"Your code name will be Jack Frost"

[wolven7]

Re-reading Grant Morrison's The Invisibles, and I finally realised something about the codenames: They are the things that the characters rail against. "Jack Frost," "King Mob," "Lord Fanny," "Tom O'Bedlam," and all the rest are the epithets and ideals against which they ineffectually raged, or which kept them from feeling the world, from being whole. They took them as their names, to own the concepts, so the concepts could no longer own them, and they turn them inside out to make the concepts and word combinations mean other than their consensus connotations.

That is a beautiful, wonderful concept, and a neat bit of self-conceptual Jujitsu. Well-done, Mr Morrison.

But more than this, it got me thinking: What would my Invisibles code name be? What would yours be?

Who among you is our Tom, willing to name names, unafraid of fallout?

Just a few thoughts...

Comments

[mrvi.livejournal.com]

*grins*

Blame Jon Six for mine. The stream of Morrison's brain you see regarding Division X/The Sweeney/The Professionals/Moorcock/The Prisoner is exactly what first enlivened me. The fact that a number can be a cipher which covers manifold lives and identities which are, in fact, aspects of the whole...

I mean, teacher, dandy, mental martial artist, 'elegant turncoat'...he always appealed far more than King Mob, to me. Fanny was awesome, Jack Frost was an arsehole, Ragged Robin was just hot and Jim Crow with his Zozo gun was fantastic.

I think my top male Invisibles are Mister Six, Tom O'Bedlam and Jim Crow. Female wise, I'd go with Lady Edith, cause *damn*, Fanny, and Helga - I always wanted more Helga. Lots more Helga.

Actually, I think it says a lot about me that aside from Fanny, I preferred the secondary characters to Boy, King Mob, Jack and Robin. King Mob was cool, but I found his style jarred - although I was impressed with his character arc.

King Mob's form of magic actually typifies what irritates me about the 'chaos magic scene', while Tom and Edith and Fanny are essentially oldschool open-handers working with what they have. Mr Six is also weirdly one of those folks who 'doesn't do magic' but he does *something* that looks like it. I think he's possibly the most hardcore antinomian of the lot - going to the other side in order to find the Halequinade. IIRC it's him and Helga who do most of the work with Key 23 etc, and his skill at breaking Sir Miles always made me grin.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

You've reminded me of a few things, here. I'm not back at them, yet, but I will be soon...

[l-the-fangirl.livejournal.com]

You would be The Professor, I think.

I would probably be Otaku under the same logic.