THE ENLIGHTENMENT
Tom instructs Dane, "We have to cut the apron strings, boy. Can't suck at mommy's tit forever. We have to leave our bodies ... and go into space."

Dane is aided in his enlightenment when he is abducted by aliens, a scenario that Morrison (and Whitley Streiber) has commented on -- that such incidents are translated by our brains as such and that they are linked to divine manifestations and visitations. The aliens are a communal mind image to help survivors mentally filter a contact with the beyond and preserve their sanity.

After the abduction, Dane is left with an implant scar in his forehead, paralleling the mystical third eye placement indicating great vision beyond the norm. The abduction is intercut with shots of the glowing red ball we come to know later as Barbelith. Barbelith, succinctly, is an evolutionary placenta, helping humanity along its path, providing "nutrients" to help us through the development in the physical "womb" of our reality.

It also makes itself known to specific humans when they reach the cusp of preparation. It examines them, scanning and giving an approving green glow -- like a cosmic traffic light -- for those able to progress toward enlightenment. Dane is given "the green light" before he meets with the cell and they travel through time.

During the travel through time, we are introduced to Lords Byron and Shelley as they debate the ability of poets to change the world, citing Blake's "mind forg'd manacles" and the mental creations devised to keep humanity humbled and in service to vices and entropy.

Their scenes are a warning of dreamers to merely imagine freedoms without adhering to the necessary discipline and effort to make it true. "So often the airy ship of dreams is dashed," Byron warns.

The Marquis, Mob and Boy watch the 120 DAYS OF SODOM play out, a satire of "enlightened" authority figures who dissent and abuse power for the sake of abstract principles, leading to the destruction of the world via atomic destruction, the application of the "light of reason" taken to its most potent form. It's not too different than the eventual shift of humanity from matter to light when the world ends, but it's a journey undertaken, one hopes, with the consent of all, not a sentence issued from on high. The figures revel in breaking the norms and ethics but are driven by their philosophy of absolute humanism. The ending is created by panic; the authority can't leave the castle of depravity they created. They feel trapped, caught in a bottleneck by a logical dead-end. This destructive ending is a fear of King Mob.

"We want to remind people where the exits are," he says. "We want to show people how to make their own exits, even if they have to use dynamite." Again, the expansion of options beyond the norm is underscored. Enlightenment can reach even the enemies because, ultimately, they are not an enemy, but a fellow game player.

THE IDENTITY
The enemies of the Invisibles then take on a new role. They are not primarily seeking to destroy so much as offer an obstacle, forcing the player to adopt new tactics, break habits, learn new skills and dust off their brains so they can maneuver through the game and come out the other side altered and educated.

Characters within the game realize that the Archons and their agents are possibly other players jacked in to the same unit and may benefit just as much with a win. The motives of the players take a back seat to the lessons they may learn during the game and all players may reach the same conclusion, reaping the same rewards and reach Nirvana, but by different paths. The jackals in TOMB RAIDER aren't really demonic dogs, but means to test ability.

Dane is confronted by a pack of hunters who prey on London's homeless, but comes to learn that they are really the Invisibles cell in disguise to scare him. The hunters are a real threat and they work for the Archons but the cell wants to spur Dane into acknowledging danger about him without actually exposing him to it. They're toughening him up, and the villains throughout the comic do the same for every character at different extremes of threat.

An escort for the Invisibles while they are in the past bemoans, "In these days, it's hard to be sure who is working for whom ... half the time I don't even remember which side I started on."

The piano player holds up the benevolent two-finger hand gesture of the pope, demonstrating how its shadow looks like a horned devil. What appears as good can be evil and vice-versa. The Invisibles cell is made up of people adopting alternate names and identities to focus their core values and playing at structured identification. Five members represent classical five elements of matter. Lord Fanny, ahem, straddles the lines between genders. Boy is a girl. Jack Frost is a hothead trying to be "cool." Ragged Robin is later revealed to be a very "together" girl, disregarding the glossolalia from the Baptists' head because she already knows what she wants. King Mob has no desire to rule anything, and distrusts anything to incubate mob mentality.

A rave attendee adopts the role of an S&M slave even though he mourns the death of the free love movement, a reminder to readers (whom he seems to address directly) that players in the game may adopt identities beyond freedom fighters and that submergence into a fetish -- even a bondage slave -- frees some facet of the sum personality. Slavery=freedom. A loss of identity better defines a personality.

