Book of the Week 04/22/2015: Invisible Republic #2

The study of history is infused with an unacknowledged trust. We accept facts and renditions of events that we did not witness, taking the words of a stranger as our only evidence. This concept is the catalyst for clichés like “history is written by the winners,” and “no man is the villain of his own story.” The spouting of these mantras is often associated with conspiracy theorist. Zealots who believe we are being manipulated by hood wearing free masons or aliens, via a false, propagated history filled with cartoon villains and fabricated heroes. Invisible Republic #2 is about the rational and human unpacking of these conspiratorial concepts. Humans have settled on a moon called Avalon that is very far from earth. Avalon’s dictator Arthur McBride has just been over thrown and reporter Croger Babb has been sent there to document the plight of refugees. Through an admittedly deus ex machine plot device, Babb stumbles upon a journal that belonged to McBride’s cousin. The journal portrays the now disposed despot form an untold angle. The story bounces from McBride’s early years as told in the journal and Babb on post revolution Avalon. Invisible Republic’s heart is not in how the young McBride’s story will eventually see him morph into a dictator but rather in the idea that the tyrannical caricature of him propagated in present day is not as true as the public might believe. The story keeps his true nature ambiguous. The book’s refusal to stamp McBride as a clearly tyrannical evil or the victim of a new regime’s smear campaign prevents the reader from settling, thus making even the smallest reveal of his nature feel like a plot twist. The young McBride is as far from being a good man as he is from being a villain. He is violent and engorged with idealism but none of his goals or ideas seem unfair or immoral. He belongs to an indentured working class, victimized by over controlling and underpaying corporations. This creates a working environment similar to pre-unionized coal mining in the 1800s, where companies reclaimed the majority of worker’s wages in rent for company owned housing and other required fees. The story of how McBride climbed from serf to ruler is still untold and will likely be full of morally dubious actions. The way McBride has been characterized leaves lots of room for him to make his transformation to scoundrel, but the reader gets to see a complex and human side of him. When we study Hitler or Stalin, we do not visualize the times they forgot to tie their shoes or missed fastening a button on their shirt. By showing us these small moments, the reader gets a more complex picture and all of a sudden we are in an uncomfortable spot. Is this comic, really trying to get us to route for a Hitler allegory? Are they succeeding? The true and perceived depths of McBride’s crimes are yet to be revealed. The brash and desperate young version is not likable but he is sympathetic. He has the bitten and snappy qualities of a kicked dog, dangerous and unpredictable yet understood. The old and now dethroned McBride has only been shown to us through propaganda posters peeling from the bombed out skeletal walls of his war torn moon, and through the laments of his impoverished former subjects. So we are still left to deduce which McBride is the true version. Writers Gabriel Hardman and Corinna Bechko seem to take joy in withholding of most crucial evidence in that mystery. They continue to pace the series with mastery, never giving the reader the dissatisfied feeling of being teased, but rather dangling the answers, promising that resolution is always on the page after next. Only two issues in, Invisible Republic has gone deeper into its uncomfortable yet thought provoking ideas than most series will in their entire runs. There is no question it is afraid to ask and no matter how heavy or big its thinking seems it is always digestible and enjoyable crafting a mysterious and interesting plot around its messages. It is fast becoming one of the industries must reads.