant goes on to mention how the 80s and more so the 90s was when they were
most actively playing with their gender expression.
Going out some nights as a masculine buzzcut punk and others going out dressed
in PVC mistress corsets with frock coat and bunker boots, etc.

(09:09):
Grant continues.

(09:39):
At the time, I was pursuing the dissolution of categories as a precursor to
their alchemical occult fusion.
The Invisibles records an attempt to collide fact and fiction,
male and female, good and evil,
into a non-dual in which all binaries are resolved into a higher symmetry.
They later go on to write, I enjoyed the freedom to shift and switch between

(10:01):
trousers and dresses, heels and flats, boy, girl, mod, punk, mistress, submissive.
I loved dressing as a skinhead in docs and bomber jackets and assuming an air
of thuggish menace, just as much as I loved getting into miniskirts and thigh
boots to flirt with boys.
What must be stressed is that all these elements of me were and are real.

(10:23):
There are major characters, minor ones, and guest stars, but they all have their
own personal continuities.
They have different interests and agendas. Some are in fundamental conflict
with others. They can support, embarrass, or undermine one another depending on the situation.
They have their own goals and needs which can be debated and then satisfied
or thwarted by coalition.

(10:45):
During the Invisibles years, when I wasn't traveling this spinning mad world
of ours studying Taekwondo and Tantra or attending acting classes,
I'd sit down at the dressing table and make invocations to Ganesh,
my glorious elephant-headed patron god, and begin the night's wondrous work.
I'd set up a bottle of pink champagne to stand in for the grail,

(11:06):
the cup of blood, and I'd take the first of usually two snowball pills.
I would play the supremely cheesy Enigma CD, or sometimes the sublime Sheila
Chandra record, weaving my ancestors' voices, both of which lasted exactly as
long as it took to do my makeup to a respectable standard and for the E to come up.
In this room, which also served as my temple, I had and I still have a wardrobe

(11:30):
where I kept all my clothes.
My sister Leigh covered the item in pages from The Invisibles and Flexmentalo,
then varnished it, turning the tall central mirror section into one more comic
book panel where I would separate my consciousness into the image before me,
turn on the strobe light to dismantle visual reality, then summon gods,
angels, demons, and ultra-terrestrials with whom I'd spend the night frolicking

(11:53):
and arguing or learning from.
These rituals were conducted on a regular basis in the 90s, during which I regarded
as my Burroughs Beat Hotel period.
I probably spent about a third or more of every week in drag doing pyrotechnic psychedelic magic.
The fabulous witch I became was as real as any other aspect of my being.

(12:13):
One of the things I learned was that, far beyond simply possessing a male side
and a female side, there were and still are lots of characters in there.
My day-to-day personality is
an aggregate of multiple contradictory voices existing mostly in harmony.
Which is where the pronoun they comes into its own.
Of the available options, they and them feel closer to how the inner assembly

(12:38):
operates than any other description.
Over the decades of writing and self-examination, I managed to separate out
these many, many spectrum hues that make up me, and I arranged for them to sit
around a figurative table.
The model of the Justice League or X-Men or my own invisibles made a lot of
sense and showed me how to organize the inner troupe.

(12:59):
Everyone gets a voice, but if one hogs the mic, the others convene to sort it
out, gently escorting the faulty crew member from the bridge and replacing them
with someone more competent.
Sometimes one of us will say something the others don't agree with.
We don't all agree. We see things from multiple points of view.
I learned during this time that I only exist as a kind of superposition with

(13:20):
various personality shards shifting in and out of focus as required for the task at hand.
If I find myself needing to get angry with someone, I can rotate my inner Wolverine into position.
In my teens and twenties, I was terrified of public speaking after an emotionally
scarring debacle at the school debating society when I was 14.
Today, I have access to several gifted orators who love to extemporize and talk

(13:44):
to audiences of any size or persuasion and in any state of sobriety.
I've spoken to others who tell me they have their own inner court,
a complex, a committee, a constellation. I know it's not just me.
I just don't know what this is.
I assume a younger generation is way ahead of me and has the terminology.
Whatever it is, it's not a sickness, it's not DID, or any convenient spurious DSM category.

(14:09):
But it doesn't end there. Turns out, it's not what we're talking about at all.
The gallery of characters I'd unearthed on my deep dives into the self were
not the deepest level, not the limit, to be concluded.
Now, I know that's a bit of a long side tangent there,
but I felt like since this writing exists out there of Grant talking about playing

(14:31):
with their own gender in the writing of Invisibles and literally putting on
drag and having this psychedelic gender-bending ritual that they use to bring this story to life,
this is a very valuable part of the discussion And especially how this book
relates into the canon of trans comics.
So I felt like I had to include this and I just wanted to give a bit more of

(14:53):
a platform of Grant getting to speak about their gender on their own terms rather
than having clickbait news articles determine what labels they use out of context.
Yeah, and I love that. I highly relate on that. Not quite as old, but I'll be 44 next week.
So and I definitely have listened to the Enigma album really.

(15:20):
And yeah, I love what they say there.
And I think that that sums them up really well from everything I know.
And I'm glad to hear their journey from them.
Yeah, and I do think this is a common theme I found with the second volume of
Invisibles especially is that there are outside texts that really add to the

(15:44):
work and that, like, the story behind
the writing of this is often just as interesting as the story itself.
And we'll get into that a little bit more when we talk about the comics contents.
But for now, I think it's probably good if we give the listeners who haven't
read the book a quick summary of what happens.
So this volume of the Invisibles is split into two arcs.