THE INVISIBLES is a giant duality parade. Yin-yang swim alongside each other and good/evil work their communal way to an ending each expects to win, with the evolution benefiting both.

"I have no wish to live in anyone's perfect world but my own." The Marquis says.

"Exactly," Mob reacts. "That's why we're trying to pull off a track that'll result in everyone getting exactly the kind of world they want. Everyone including the enemy."

Shelley cements his convictions thus: "Where is the love, beauty and truth we seek but in the mind? ... The Home of all hearts, untouched by time and pain? Here [points to his head]. Waiting for us to grow up and recognize it and come home."

Tom instructs Dane of the potential, saying his mind "is like all our heads: ... whole universes can fit in there!"

But let's conclude with The Marquis; thoughts, which also wrap up this arc:

I dreamed of scented rooms and endless permutations of identity ... A world of gorgeous clothes and cosmetics and music and endless fulfillment.

" ... We will become the forerunner of an outrageous new species ... There is no more time. I close my eyes. And in my mind, I see the sun rise on a new and better world."

Play the game, kids. Join the party.

THE COMIC
THE INVISIBLES is a masterpiece and I don't toss that word around loosely. As deep as Morrison's earlier, criminally unknown FLEX MENTALLO and as bizarre as his DOOM PATROL run, THE INVISIBLES constantly flashes forward and backward later on in the run. The flashes flutter around the very linear war storyline even as Morrison later develops the movement of timesuits and fiction suits. THE INVISIBLES: SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION is, surprise, the most straight-forward of the collections. I hope you find that somewhat encouraging.

Also recurring throughout the series is the Harlequin, a three-body entity that seems to pop up momentarily as shadows in issue seven, page nine. The Harlequin acts as a game cheat-code provider and provides information and access to the hand of Glory, a Game Shark for their reality. I mention this only because the aforementioned appearance may complete anyone's efforts to track their progress of the title.

Morrison made no effort to hide how dense the book is, in terms of peripheral information if not the Invisibles war. He also doesn't disguise how he came to piece together the story and style. Morrison admits to many drug experimentations, alternative methods of healing and therapy following a health scare, a real-life encounter with the Grays and excursions into various subcultures. He's walked the walk and now he's talking the talk.

What is THE INVISIBLES? It's pretty people and cool gadgets fighting tentacled shadow demons for the betterment of the universe. As a comic, you can't get much better a premise to use the conventions of the medium. The cosmos, machinery, violence, dimensional hopscotch and dramatic poses -- how can it not appeal to a wide audience? It's a cool counterculture battle. And those who would demand more from such a story need only follow a reference to McKenna, the I Ching, voodoo, sigils and cyberpunk. And those who would demand even more can follow the philosophical implications of human evolution helped along by a game including transvestites, blue mold and Molotov cocktails.

Specifically dealing with this collection of stories, THE INVISIBLES: SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION is a fine microcosm of THE INVISIBLES. But I can't picture anyone being able to completely dig this comic without reading the whole series. Repeatedly. Often. This is not an easy book to grasp and it has scared off many readers because it's a deep body of water to traverse. But it is surely worth the effort. This title is meant and written to be read more than once. Exploit that.

Ultimately, you get out of THE INVISIBLES what you put into it.

In the baptism scene, Tom grabs Dane by the ears and forces him to stare into the Invisibles badge (a blank white button). I imagine hordes of readers being grabbed by their collective ears by avid fans and forced to confront the comic.

"Look!" Tom screams. "The badge is a mirror. ... Look at yourself in the mirror. What do you see?"

Jack, confused, hesitant, and bleeding from the badge, stares at his shaking hand and the pin in his palm. The white, like Nietzsche's abyss, stares back at him.

"There's nothing. Nothing. Nuh ---"

And then he realizes that white isn't a void; it's an all-encompassing ether. Eternity and whatever you choose to find is in there.

This is one of the few titles pushing the ability of the medium to communicate and perpetuate an idea. This is art. This is escapist. This is pure optimism underneath a pink grenade. As I said, it's about everything.

Read it. Let it dissolve on your tongue. Let it sink in. Try some more.

Return and begin again.

Strongly Recommended