Zeb Larson reviews Invisible Republic #2…
The brutal rise of Arthur McBride. Arthur and Maia are on the run in a hostile city after their act of violence at Bright Rock Beach. Meanwhile, disgraced reporter Croger Babb is threatened by a conspiracy from the past as he investigates Maia’s story.
Invisible Republic is going to be a serious slow-burn comic, despite the fact that there is a fair amount of action in each issue. Hardman is doing a very commendable job in withholding information from the readers, giving us a little bit at a time to keep us going. I will not be discussing spoilers in this review.
Babb is convinced he’s found a big break, and he manages to convince a dubious editor to trust him. Tracking down Maia Remeron is a bit more difficult, however, especially once he realizes that the Malory regime kept all of its records on paper. There are also people who don’t want him to find what he’s looking for. In the past, McBride and Remeron clean up the soldiers they killed and make for the city. When they get there, they don’t find a warm welcome, nor much luck in finding work. Like Babb, they’ve got pursuers of their own that are determined to track them down.
What’s interesting is that for a comic that consists of flashbacks between the past and the present, we actually know more about the past than we do about the present. Compare this to something like Better Call Saul, where we as the audience all know what Saul Goodman’s trajectory was. At best, we have an imperfect grasp of the end trajectory for these characters. All we know about Babb is that he botched a story, and all we know about the Malory regime is that it’s collapsed. Within that, there are a great many unanswered questions. What kind of dictator was Arthur McBride? What is Avalon’s relationship to other planets, and to Earth? Just what did Babb do? And now that McBride is gone, why are there people still covering it up?
This makes for an interesting narrative approach. The reader has fewer obvious clues to focus in as to McBride’s nature, or how his early actions prefigure the man he becomes. We know that he’s violent and can rationalize his actions, but that’s pretty much every dictator in history. You have to be willing to let this comic book withhold answers and provide them slowly, which means feeling adrift. It’s not the most comfortable feeling, but I also suspect that the story will make sense when we have another four or five issues under our belt.
The downside of Hardman’s approach is that we still don’t know Remeron, Babb, or McBride very well. Subsequent issues will hopefully flesh their characters out a little bit more. If Invisible Republic is the inside story of the McBride regime, we need to see more of McBride and what he wants. I’m excited for it, though, and I think Hardman is waiting to give that next piece.
Zeb Larson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pnc360pUDRI&list=PL18yMRIfoszFLSgML6ddazw180SXMvMz5
Originally published April 22, 2015. Updated April 14, 2018.