(16:05):
The first focuses on Lord Fanny as the story cuts back and forth between the
beginnings of her life as a woman during her initiation rituals as a witch and
the present where she's approached by a mysterious seductive man with ulterior motives.
When King Mob arrives to rescue her, they both wind up captured and brutally
interrogated by the Myrmidians, leading us into the volume's second arc.

(16:27):
Entropy in the UK follows Jack as he begins to remember Old Tom's training and
eventually reunites with the other Invisibles, and he agrees to help rescue King Mob.
All the while, we see King Mob's psychic interrogation at the hands of Sir Miles
and Mist Wire and we explore the inner world of King Mob both in his civilian
identity as the writer Kirk Morrison and the psychedelic secret agent adventures

(16:51):
of his popular character Gideon Stargrave.
The Invisibles face otherworldly horror in
their rescue attempt reality itself nearly collapses and
Jack comes face to face with one of the Lovecraftian old
ones the merminian serve known as the archons now
ari i know this was a much more adventurous and
eventful volume than the first trade of the invisibles we

(17:14):
read but what were your first impressions reading this well this time i actually
can we put this on pause real quick yeah because pop tart is on the bed behind
me and he's snoring very loudly i don't know if it's It's not coming through.
Okay. Should I just leave him there? This is kind of adorable.

(17:37):
So I might just let the viewer in on anytime you're hearing jangling and pitter patter.
That's our unofficial third host, our dog Popsart.
He's a beautiful little mutt and he's just curled up on the bed behind Aerie
and it kind of warms my heart.
I think his ears are perking. He just heard his name. Yeah.
If you hear dog snoring, consider that our gift to you. And he's not supposed

(18:01):
to be on the bed. So he's getting a little treat.
But to answer your question without all the dog drama this time around,
I definitely saw the Matrix connections way more than I had before.
And it was fun. You know, it was just good story, good action.

(18:21):
And I love all the layers of it. And then Inception is very much like that, too.
And I love seeing things like that. I think sometimes a lot of people want to
be like, oh, they ripped that off or whatever.
I see it as passing the torch and carrying inspiration on.
And all three of those works are very different in their own way.

(18:45):
And I think all trying to say different things.
I will say that this time around, I was kind of surprised and taken out of my
element a little bit because the first one was so me and the type of comics I really enjoy.
I love, you know, what I did read when I was younger was like Love and Rockets

(19:09):
and Preacher and Crumb and American Splendor and stuff like that.
That's just kind of nothing, a big nothing burger, you know,
like it's just life happening.
And whereas this was very much an action story and really fun.

(19:30):
But what I really liked about it was it just so well paid off everything that
is set up in the first one.
The first thing you get in this one is a Fanny backstory.
And that's exactly what I wanted.
So it kind of really set everything up and then gave me all the things that

(19:53):
all, you know, answered all the questions I had from the first one.
Which is really nice and just gave me a really nice action-packed payoff.
Yeah, I think that was a good way to hook us in.
Like, this definitely shifted the narrative more to, like, a proper plot than
the previous ones, just, like, exploration of everything relating to weird occult

(20:15):
figures, mysticism, and literature.
And, like, the back matter of this volume even included some notes from Grant
Morrison, like, in initially pitching this comic and how they wanted it to be
a platform where they could tell any story they wanted.
And that's very clear in volume one when like we're seeing Lord Byron and Shelly

(20:35):
and yeah, like all these other weird elements I've never seen in another comic before.
Whereas this is just like, okay, these are the characters from volume one and
their story is continuing.
And I'm glad like I, this is exactly what I wanted from the invisibles.
Like this was maybe a bit more of a me volume and we'll get into some of the
weird psychedelic reasons for that later.
But to be honest i was actually surprised you invited

(20:58):
me back for this one because i
was like the first one made so much sense because
you have like keats and shelly and arcadia and marquis de sod and i was like
this is my jam i can talk about this stuff for like ever and when i read this
one i was like oh this is like a fun comic book oh that's cool but i I wasn't

(21:19):
expecting to be invited back for it because,
like, it didn't have all my pretentious little things in it. But I'm glad I'm back.
At the very least, I know you can appreciate the first volume for what it is.
Like, there's a lot of modern comic readers that I don't think would be able
to get through Invisibles Volume 1 and be like, oh, yeah, I want to keep reading.
I mean, more advanced ones that like things like Love and Rockets or non-traditional,

(21:43):
like, superhero comics.
Yeah, Invisibles is great. But, like...
We just don't see many modern comics written like this anymore.
So it's hard for me to get that buy-in.
And I've even had friends read the first issue, and they're like,
eh, it's interesting, but I've got my own thing.
So I just wanted someone who I know can appreciate this, and who's also been

(22:03):
taking in more Grant Morrison, both in your own interest in reading and from
my various, like, watching interviews and researching their other work.
So, and I think most importantly, like just the fellow trans woman experience
that can also appreciate like these Lord Fanny moments and the first three or four issues.
And like, I love this exploration of their character.

(22:23):
And I was confused in the last volume when they were more referred to as a transvestite.
But I'm now starting to see that here of like, this does seem like something
they're presenting more in the realm of cross-dressing than them identifying as a trans woman.
And however, like regardless of her presentation, everyone always does consistently
use she or her pronouns for her.

(22:44):
So things might be different if this was written now, but like it doesn't seem
like this character is on hormones or anything.
They just are awesome at presenting themselves as Lord Fanny.
And it seems like that's kind of their main recreational activity outside of
this is hanging out with other people that are either trans women or crossdressers
and hanging out like crossdresser bars. bars. Yeah.

