Whitechapel - Read it for free. One day only.

Read it for free. One day only.

Brendan McGinley — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 09:03:07 -0800

INVISIBLE, INC. is the story of a reporter who discovers why supervillains don't try to take over the world anymore; they did it decades ago.

It's also where I scream my frustrations with the press, politicans and priests who lead the world astray. Power protects power, violence vindicates violence, and money makes money. This is not the world we should have.

After much tinkering, you can read the final version free online till tomorrow morning. After that, it gets serialized on my website and you won't see the last page for months.

And all I ask in return is you tell me what you think.

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Eithin — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 09:28:26 -0800

That's rather cool, and I want to read the sequels now!

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kahavi — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 11:52:26 -0800

Oh wow, that was rather effective. Great job! If there's a sequel, please let us know.

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Alan Tyson — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 13:09:57 -0800

The story itself is very nice, but I think it could be served much better without quite so many captions. I can tell you've got a lot to say, but to be honest, I found myself skipping over them a lot. Some trimming is definitely in order here.

Nevertheless, a very cool concept and some really nice artwork! The subtext of Vera and Ultraviolet's past relationship was nicely done, particularly.

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virtuasamurai — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 13:20:18 -0800

This is a weird coincidence, I was looking at Tomas Aira's portfolio work earlier this morning. He's in the same Argentinian comics group as Roberto Viacava, who's drawing Absolution. Aira's very good.

http://altercomicsaira.blogspot.com/

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cjstevens — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 14:17:35 -0800

Thanks Brendan.

Haven't got time to read this yet (will save for later) but on first glance I think the art is fantastic, vivid and original style!

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mister hex — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 14:49:56 -0800

Art - very nice, effective, lovely color. I like the angles and the choices, the story moves effectively and the pages are well composed, leading the eye without dragging it along. It had rhythm. Good job.

The story - very interesting and engaging. Love the title. Love the Yellow Book, the wider implications, the twist at the end of this, I presume, the first chapter. I would DEFINITELY follow up on this and even pay money to read it. Good job.

Criticisms (and please take this as what I think, which is what you asked for, so buckle up, buttercup) :

Some of the anatomy was a little wrong somehow. And I'm no expert but computers were used in the making of this and I'm an ink-on-paper old-fashioned curmudgeon type of man. Seems lazy to me to rely on damn mechanicals. Then again, I'm no artist and maybe that's why. Those are my art criticisms and they're mild.

I'll agree with Artemis that there are too many captions and too many say the same thing. One last edit to eliminate maybe 10% (maybe less!) or combine a few. One last edit and be ruthless. I am a writer myself and I like your writing, a lot and as one with an affinity with the subject matter (conspiracies, super-heroes, good story-telling), you handle it very well. That the dialogue was excellent makes the more purple captions stand out. My writing criticisms are equally mild and both are out-weighed by my praise for this work of yours.

Good Job, both of you! It's Wanted-meets-Watchmen (not to reduce it to a simplistic blurb but somebody had to say it.)

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DC — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 15:30:48 -0800

Loved it. This is something I would also buy.
I third the caption thing. There are too many of them and at one point I wasn't paying any attention to them. I talk for myself as a reader, I like captions at the minimum. If I have to split my attention, then it should be on moments where one thing (caption or action) is more important than the other. Right in the beginning it's too much information to take at one with the action, characters, setting, etc. and also the captions.
Liked that “alien invasion thing last summer”. Is it some hint at Secret Invasion?;)
You're the writer, you know the characters better then we do but that guy in the beggining, if he's powerfull enough to take those beams like it was nothing, he should be able to survive a fall, right?

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KeeperofManyNames — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:30:12 -0800

I fourth the caption complaint.

However, otherwise I found it captivating and intriguing. I would love to see more of this and follow where it goes.

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LBA — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 19:05:43 -0800

I really like it

I enjoyed the twist wrt to the Memory Erasure
I loved the artwork (computer generated or not, it was very good)

I would suggest ghosting or making more transparent Rachael TIerney's head in the top left corners of the flashback panels (it was a little distracting)
as others have mentioned you might want to edit down the captions

I enjoyed the story a lot, you told a good story which is one of the highest compliments I can pay.

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stsparky — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 19:51:55 -0800

Pretty compelling story for one, though the suspected "underground" cape who asked to bring her friend to "the light" had a near unreadable font.

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Brendan McGinley — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 21:24:52 -0800

Well this is going better than I'd hoped. I fifth the caption complaint, and that's what all these edits have been for: boiling and boiling the meaning and foreshadowing down while trying to keep the story at hand on top. It still comes off as in love with its own voice. A little more to go, is the consensus. Thank you, all.

