Zeb Larson reviews Invisible Republic #6…
NEW STORY ARC. This war just got asymmetrical.
Invisible Republic is a book that has steadily built up steam in the last few issues, and that building really pays off here. The book has just begun its second arc, and it introduces a few new plot elements that will help this story arc move quickly. Invisible Republic may just be the tightly-written geopolitical thriller that comics need right now, and the twists and turns are becoming interesting. I will be discussing spoilers in this review, so consider yourself forewarned.
The issues opens with the Baronness Pannonica of Kappa Valley returning to Maidstone after a thirty-year exile. Croger and Woronov are on their way to talk with Maia, who’s holed up in a dilapidated building in Accra. She tells them a bit more about her time with Arthur while we flashback to the aftermath of the shooting in the square. Luis is dying, but Arthur refuses to send for help or bring a doctor into the penthouse they’re hiding in. With a bit of digging though, Maia finds in bed with the owner-the very same Pannonica who has come back to Maidstone forty-two years in the present. More importantly, in speaking with Christoph and other members of the group, Maia learns that Arthur is less of a leader than she thought. In fact, he’s not particularly respected. Back in the present, Maia tells Croger and Woronov that she plans to position herself for leadership as a gunship moves in.
Part of what helps this new issue is that events in the past and the present have immediate relevance for each other. For much of the first arc, the action was mostly in Croger learning about the past; even when he was nearly getting tossed off of a building, it wasn’t because of some convergence in events. Here, the past that’s revealed and the present feel much more interconnected, which helps the whole book to read more tightly. Pannonica’s relevance is immediately important, but we don’t know any of the history of her exile yet. This is a strong hook.
I’m also fascinated by the naming conventions of the galaxy. Kent is another planet and an English place-name. Accra is the capital of the African nation of Ghana. The Kappa Valley is a Greek name. It’s not a major detail (at least yet), but it’s a reminder that all of this was founded by explorers who named everything after what they knew on earth.
Those tiny details aside though, this raises a lot of interesting questions about Maia. Her revelation that she wants to be the new leader of Maidstone at first struck me strangely, because we’ve seen no evidence of ambition or drive for leadership. Yet I’m not sure that it’s an inconsistency in the writing, either. How much of what she says can really be taken seriously? Her diary might seem to be genuine, but Croger’s discovery and the convenient run-in with Maia’s man could all have been bait to draw him deeper into this story. After all, we learned that Arthur was not taken seriously by the members of his group and was basically the “mascot.” Perhaps Maia never showed up in the history books because that allowed her to be the power behind the throne more easily.
Conversely, Arthur may have been the real power as we’ve always thought. Joseph Stalin’s peers ignored him and mocked him as a petty bureaucrat, one who shuffled paperwork and never contributed anything of theoretical brilliance to communist theory and orthodoxy. Most of those same peers ended up in shallow graves for dramatically underestimating him. If we take Maia at face-value, Arthur was not particularly ideological or fervent, but he did love power and attention. That’s a perfect template for a dictator.
My earlier skepticism about this series has melted away, at least as long as it keeps producing issues like this. There aren’t enough political thrillers in the world of comics, and this book is a welcome relief.
Rating: 9.3/10
Zeb Larson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng&v=qvTY7eXXIMg
Originally published September 25, 2015. Updated April 14, 2018.