(23:06):
And I mean, I can tell you at that time, we did not have the language for it.
And I'm not saying trans women didn't exist in the 90s, because obviously they did.
Lots of trans people did. But in popular, just in people's minds,
like in the language, when you said trans woman, you were talking about someone

(23:30):
that had fully transitioned.
You know, with the surgery and everything and as
a young one that's why i didn't even think of
it because you know like i was just like i surgery is
scary to me and i don't know if
i want the you know if i had grown up today i

(23:51):
would have instantly known wow that's me i'm a trans woman but in the 90s not
only were you thinking surgery when you thought trans woman you were thinking
like years and years and years of intensive therapy in order to get that surgery.
And people didn't even mention hormones, even though that obviously would have

(24:14):
been a part of it before you got the surgery.
But really, people didn't even think about it.
They very much sexualized it of like to be an actual trans woman.
You had to have all the parts of a woman.
Anyone else was a transvestite or a crossdresser.
And that was just how we thought of it. So to a little trans lesbian such as

(24:42):
myself, I, you know, I had no idea up until a few years ago.
And I was realizing that the language was changing and that I could be my true self.
And I did feel like this still got to the heart of like a lot of,
if not the trans experience, at least like the moments of a trans narrative that we see.

(25:03):
And like there's a lot of truth in that and like this
is what i want to see in a trans narrative like
uh i i remember specifically there's that
shop where fanny's looking for like a new set of breasts and there's a couple
guys in there like i don't know if it's also like a sex shop or a porn shop
but one of them's like saying really transphobic stuff and then fanny using

(25:24):
her like psychic powers just calls him out for the trans egg that he is like
it's very hearts in atlantis moment of like,
I know you dress up as a girl in your free time.
And like, they even call them out by name. Like, how do they know your name?
And I think what he's going on is probably what I went on when I was younger
of Lou Reed songs, Rocky Horror, Lola by the Kinks.

(25:48):
And then I think the first exposure I had to a trans woman that was just on hormones was that.
And I hate to say this, but, you know, it was the 90s, The Crying Game.
I was blown away because the one thing about that movie is it does refer to her as she her.

(26:08):
And she is seen as a woman for the most part, even though they get they get
eye winky with it a lot and have like Lyle Lovett singing Stand By Your Man at the end of it.
But for, you know, for a little trans girl that didn't know any better, it it was mind blowing.

(26:29):
So whenever I see Fanny, I think of that that category that we had back in the
day of Walk on the Wild Side by Lou Reed or Lola, you know, and really when I see Fanny,
I see Lola and I love Lola heart.
Like i think it is surprising since we do see that

(26:51):
from a very young age she was raised as a girl
like since she was the only heir to her
family and the witchcraft was passed through the women
of the family and they're well we only have the one kid so you're gonna be a
girl so like i think it's i think it's actually kind of cool then that like
she's owning that in the present it's not like okay i'm now a woman because

(27:13):
people force me to be it's like oh hey i can be a man anytime I want. I just don't want.
I think that's something I just didn't expect to see. I really didn't expect
to see that early childhood acceptance of it.
And I would love to hear more about Grant's experience just like in these communities

(27:33):
and in these spaces around that time, because like right now I'm listening to
one of their only novels, Luda,
which is kind of a similar like mystical heroes narrative of sorts.
But it's about drag queens and has that same like kind of chosen one and mentor
dynamic just without all the direct heroes narrative stuff, just that same symbology.

(27:57):
But clearly this person is very well versed in it. I mean, they have their whole
drag routine to get in character, to write the comic.
And I would just want to know, like, hey, what was it like cross-dressing in
the UK in the 90s? Like, tell us more. Right.
They do talk about it a bit in their book, Super God.
But, like, that's only partially biographical and more about,

(28:18):
like, comic book history.
So we get glimpses of it. But, yeah, I would love to just see him write a biography
about those years of his life for Grant in the 90s. And not quite the UK,
but you see that same mentality in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
You have these three characters and they're all kind of considered the same thing.

(28:40):
But one of them is definitely a drag queen.
Another is definitely a trans woman because you see her taking hormones all
throughout the movie and they
make jokes about it. And the other is just a twinkie combination of both.
But they never really mention it.

(29:00):
I don't think they ever say trans woman or anything like that,
which is kind of, you know, like, it's kind of nice.
It's definitely dated. But it just shows you that even that culture didn't have
that language. When I was 18, it was drag queens who took me in.
And now everything is so ordered off, which, you know, as a trans woman is appreciated.

(29:27):
But I just didn't know the language for the longest time. As far as that 90s
edginess, I do love the way that they slip it into Fanny's origin of like,
OK, that god of death that we saw in volume one that took care of the serial killer for them. Yeah.
Young Fanny befriended them with a by telling a dead baby joke and making them laugh.
They're like, all right, you're all right, kid. I was going to trap your soul

(29:50):
here, but you're all right.
You're free to go. I love that whole part. And I love the idea that a queer
person can impress death.
Can can make death laugh because, wow, we know we, you know,
half the time we don't even feel alive.
We don't feel ourselves. So if anyone can make death laugh.

(30:15):
It's a young queer person that doesn't really know what's going on with themselves.
And I do like how this this chapter is where we like once again see the comic
play with time in really interesting ways.
And like we're not just seeing things like narratively shifting back and forth.

