Of course, he’s also been using that shovel to dig trenches in Argentina.
At one point it’s at the funeral for Bobby’s dad: at another, he’s digging a hole himself to bury his dead dog. A repeated image which spurs the comic forwards is of a spade going down into the Earth. The issue shifts back and forth in time in a fashion which wouldn’t work on the screen or stage, and it allows Parkhouse and Morrison to transition between shared memories.
What the comic format offers which no other format can really offer – not even theatre – is pace and time.
#THE INVISIBLES SERIES#
It’s not shown in any kind of vivid fashion: this is a working-class story which doesn’t put on airs and graces despite the past and future issues of the series it’s sandwiched into. Then he puts on his superhero helmet and races off to his death. Bobby banters with his team in a locker room as they do their shoelaces up, quarrel about biscuits, and talk about the packed lunches their wives have made for them. Here, there’s time taken to establish a scene, and establish a tone. There things were more colourful, and the pace ran a lot faster through each page. Rather than exploring the mystifying spectacular, Best Man Falls acts true to life in as simple and bland a fashion as possible.Įven the superhero-y scene at the end where we see him die is portrayed more typically than it was when it first appeared in the very first issue of the series. Cultural touchpoints scatter through the background in flashes: Live Aid appears on television Bobby eats a pack of Seabrook crisps. There’s realism in each section, as Parkhouse depicts a British fireworks display as it would appear: the roman candle sat on a plank of wood on top of a brazier rockets launched from within an old glass bottle. The story could sit between Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and Kes for it’s interest in offering a authentic and detailed portrayal of its lead character. “Best Man Fall” offers kitchen sink dramatics in classic British style, looking at Bobby within the context of decades of “angry young men”. Forget superstring theory or occult magic as influences for Morrison: there’s as much of John Osborne in this issue as you’ll find anywhere in comics.
“Best Man Fall” comes straight from the kitchen sink, and Bobby comes from a distinctive lineage of disgruntled young men, angrily lashing out at the world around them with a pint in hand. In giving us a look at the life of a normal man who is drawn into the superviolent world of heroes and comics as a whole, what Morrison and artist Steve Parkhouse are offering is a distinctive working-class-hero story, a type of narrative which only works within and from a British mindset. Each segment is a whole piece, a slice of true life which stands by itself as well as being a snapshot of a short moment in history. He hits all the parts of his life which mattered to him, and the storytelling takes great pains to sew together all those elements into an authentic and true life, even as that life is cut short.įor all the exploration of that linear/non-linear sequential arrangement of Bobby’s memories, what’s as interesting is how clearly defined each of those memories are by themselves. He thinks to being a child, being an adult, being a dad, being scared, being happy. He lives, he dies, and as he dies he remembers elements of his life in scattered – but carefully arranged, and actually fairly linear – form. He ultimately signs up to become an armed guard, at which point he runs into one of the comic’s actual protagonists and is promptly shot through the face without much ceremony. It tells the story of a working class man called Bobby, who goes from a dreaming, nervous child to a war-scarred veteran of the Falklands, and then into a miserable domestic abuser and washout. The issue itself is one of those celebrated ones – it made our Top 100 Comics List, in fact – and it achieved that acclaim largely through it’s perceived non-linear storytelling. Even a writer as carefully manic as Morrison can’t be about dadaism and meditation all the time, and it’s with a comic like The Invisibles #12 that you see some of their working class roots grow out into narrative. And although it doesn’t come up particularly often in their comics works – particularly in something as ambitious as The Invisibles, which often feels like a life statement from a writer published ahead of time – that background does sometimes drag itself back up into the work. For all the drugs, surrealism, or chaos magic which are frequently invoked along with their name, Grant Morrison is a normal person who grew up in Scotland, has a family, and lives (to the best of my knowledge!) a normal life. Every so often, Grant Morrison reminds you they’re human.
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