"Be born again and again in me! Life after life! Suffocated in mortal clay! Broken and blinded by the explosion of being!" --The Omega Sanction, Mister Miracle #4, 2006
"The whole of creation was nothing but a cage, devised by Ormazd to trap the forces of evil where he could destroy them. That's when the battle started. Ormazd, creating the first trap, created the concept of restriction. The forces of Ahriman struggle for liberation. Which side are you on? Do you know?" --Quimper (by way of Denise), Invisibles vol. 1 #25, 1996
"Have your eyes grown strong enough to behold the fundamental force that is restriction?" --The Omega Sanction
"Only set me free and break this chain." --Aurakles, Mister Miracle #4
"Look there! Urizen, deadly black, in chains bound." --Tom O'Bedlam, Invisibles vol. 1 #2, 1994
"I've had a long time to think about this. So let me get things straight. You're right here with me. You're suffering too, Omega. Am I right? That's okay, everybody's got chains they wanna get out from under, right? Even you." --Shilo Norman, Mister Miracle #4
"I WILL SET YOU FREE! I AM THE LORD THY DESTROYER!" --Aurakles
"I am not the god of your fathers. I am the hidden stone and break all hearts. Break open your heart." --Barbelith (by way of Jesus), Invisibles vol. 1 #24, 1996
"And there's a fundamental force in me too. I gave my life over to representing something that's in all of us. So whatever's holding you down, wherever you are, however hard it seems... how about you and me escape together?" --Shilo Norman
"Which side are you on?" --Barbelith, Invisibles vol. 1 #16, 1995
"The dalang is more than a puppeteer. His skill makes us believe that we see a war between two great armies, but there is no war. There is only the dalang." --Agus, Invisibles vol. 1 #5, 1994
"Forgive yourself and remove those chains you wear." --Metron, Mister Miracle #4
"I've been here before... feels like..."
"7 days. You have survived the first initiation into the mysteries of the New Gods." --Shilo and Metron
"All times are the same time. The initiation of a sorceror reveals this. That is why they say a true initiation never ends." --Tlazolteotl, Invisibles vol. 1 #14, 1995
"Think of timespace as a multidimensional self-perfecting system in which everything that has ever, or will ever occur, occurs simultaneously. I believe timespace is a kind of object, a geometrical supersolid. I believe it may even be a type of hologram [...]" --Takashi, Invisibles vol. 2 #5, 1997
"Teenage kicks right through the night." --King Mob (by way of the Undertones), Invisibles vol. 2 #5, 1997
"Funny, don't you think? How your life coulda turned out." --Shilo
"Welcome home, Mister Miracle." --Professor
"Lost one. Welcome home." --Barbelith
Started reading Robert Wilson's Masks of the Illuminati yestarday, randomly (or...perhaps not?); it'd be fun to put the relevant R.A.W. quotes up into that progression you have there. Not that I'm the first, or even the hundred and first, to make that connection, but it is fun to see the ideas pinging and ponging between Morrison and Wilson.
Posted by: Dave Intermittent | March 10, 2006 at 11:12 AM
Masks was probably my favorite of the Illuminati books, although I liked the first couple of Historical ones too. Haven't read them in years, but they can evoke just as much nostalgia as The Invisibles, for an even earlier time.
Please forgive the oddity of burying all the analysis in my own comment thread (in what should have been the first comment--damn you, Dave!), but there’s a lot more to say about this comic and I didn’t want to interrupt the collage. As you’ve probably gathered, I found the final issue of Mister Miracle... well, to call it Morrison’s most exciting comic in nearly a decade would be a gross overstatement, but it got me rifling through a couple years’ worth of Invisibles back issues--the really good years--and that’s hard to beat. Certainly it fired up circuits that haven’t seen use since “Sensitive Criminals” or “American Death Camp.”
I also recommend that you check out this thread from the good people at Barbelith, who have already verbalized many of the things I would have said in a full-on post: the multiple realities of the Life Trap as an in-text explanation for the shifting art styles on this title, all manner of rabbinical sorting out of timelines, and confirmation that I’m not crazy for seeing the titanic, bearded Oracle as yet another working-out of Morrison’s fave anxiety of influence. (Alan Moore-acle, indeed.) Or at least I’m not the only one. For more on the Oracle, scroll down to Mario’s 23:48 post and follow that motherfucking link!
Also, a big shout-out to Peter Hensel for being the first to notice the religious allusions in this series. In the final issue Shilo is not just Christ but the Buddha, fighting to break out of a cycle of endless resurrection to attain spiritual peace—and a bodhisattva, staying behind in the cycle to help free the rest of us. Only this bodhisattva has to free the gods as well as men, Morrison’s democratic spin on this myth for the modern age. Aurakles promises to free us all, but only by destroying us and demanding our sacrifice: he is the God of our fathers, the Urizen (or, if I were inclined to make a Doom Patrol reference instead, “mad Ialdabaoth, the stern and frowning dad of this world”). But while the Oracle can help Shilo out of one level of the Life Trap (a DC continuity in which, nonsensically, a youthful avatar and apprentice of freedom becomes a jailer--I sense the hand of Chuck Dixon), he only sends him into another even more degraded one.