(30:36):
Like Fanny is experiencing this kind of like Dr.
Manhattan, like sees all the moments of his life at once. They're like seeing
their initiation as a witch.
They're seeing their early teenage years or later teenage years doing sex work
and like getting themselves back on the road to becoming who they are now and
bringing themselves back together.
And then they're like interactions being kind of fucked up in a bathroom and

(30:59):
approached by a weird guy.
And throughout this comic like even later
when we like see things with king mobs past
and present and like seeing later dane's
past and future like this plays a lot with the
idea of all things and all moments existing
at once so for those out there that like
love everything everywhere all at once i feel like

(31:22):
this is a good foundational text that like kind of works towards some of those
ideas this is so much different that i'm not even going to say this pulled from
invisibles maybe it did but like this just kind of plays on some of those similar
ideas that like if you like this
view of the universe and reality i think invisibles will be up your alley.
Same now it's around the same moments

(31:42):
like we're seeing also the search for Dane among
the other invisibles and like one of
the dumb little moments that I absolutely loved is
like we turn a page and I thought this was like filling in for maybe ad space
that had been the comic or something weird but it's like 90s comic book art
of King Mob but it looks like Rob Liefeld art specifically like he's got the

(32:06):
big torso huge muscles and pouches and then tiny little feet.
Eat i'm like okay this is just like a pinup and then
on the next page we see like the small version
of that in a word bubble from king mob
as he's talking to his old lady friend getting help
and like oh this is how king mob sees himself that's that's
hilarious i love it yeah i i love

(32:28):
that part and with the time thing too he
comes on to her edith right i
think that's her name yeah and he's kind of like we've
done it before let's do it again she's like oh i
was 24 then and i'm assuming they do
get it on but that also goes with
the time thing and then you we were talking about

(32:49):
earlier not on the podcast but before we did the podcast we were talking about
how robin mentions she was born in 1988 which means she would have been like
10 then or something and i again more time play And yeah.
When you're like mysterious.

(33:10):
Ethereal, secret agents.
Time would kind of be like that and all over the place.
But they don't really, I like how they discuss.
Kind of don't really touch it you know like
some a lot of things have to go hard
on everything and explain everything

(33:30):
but when you're a world of like eight secret agents fighting like cthulhu creatures
and demons and and tiny whininess yeah you you should expect some some yeah
like they're They're fighting creatures outside of time,
so they have to experience losing their position in time as well.

(33:53):
And what you said there, I don't know if we touched on this last episode,
but it makes me think, like, I wouldn't be surprised if the reveal is that Robin
is that old lady friend of Mob's.
I mean, we even see she's kind of the one that put him through psychic training.
Entertaining and like robin's clearly the
psychic of the group and king mob's often going to her

(34:14):
to like get predictions and tarot readings and stuff
and like a lot of the text and pitching documents mentions
like psychic time travelers and groups of them
and i'm like i thought that was just the windmill scene like oh wait
no that's robin and i heard i
think was grant morrison's interview with arden lee that they
were working on a tv adaptation for the

(34:36):
invisibles i think for bbc and it must not
have come to fruition because i've heard nothing about it since but they
were actually going to make the main character of the tv show robin and
like her visiting a younger version of
herself and the younger version like not listening to her
older self because why would you and that's just the way of things navigating
that and like if grant ever does revisit the invisibles even in comic form i

(35:01):
would love to see that come to life because like robin's a way more more likable
character than Dane and I want to know more about her like she's the one that's
still a huge mystery even two volumes in now.
I would love to see that story, maybe not on the BBC, because I cannot possibly
fathom his work being translated to the BBC.

(35:26):
Yeah, I don't know if I want the Doctor Who sanitized version of The Invisible.
That's exactly what I was thinking. Yeah, I don't want a Doctor Who version.
Soon but moving on to the second story
arc like we start to get into some of the moments of dane's training that we
didn't see before as they're like coming back to him as he's like being reminded

(35:47):
of things as he's out on his own and also as he's put in these otherworldly
situations or an impossible odds and like that's when the training comes back
to them like he has to be in a weird state of mind,
one of the freakier moments for me of and like this is why this one resonated
with me so much much more is we see that Dane had this interaction with some

(36:07):
kind of alien force barbell.
If they refer to it as it takes the form of aliens, it takes the form of Jesus.
It talks to him and is like, what gives him the key to like face the archons and tell them what to do.
But like in reaching out and trying to get him to listen, like they have this
little speech of like, which side are you on?
The soul is not in the body. The body is inside the soul. Do you understand?

(36:34):
We are you try to remember.
And for those that have heard my coming out special on giant size violence,
it's, it's morphin time.
Like that really hits hard. If you've had the psychedelic ego death experience.
And what's even more weird is like, I've alluded to the weird fever dream involving Grant Morris.
And I had, when I started this show and I only read like three issues on the

(36:57):
invisibles, but a very key element of this, like, and it's like my brain, uh,
like invoked grant morrison in much the way that king
mob invokes john lennon in the first issue just you
know without the ritual or anything but the big takeaway was
the words i am you or like a
magic word of like i am you just saying over and over

(37:17):
i am you i am you i am you i am you i am you i am you
i am you and like seeing that then translated like we
are you which i had not read this far i
had not been given that phrase yet like that's weird
to me i know it's probably just coincidence maybe it's pulled from other
interviews of grant morrison i've heard but like that hit
weird seeing the psychedelic trip and that moment specifically

(37:39):
getting like given to dane from beings in the ether yeah and i can back you
up on that because like i had the same moment you had that moment i was there
and then we both read it in the book afterwards and it's like oh Oh, that is weird. Okay.
And so the first volume of Invisibles, I had to read a second time,

(38:01):
mostly because I understood it a lot more after you would read it and could
tell me a bit about the literary origins of it.
And like, also just, it makes a lot more sense with future context.
I reread this months later, like I'd read most of this last year and just took
a while for us to arrange this episode, but I still reread it months later.

