Travis Hedge Coke
“To Be an Invisible, in the Springtime:” A Prelude
Introduction by Matt Meyer, Two-Fisted Comic Watch Editor-in-Chief
Rules for writing an introduction:
- Always state that the author (who must always be unassuming or even meek) Changed Everything.
- Always state that the work itself Changed Everything.
- Fake sincerity in the sincerest way possible.
- Be sure to give a synopsis of how/why you were asked to write this introduction, and how being given the opportunity humbled you.
- Write a hacky, ironic list of rules for the introduction that pretend not to adhere to their own rules while simultaneously reinforcing them.
- Admit that writing introductions really isn’t your thing.
- Lie.
…well, maybe not lie-lie, but bend the truth, at least.
I’ve had the pleasure of editing Travis Hedge Coke for something in the neighborhood of three years now. Their (always they/them; they’ll politely insist their pronouns are your choice, but seriously: they/them. Don’t be that person.) weekly Patricia Highsmash column has been running like clockwork on the site for almost as long as the site has existed, which, in the macro of the internet’s attention span, is really saying something. Travis is dedicated, works hard, and routinely challenges readers (and me) to think not just outside of the box, but beyond the box and into a whole ‘nother time warp.
Travis, you see, doesn’t see the world like anyone else I’ve ever encountered. I don’t feel like they’ll mind when I share some broad strokes of their life, because they’re quite an open book already. Travis is Indigenous, queer, intersex; they teach; they’re literate; their knowledge of history, society, popular culture, and the intersections thereof is second to none. Their lived experience has cross-pollinated with their Megamind-esque knowledge of just about everything has rendered a unique and never-duplicated reading experience week-in, week-out.
So when I once off-handedly mentioned to Travis that maybe they should write something on Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles, I expected a column. Maybe a small run of columns, even. Either way, I knew I could count on them to put their unique stamp on it.
What I got instead was an entire book’s worth of columns, complete with a series bible that resembled a menu at one of those avant-garde bars where you quaff the alcohol rather than imbibe it:
Patrica Highsmash
There Is Nothing Left To Say (On The Invisibles)
by Travis Hedge Coke
“Truth speaks best in the language of poetry and symbolism.”
One of the first lines of thousands of quotable lines in The Invisibles.
“Truth speaks best in the language of poetry and symbolism, I think.”
Not a guidebook, not annotations, not a syllabus or glossary. To talk about, around, and through stuff.
The Invisibles, a comic by Jill Thompson, Philip Bond, Grant Morrison, Danny Vozzo, Phil Jimenez, Shelly Bond, Ellie DeVille, and dozens of others. The Invisibles, a comic made and remade by players, audiences, readers, fans, academics, and industries every day. The Invisibles, a comic owned by creator and initiator, Grant Morrison.
The Invisibles is a spell to connect us to one another and to remind us we are Invisible.
So, this is us.
“What do you say to that, my friend, eh?”