That reality is, of course, current DC Comics continuity in all its post-Identity Crisis glory. Morrison positions Seven Soldiers as simultaneous to the more mainstream apocalypse of Infinite Crisis, the more serious (and certainly more entertaining) cosmological dust-up happening off in the sideshow while everybody’s distracted by the shenanigans in the center ring. We haven’t seen this type of pairing since the original Crisis and a little story called “American Gothic,” by a certain stern and frowning dad…
And there may even be an element of comics critique in this elaborate structural homage. The Moore-like Oracle sends Shilo into the world of Infinite Crisis; is Morrison subtly blaming that kill-happy event and all the similar four-color carnage on Moore? That’s certainly a popular interpretation, even with Moore himself, but I find it’s gotten tiresome; comics writers have been criticizing the excesses of the eighties for nearly ten years now, starting with Moore and Morrison (circa Judgment Day and Flex Mentallo), and yet the ante keeps getting raised higher with each new rape or murder (generally not the work of Moore or Morrison). Mercifully, Morrison keeps the dig at Moore fairly muted and then he looks for a way out instead of wallowing in the bloodletting as Geoff Johns et al are wont to do. The escape route--Shilo’s greatest trick--is not a God-of-your-fathers covenant and sacrifice like Oracle/Ialdabaoth/JHVH demand or even a redemptive self-sacrifice from on high like Christ, but a superhero bodhisattva who comes to the very Morrisonian realization that his tormentor is just as trapped as he is and they can both break out of the cycle together by forgiving themselves.
“It’s only you fighting them that gives them strength.” --Jacqui, Invisibles #5, 1997. My favorite scene in my favorite issue of what was my favorite comic, back in my favorite years.
That love and compassion have always been there, lurking in the background, each part of Morrison’s work reflecting the whole. I believe it may even be a type of hologram.
Posted by: Marc | March 10, 2006 at 11:33 AM
Add the ending to New X-Men as well, in which fighting is literally infectious, and the only way out is the cleansing fire of love. And of course, the Filth is an extended inversion of "as above so below" in which we learn that what's below creates what's above, and that micro scale love can create macro scale love; it's turtles all the way up.
I wonder as well how this ties into the anti-dad of Seaguy? But there's probably a Barbelith thread on that by now....
I read the Illuminatus trilogy way back when, but for some reason Masks has sat on my shelf for years. I'm finding that Makss tends to hang together better, thought the homage to Joyce gets a little tiring.
Posted by: Dave Intermittent | March 10, 2006 at 12:47 PM
Apologies if this is already somewhere in a Barbelith thread but: I suppose what Shilo winds up eating is an Easter Sundae, of sorts?
Posted by: Dave Intermittent | March 10, 2006 at 01:10 PM
Easter Sundae... awesome!!
Posted by: Jog | March 10, 2006 at 03:29 PM
And damn you a second time, Dave Intermittent.
Posted by: Marc | March 11, 2006 at 10:49 AM
I think most of the time you're spot-on--but the Barbelith assumption that the Oracle is somehow an Alan Moore reference strikes me as creating a link ab nihilo, based on a (not very strong) physical resemblence. Is there anything specific to tie him to Moore, given that the Oracle appeared in the ur-story from which all of Morrison's Seven Soldiers descends? I mean, Morrison is subtle, but when he has a connection he wants you to make, he makes it good and hard.
Posted by: Kevin J. Maroney | March 11, 2006 at 05:21 PM
Only the physical resemblance, and the general Moore homage/anxiety that's run through the entire megaplot. Appearing in the JLA story doesn't have to limit the Oracle's range of meaning; Morrison's already cast him as the god of your fathers, which makes him a convenient vehicle for any filial artistic rebellion. I'm happy that he isn't limited to comics metacommentary, especially of the tired the-eighties-were-so-'orrible variety, but the element seems to be there.
Posted by: Marc | March 12, 2006 at 10:20 AM
I've written a bit about Moore/Morrison anxiety and Watchmen/Invisibles, partially inspired by your writing.
I wish I had something to add about Seven Soldiers, but I'm only just starting the first trade paperback now.
Posted by: David Golding | March 14, 2006 at 04:38 PM
Hi, David--sorry I didn't reply earlier. I've only been able to sample the "Arcadia" stuff but I liked it quite a bit--Invisibles readers should definitely check out that link.
You have some very pleasant reading ahead of you, although I must say nothing whets the appetite like a good monthly release and nobody knows how to work that anticipation like Morrison.
Posted by: Marc | March 16, 2006 at 07:43 PM