(38:21):
And i didn't get nearly as much because this one is
just like plot and i know every one so there's.
Not as much to uncover except there were
ideas i'd had in those months that i
was then seeing had been like implanted in my
brain in this book and were not as original of ideas
as i thought they were like when we were at
the zed and zed's dead show in minneapolis over

(38:44):
new years like we'd been seeing these super trippy visuals
flashing lights and just that setting always just puts
me in this weird like concert trance state and a
lot of my best writing and creative ideas come to me when i'm
in this state and just like okay i can't socialize i can just take in
weird visuals and inspiration and music
and seeing some pyramid stuff like it just came to me i'm like
oh my god pyramids are time machines like

(39:07):
pyramids are kind of like working time machines they like
give us this thing that like gets preserved through history
and sends bits of culture and like
memories of who a person may have been and like some
historic context form into the future and if humanity progresses
for another two or three hundred years i believe we're
gonna have some kind of technology that'll allow us to

(39:28):
like maybe not reanimate the dead but at least like
clone people from dna and so it's following that logic that means mummies are
inevitable and like we're gonna have we could have these beings that are like
not just time traveling nepotism of like reincarnations or like clones of past rulers but also like.

(39:50):
They're not just going to be that. They're also going to be the product of all
the culture and the legacy left behind. And, like, who knows whose DNA is actually
in there? It could be anybody.
And I was like, okay, this is, like, an idea I really want to explore.
And then, revisiting this comic, I see right in the middle, in one of King Mob's
travels, he's told that, like, mummies, Egyptians,

(40:11):
burial rites, and monuments, these are the symbols and artifacts that propel
ideas, concepts, and personas into the future.
And they describe it as like a form of metamorphosis like
part of the reason humanity is kind of destroying its own
environment is a means to like they
could call it metamorphosis it's like a caterpillar eating

(40:31):
the leaf it's currently living on but then
turning that into a cocoon that turns it into its next form and
like it being like yeah we're destroying our environment and seeming
to sabotage ourselves but this will be like our way of
sending us in the the future or our way to evolve and i'm honestly pretty disappointed
that my theories of inevitable mummies were implanted from this and i now see

(40:54):
how the matrix and maybe other things maybe borrowed more than they realized
from this comic passing the torch passing the torch.
Or youngie in theory whichever one you want to call it,
but also in that dane section
something that kind of connects to your

(41:15):
ego death experiences as well and a
scene that i know we both really enjoyed is when
dane is talking to himself is when
you see the two danes like one
dane comforting another dane and one
looks a little little older i think that
part is just beautiful and it really goes with the

(41:37):
timey whiny stuff we were kind of talking about before
too and same thing with the other ones doesn't
really focus on it that much you don't know who these
danes are but it's a beautiful moment yeah
you're referring to that thing that's like december 22nd 2012 on like allegedly
the last morning of existence yeah i wasn't sure like if that's two versions

(42:01):
of dane or dane and a friend they do definitely look similar enough that like
it could be two versions the same guy.
I had kind of hoped that maybe this was some illusion of, like,
Dane becoming okay with his sexuality sometime in the future.
Because, like, I mean, we see him projecting all this internalized homophobia elsewhere.

(42:21):
And, like, yeah, maybe he's bisexual at least.
But, like, there's so much there that, like, needs to be unpacked.
Like, we even see when his confrontation with these demons is,
like, bringing up his past.
Like, he has this whole monologue on, like, you couldn't love your mom or your dad.
Not really. you couldn't love your mates or you'd just be uh
sorry poof the only person you were

(42:44):
really allowed to love was your girlfriend it was just so great
being allowed to feel that way like a million locked doors opening
at once she was the only person i ever admitted to
loving fucking tragic eh and like
that just resonated so hard from like yeah my experience being
socialized like growing up presenting as
a boy and like all these emotions that i had to repress and like

(43:05):
feeling like you couldn't express affection or emotion elsewhere so
even if like we don't get confirmation that maybe dane's
gay at least we can see like he does get over that
and he's able to physically comfort either his future
self or just his companion of i mean
they seem a little homeless in those panels
but i don't know it just gives me a little hope for dane as a turning

(43:27):
out into a decent person same there's definitely hope
there he's definitely a product of his society society
and he's been yanked out of
that so he can really go anywhere he's
just kind of got to fight himself at that point.
And he does i love where like
kind of the matrix thing where all

(43:49):
of the different storylines are kind of
converging and he's there in
this like kind of alternate alternate dimension fighting
this demon which is definitely kind
of himself too and i just
i just love how he works that in because

(44:09):
i think that's a voice that isn't
heard a lot the person that was
born into circumstances that that makes
them hate and and makes them like kind
of punch the the world and seeing him deal with
that and that also playing into

(44:29):
the main story so well is really
cool and i do like how that confrontation like it's
very reminiscent of stephen king's it for me and like how it's you know it's
just referring back to what you knew as a kid or like disarming the opponent
not giving into fear like the way that book puts it is like you've got Gotta

(44:50):
slam your fists against the post and still insist you see the ghost.
Tying back to the little stuttering rhymes that one of the main characters has
to repeat over and over to get over their own limitations.
And yeah, here, like we just see one Dane treating this other demon character like you're not shit.
Cutting them down just like, yeah, they're going to swear at him.