1
Intro
Knight of Pentacles
Two of Cups
Strength
Page of Swords
Justice
Eight of Pentacles
The High Priestess
2
Water
01 Robin’s Fic
Page of Pentacles
02 How the Helga Get in Here?
Six of Pentacles
03 Boy Our Embarrassment
Six of Wands
04 Once I Was a Little Light
Five of Swords
05 Sacrificial Greed
Ten of Swords
06 Dreams Like This
The Moon
07 Whose to Tell
Ten of Cups
08 The Dead Weight
Ten of Wands
09 Fantasy Fanny
Queen of Swords
10 Non-causal Time
Queen of Cups
11 What Does Trance Need With Conflict?
Two of Wands
12 Practical Techniques Vol 1
King of Cups
13 The Fanfic of the Book of the Movie
Ace of Pentacles
3
Wood
by Elizabeth Vongvisith
01 Batman
King of Wands
02 Aged Out?
Three of Pentacles
03 Una is the Superior Jerry
Knight of Cups
04 Ethnic Politic
Five of Pentacles
05 Mob’s Death
Knight of Wands
06 Dane’s Trip
Page of Wands
07 Take People As They Come
Four of Swords
08 The Same Shows as You
Seven of Wands
09 The Past We Read About
Eight of Swords
10 No Future
Seven of Swords
11 Style/Flubs
Ace of Wands
12 White Privilege
Nine of Swords
13 The Right to Be Angry
King of Swords
4
Fire
[TBA] 
01 Practical Techniques Vol 2
The Empress
02 So It Is Written
Ten of Pentacles
03 New Colonial
The World
04 De Sade’s Ghost
Judgment
05 Purpose in Story
Queen of Pentacles
06 The Liberty Calendar
Wheel of Fortune
07 Class Commercialism
King of Pentacles
08 Character Design
The Sun
09 Ethnic Magick.Stereotype Life
The Emperor
10 Autonomy
Nine of Pentacles
11 Girls to the Front
Queen of Wands
12 A Car is Waiting
The Chariot
13 The Invisible Arts
Temperance
5
Dirt
01 The Devil’s Walk
The Devil
The Hanged Man
02 Off-Queer
Ace of Swords
Six of Cups
03 Don’t Make Me Say David Lynch
Nine of Cups
Ace of Cups
04 Gander Politics
Three of Cups
Four of Pentacles
05 Universal Drag
Five of Cups
The Hermit
06 Shared Territory/Lonely Symmetries
Page of Cups
Two of Pentacles
07 Five Children and It
The Tower
6
Metal
[TBA] 
01 Cops and Protesters
The Lovers
Seven of Pentacles
The Hierophant
02 Holy Fucking Terror
The Magician
Five of Wands
The Star
03 Hypersigil
Knight of Swords
Four of Wands
Eight of Wands
04 An Old Man Folds Paper
Nine of Wands
Death
The Fool
Eight of Cups
7
Outro
Two of Swords
Seven of Cups
Three of Wands
Four of Cups
Six of Swords
Three of Swords
[TBA]
…You see? Pure madness of the highest, most blessedly anarchic order.
But then, I should have known what I was getting myself into. After all, The Invisibles is kind of that comic, and perhaps the perfect challenge for Travis’s unique set of skills and introspections. Given that it’s been nearly three decades since it began (!) on DC’s then-fresh and blossoming Vertigo imprint, here’s a short primer: Invisibles imagines a world where every conspiracy theory you’ve ever heard is true; where cells of terrorist-adjacent yet nevertheless cool freedom fighters live on the fringes of society and fight for everybody’s freedom. Along the way of its sixty issues, the series also touches on time travel, astral projection, the entrapments of capitalism, the Marquis de Sade, something that’s never quite defined called Barbelith, things that may or may not have inspired The Matrix, bruja, cross-dressing, LGBTQ normalization, police violence, Y2K paranoia, British classism, alien abduction, one hell of a dance-off, homelessness, the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012, copious amounts of drugs, fictional personas, giant bugs, royalty as lizard-people, and I think the theory of the lost continent of Atlantis.
In other words, it’s a lot.
But it’s a gorgeous mess of a lot.
Morrison (accompanied by an astonishing array of artists throughout such as Steve Yeowell, Phil Jimenez, Jill Thompson, Chris Weston, Tommy Lee Edwards, Phillip Bond, John Ridgway, Mark Buckingham, and more) was, by 1994, more or less able to write their own ticket. One of comics’ brightest stars, they were part of a generation of creators who could sell a comic sight unseen based solely on their name and star wattage. So when Vertigo gave Morrison the chance to launch whatever the hell book they wanted, they knew they had a license to print money: thus was The Invisibles birthed, a hyperbaric crossbreeding of every odd, weird, or strange thing Morrison had ever dabbled or been interested in writ into one (mostly coherent) narrative.
With all of that in mind – really, the shotgun marriage of Travis Hedge Coke to The Invisibles makes the kind of perfectly obvious sense that really should have come about far, far sooner than it did. But alas. Hindsight is ever the editor’s burden.
So of course, when Travis began turning in their initial thesis for what would become “There’s Nothing Left To Say on The Invisibles,” I couldn’t wait to read it. I knew I’d be in for a treat of the acid literature variety, with all manner of insights, side quests, secret passageways, bons mots, and merry-go-rounds in the signature Hedge Coke style. Smashing their style together with Morrison’s most sprawling, abstract, obtuse work just made sense.
And even though I knew, roughly, what to expect, I was still pleasantly, thrillingly surprised by the end result. It was exactly what I expected – and simultaneously the opposite.
You’ll be surprised, too.
NEXT WEEK in THERE IS NOTHING LEFT TO SAY (ON THE INVISIBLES):
I WAS A LIBRARIAN’S ASSISTANT, PART 1