(45:13):
And it works pretty well.
And just trusting their instinct of like, OK, I'm just going to pull whatever's
in this shopping bag that old Tom left me and put that to use.
And like internally, he knows what to do when he's trusting that he knows what to do.
And like with very little outside help, he succeeds in defeating like an arch demon.

(45:33):
It makes all these moments of like this little rebellious asshole like kind of pay off.
Like, OK, you know what? This kid, he's the real deal. Like he's the most rebellious kid.
He is. Yeah. And it reminds me a lot of Stephen King's insomnia a lot, too.
The Crimson King is very similar to these demons and even the little realm that's

(45:54):
in Insomnia where he ends up where the Crimson King is, is very similar to where Dane is as well.
Also, like from Dane's past, one of the few things I noticed revisiting this.
So we get the reveal that Dane's teacher, Mr.
Malcolm, is actually like King Mob's mentor. Like he's some kind of like Invisibles legend.
And I guess they've been looking out after Dane. And like they have kind of

(46:18):
this weird division X that's like super secret government invisibles related
stuff or dealing with the kinds of things the invisibles interfere with.
And I didn't notice the first time that all of that's built up through the book.
Like people are talking about, yeah, Division X got reactivated.
And then we see that in the end, like in a chapter that presumably takes place before the rest,

(46:40):
like finding out that the Myrmidons have bred some kind of Antichrist with Princess
Di and some like demon Chogoth character.
And they're so good with that, too.
The callbacks and the foreshadowing. Just like the way the first book ended or the first volume,
focusing on one security guard that randomly gets shot in the beginning and

(47:06):
then going at the very end,
doing a full chapter on this one minuscule character's life.
And then they get shot in that scene and you're like, oh, that's that random
guard that just got shot in the beginning of the book.
And he does the same thing with mr malcolm
and it made me so happy because when

(47:28):
i was reading the first volume i was like
oh i i really liked that teacher and he
was really sweet and we need more teachers
that really kind of focus on even the
bad kids and we need
more people like that and it just made me so happy and i
was like i'll never see this character again you

(47:48):
know and then in the the next book it turns out
like he was one of the agents the whole time
and it made me so happy it was
such a good payoff he is really good with payoffs and just the idea that like
hey your lamest teachers might have been the coolest freaking person before
they became a teacher having been a teacher for a couple of months before i

(48:11):
was like no i very much appreciate any time that is done because it is a tough job.
Now, one thing I did want to make sure we touch on here is that there's definitely
content in this volume that...
Like, it's edgier than what was there previously, and I could see it rubbing
some modern readers the wrong way.

(48:32):
But, like, this is a subversive text.
It's subversive media, so you can't go in expecting versive language.
I mean, a lot of the terminology in Lord Fanny's backstory, like,
doesn't really fit the current nomenclature.
Boy's backstory gets an issue in this. Then I'm like, OK, it's pretty clear

(48:54):
this probably wasn't written by a black writer, but like still there's things to like about it.
And like there's still truths that are shown in there about like what it's like to grow up in poverty.
And like they do interesting things with that story.
And the one that really stood out to me, like there's a bunch of awesome scenes
with like how they handle King Mob's escape and like how they're going about the torture,

(49:15):
how it's like all mental based and
like anything they read is gonna seem real
to them or it's like what they're gonna see and like they've put
some kind of cthulhu virus into their
blood system that's corrupting their immune system and then
the way they get around that was like wait we just have to strap down this
rich bastard and take his blood and then we'll have the

(49:36):
immunity of this thing and like they just have a line of
like hope you don't have aids asshole like okay that's a a weird kind of thing
you would only see written in the 90s by someone edgy probably but like when
it's queer characters stealing the blood of a rich elite asshole saying a line
like that it's like this feels a little empowering though it was a little empowering

(49:57):
yeah especially at that time.
It's better than rent yeah i'll stand by that yeah and i did want to point out
okay this is some of the most common Invisibles trivia,
like if anyone's ever talking about Chaos Magic or Grant Morrison,
one of the Invisibles, these things come up.
But, like, right before we recorded this episode, I pulled up the letters columns from these issues.

(50:20):
And I'd really recommend anyone that reads this do that.
There's a good Google Drive that has all of, I think it's, like,
The Invisibles Inc. And that's all the letters columns.
And those in themselves are a harrowing tale of what Grant Morrison was going
through when writing this.
Because, like, he'll talk about with his chaos magic, this was where he saw

(50:42):
their writing, like, affecting their lives.
Lives like King Mob gets taken in and they
start showing him deformed versions of his face making
him feel like he's the elephant man and and then in
real life Grant was like taken into the hospital with a
flesh-eating bacteria putting a hole in his cheek and then like
they thought they were getting better there's an issue or two where things
seem to be turning around for them and then next thing you know Mark

(51:05):
Millard the writer of like Kick-Ass and Kingsman and
Old Man Logan Civil War a bunch of things that I liked as
a kid that I don't like now like he stepped
in to fill in for the letters column and they're
like yeah grant morrison's got a collapsed lung
in the hospital so they can't do this right
now we appreciate any cards and well wishes and this

(51:25):
happened like just two three months after king mob has a collapsed lung from
the torture and like getting shot and there's talk about like this felt terrifying
to me they started having delirious hallucinations from like the pain meds some
quack doctor was giving them that were making Making the virus...
Or, like, making things worse and putting them in more pain.
And, like, they started seeing hallucinations of, like, Jesus coming to them

(51:50):
and saying, I am not the god of your fathers.
And, like, they put that then directly into the invisibles. And we see that
in, like, what Dane experiences. So, like...
So much of the text we see here is, in a sense, biographical to what Grant Morrison
was experiencing and not just on some psychedelic trip in the past that they
wanted to share with the world, but like what it felt like to be getting tortured by a virus,

(52:13):
whether or not that was being engineered by someone or just some dumbass doctor
that didn't know how to properly diagnose what was going on.
Like Grant Morrison, by all accounts, should have died in that.
But thankfully, by chance occurrence, like some like a doctor of celebrities
like Mick Jagger's doctor was there and he showed up, diagnosed what it was,

(52:34):
got him on better meds and saved his life.
And if it weren't for a chance happenstance that that celebrity doctor was passing
through town, Grant would almost certainly be dead.
So I understand why Grant feels like this magical connection to the book and
its connection to their life and how the works like influence the direction
of his life is like a hyper sigil.
Because if that if that happened to me, I would 100 percent believe that my

(52:58):
writing is magic and that this is happening.
And like, who am I to say that this isn't or like the grants writing didn't
somehow mentally influence things to like help things get better.
But this is why I say the back matter is 100 percent worth looking up and finding
online because it's not in the graphic novel.
But I had just as much fun reading these letters columns as I did reading the comic today.

(53:20):
And yeah, like, yeah, writing is magic.
That's how I've always, you know, I've been many phases in my life and I've
definitely had my crystal phase and my, you know, all my later witchiness or whatever.
But when I was younger, it was writing.

(53:40):
It was things like Terminator 2 and stuff like that made me feel things so intensely
and really did connect me to reality more.
And to me, creation is magic.
Magic whether it be putting together
a computer which is very much like a human mind or

(54:03):
an ai or something or writing a book i mean look at all the power that homer's
stuff like wow you can't get more powerful magic than that i mean everything
is based on it the human experience is like Like, the Odyssey.
Even if there's, like, a degree of separation in it.

(54:25):
Like, when people see a character that they want to aspire to be like,
especially in spaces like ours where you don't know trans people like this,
queer people like this exist until you see them in media.
And then you have a goal in mind and you try to become more like them.
Like, that's bringing that character to life. That even...
Like you if you don't want to call it magic fine but that is an

(54:47):
act of creation that's inspiring real world creation that's fictitious
creation that then inspires real life and i i think that in itself is magic
of like if you can create something that then influences a world outside of
the fiction you've made that's magic it's very culture bound too because we
have very much the the Joseph Campbell,

(55:09):
Homeric journey.
Whereas when you read manga and watch movies from other places like Japan or
China or Korea or India or wherever, they have different storytelling.
And it's really cool. I mean, to me, again, that that is magic.

(55:31):
And they all have very they're all very similar.
But they have different quirks, which is
really cool and i love delving into the
cultural differences and how much is
the same but what is different as well and
that was something i noticed like when we make parallels to

(55:52):
the matrix here this volume it gets really clear because
the whole rescuing of king mob feels very
similar to the second half of the matrix of like rescuing morpheus
and like neo discovering discovering his powers in
the process meanwhile dane discovers like their
magic healing powers in the process but with
the invisibles there's so many like added weird elements

(56:14):
and like multiple layers of storytelling and just
like things i'd never seen before that i don't read this and be like
oh yeah this is the joseph campbell hero's journey like
beat for beat maybe it's a little more clear with
dane getting trained by like an old homeless wizard in
the the first volume but like this doesn't feel quite the same
whereas with the matrix like i love the matrix

(56:35):
but yeah i mean it's star wars with computer reality
instead like we see those beats much more clearly there and it's like not nearly
as maybe creative or it's not doing as much to like separate itself from a traditional
retelling of the hero's journey as invisibles does the matrix is like a pepperoni
pizza and the invisibles is one of those weird ass pizzas.

(56:58):
That's like a Mexican barbecue pizza or whatever you want to call it with like
tortilla chips and like guac and like all sorts of stuff on it.
Yeah, the pizza's in there, but it's got a lot of other stuff on it, too.
And it's really yummy and you've never tasted anything like it.

(57:19):
I'm really looking forward to seeing where this series goes from here.
Like from all accounts i've heard i know king
mob has just an easier time of things going forward like
grant morrison was too scared to put him through anything else and
like we see more pleasant things in the next chapter i hear he gets rich he
gets a girlfriend and grant started dating girls that looked like his girlfriend

(57:40):
in real life and i know they're gonna be in america so like hey step closer
to our back door and i'm really excited to see where this goes now that like
Like things can get happier.
Dane's a proper invisible and like we can actually explore this world.
It's not just the same like incorporating Dane, then losing Dane and then finding him again.

(58:00):
And then we're broken apart in rescue mission. Like I want to see the invisibles
together in force doing what invisibles do, whatever that looks like.
Same. I definitely want to see more Robin because I feel like she is kind of
the one that I just don't really know anything about Robin still.
And I'm really intrigued.

(58:20):
And I really want to see where Dane's story goes, too.
I still feel like we are at the very beginning of Dane's story.
And yeah, I still really want to see where that goes. I'm very excited for the third one.
Now, do you have a favorite issue from this volume? I would say probably the

(58:44):
first one, Fanny's story.
And I think a lot of, you know, some people might have a problem with it,
because in the first one, you see her as Fanny,
you see her with her wig and her dress and very much like a trans woman.
Whereas in this one wow

(59:08):
you see all of fanny you see her beginning you
see just the persona stripped naked to
her very bare self but fanny
is still there and i kind of like that because like even though through the
majority of this volume if you opened it up and was just skimming it you You

(59:31):
wouldn't even know you saw Fanny because she's she doesn't have her wig on.
She doesn't you know, she's in prison.
She doesn't have her wig on. She doesn't you know, her makeup's all kind of
smeared off and she does look what we would consider masculine.
She's got the shorter hair, but it's still Fanny. And.

(59:52):
As, you know, as I get older, as I am farther along in my transition,
you know, and when I first transitioned, it was very important to me to always be presenting.
But I think it's a huge, giant moment when you realize you're you, no matter what.

(01:00:16):
But so to see Fanny in so many different ways, but still being herself and still
being true to herself actually really meant a lot to me.
And you just find out so much about Fanny that you would have never have even guessed.

(01:00:37):
And wow, her journey is amazing. And little Fanny is adorable.
Yeah, I really do love that. that they strip her down
to like the bare components and still she's
like doing witchcraft stuff taunting guards and
like being badass and like never for
a minute does king mobs here is anything but lord fanny yeah

(01:00:59):
trans icon right there like she alone
makes this comic worth reading yeah personally for
a favorite i think i've got to go with issue 23 and.
That's the one that starts with dane looking in the
future looking at maybe his future self just because like i
really resonated with so much of dane's experience through this
and like that moment specifically of just finding a person that

(01:01:22):
like whether or not that's future dane like they're seeing
themselves in because this person is engaged with this
otherworldly unbelievable story and like
this is what i felt coming out of that
first ego death experience before i was able to put it
to like a narrative podcast once in a great while
i would find someone who'd be like i know what you're talking

(01:01:42):
about right i've seen something like this right they would
get it they'd say things back to me or like they'd
help me dig deeper into it and like when
i'd have that moment i would see myself in them
like an imu moment but like an imu is
in the universe or seeing yourself in other people and i
just really resonated with that like someone is finally engaging with

(01:02:03):
dane's story they're telling dane can
tell everything and they even get to the very personal core
of like even if none of this is real what were
their inner demons they were facing of like this experience with
their first girlfriend all these things of self-doubt and
then realizing that like you're everyone or everyone
is like moving forward into this like kind of

(01:02:26):
super being just like seeing this
weird non-linear time thing of like past and
future selves coming in and out ahead head and behind you and finding a way.
To put that into words in a way that's like bringing some level of comfort and.
Joy to another person because like the world is ending presumably and like both.
These characters are at peace and it just seems like such a touching loving

(01:02:49):
moment that someone telling their story is.
Bringing two people together and bringing them peace while the world is literally about to end.
So they're not panicking about it. And like, I think as a storyteller,
that's really all I can aspire to do is tell people other worldly stories,
share wild experiences,
and hopefully bring people some kind of comfort and self-recognition in the

(01:03:12):
telling of those stories.
It really hits that part of youth when you
realize you're on your own like his mom
gets out of the picture like friend
sells him out his friend sells him out there's
the flashbacks of the girlfriend that leaves
them for like the cooler older guy and he

(01:03:33):
really like realizes like yeah it's just him you know it's It's just you and
and then you can stop acting a little bit when you realize it's just you and
I really like seeing that with his character and one more thing.
I wouldn't say it was my favorite chapter. That was definitely the first one

(01:03:56):
with Fanny and her backstory because I had just been wanting that so bad and it really paid off.
But I was most surprised by the boy chapter, which is just one of the random
kind of like disconnected story,
but still, you know, creates that character of boy and adds to their backstory a little bit.

(01:04:17):
I think it's in Chicago and.
Being grant morrison i was honestly
pretty ready to be offended and just
like because race is
definitely a big part of this issue and
i think i even initially skipped it

(01:04:38):
and then i kind of went back to it and i
was like oh wow that was actually really poignant
and kind of ahead of its
time of pointing out like gentrification
and especially someplace like.
Chicago I grew up in Atlanta I saw
it happen there so to see someone that

(01:05:01):
sometimes make I'm not gonna lie they
make me cringe a little bit sometimes to see
them tackle that and do a really good
job at the time that they did is really
awesome and then i did really like the
dane chapters too and again when
mr malcolm popped up it turns out

(01:05:23):
he's one of them oh that was so cool but ari
any final thoughts from you before we wrap up i think
i just gave him before you even asked me so okay
well thank you ari for joining
me once again on this deep dive into the invisibles and also thank you for sharing
so much about your own personal experience and what about this book resonates

(01:05:46):
with you and for giving us some context of what it was like a generation before
mine growing up and seeing media like this or media outside of this.
And I feel like that really does still add to my appreciation of the book and
it's why I'd like to keep having you on these episodes. Aw, thank you.
But if the listeners at home have requests or recommendations for comics or

(01:06:07):
creators you'd like us to cover in the future, you can send them our way on social media.
You can find us on the transcending comics instagram and facebook
page on twitter is at transcend comics or email
us at transcendingcomics at gmail.com we'd like
to thank you again for giving our podcast a chance and give a special
shout out to ray day parade for designing our logo and cover photos our intro
and outro music this week is a little soul and you've been starring by carlson

(01:06:31):
you can check out more of their music on carlson.com join us again next time
as we continue transcending boundaries and exploring the colorful world of trans non-binary,
and genderqueer representation in comic books of all kinds.
As the curtains fall on this episode of Transcending Comics,
remember that comics have the power to inspire change in countless worlds, including our own.

(01:06:52):
Keep reading, keep writing, and keep transcending.
Music.