@VirtuaSamurai -- Yeah, Tomas is fantastic, and the PDFs don't really show it, crunched as they are. His blog gives better views of the art, but he shines brightest at the end there. I don't know if you notice, but we decided he'd paint most of the book to contrast Rachel's very shiny, 4-color anecdote. Then, when her world imposes itself on Vera's at the end, the art changes into a hybrid of both...painting within the ink lines. That's Tomas at his best, in my opinion

@DC - The funny thing is, I wrote that like...gosh, four or five years ago, nodding to the big summer crossovers that were making a comeback. It's just the timing, is all. In the script to issue #4 the invasion gets mentioned again as a pretty benevolent one because there are these race/colonization themes, which I hear is going on in Secret Invasion? Ehh. Ideaspace giveth and taketh away; what can you do?

As for the giveth: it was a Krill invasion, and much as I love the hybridization of the Kree/Skrull names, that's actual conspiracy lore for the Yellow Book.

Tumor, the guy who got splatted, isn't invulnerable. Dr. Radium's blasts reverse Tumor's possession of another body, so he was trying to protect Ulti-Might and accidentally blasted the poor dweeb out of his hands. It's all kind of inessential to this chapter, but we get into it deep in the next issue (as seen on Tomas' blog).

Thanks again for all the honesty.

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Brendan McGinley — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 21:28:22 -0800

@ stsparky -- I know. Again: PDF, booooo.

It's a little more legible on paper/JPG, and in addition to being a good representation of his voice, it's actually a big clue as to who he is, so bear with me and I'll try to make it worth your while.

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LA_Gomez — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 04:20:05 -0800

I was drawn in by the artwork(no pun intended) but I stayed for the story. I thought it was good.
I look forward to seeing more.

I wish you the best and Good Luck.

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muse hick — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 07:24:09 -0800

i posted a review on my site

as you said it was only up for one day do you have a link for where you are serialising it and i'll put that up on my site?

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Brendan McGinley — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 07:35:21 -0800

Gosh, that's...wow. Thank you.

The plan, unless any publisher wants to make me wrong, is trickle it out a few panels a day or week on www.indeliblecomics.com. I hope to wrestle Adobe Flash into submission by New Year's. I'm not terrifically computer savvy, as the website demonstrates. I can't even get an RSS for the sidebar going.

Once the first is published and has built up an audience, we'll see about printing, either all six floppies, or run the first five issues run online, then drop the sixth exclusively into a TPB. That's a fair deal for everyone, I figure.

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Brendan McGinley — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 21:13:37 -0800

Well, what the heck. New version here with some trims and tweaks.

I spent all evening editing the darn thing instead of recuperating, it might as well fly. I'll keep it up till the Flash version is live.

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johnmuth — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 22:55:49 -0800

Okay, I didn't get to read the version you originally posted, but just finished with the link you posted tonight...

I like it, a lot. My biggest issue - and complaint is with most of the lettering, in general. But, specifically with the caption text. The boxes are too close to the words, the placement lines up strangely in quite a few places - on the first page, there are a couple of strange tangents that the captions make with the framed article about the "Victory's Four Killed". I think that the font used could also be changed to something a little more, well, caption-ish, and not so dialogue like. Sort of like a typewriter font, or a less scripty/handwritten look. I would also say, that maybe it would help if the captions came more together - more than one sentence per box - and that way the text could be contained on the page, to a more manageable size as opposed to the little boxes all over a page.

I think that tweaking that would help make the text more readable, even if the prose itself is kind of superfluous and "purplish" as someone said above.

But, a good start. Very intriguing and I'd be very eager to follow this story further. :)

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Brendan McGinley — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 07:22:25 -0800

Well this seemed to work pretty well the last time, so here's the deal:

I'll be adding a page a week from a new comic, Heist.

The first complete scene is up now. By me, Andres Ponce, Rocio Zucchi and Josh Elder. It updates every Tuesday at www.indeliblecomics.com.

Invisible, Inc. is now in pretty flash, and I'll be leaving issue #1 up in full, updating from issue #2, also once a week.

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rickiep00h — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 08:49:34 -0800

Not sure if the logos and trademarks and stuff (especially in the final panel) are kosher.

I will say that it seems a little stilted at times, trying to get out a ton of exposition done at once. But other than that, I'm digging it.

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Brendan McGinley — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 09:37:18 -0800

Oh, the taskbar logos -- shoot, I wouldn't have even realized that. Thanks.

Everything else should be okay. Obviously the Herald and Timely News are supposed to be their real-life counterparts, but that's no different from the Bugle in the Spider-Man flicks.

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rickiep00h — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:04:16 -0800

Right. Again, looks great! I can definitely see this as a mini... are you intending to go long-form with it? (Sorry if you mention it in the OP, I'll get to looking at that later...)

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Brendan McGinley — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 05:46:56 -0800

Yeah, long-form but limited. There are six issues in the arc and four arcs including this one, plus a couple of one-shot gutter tales in between each one. It'll equate to 36 issues in all, I figure. I'd like to get to the point where we're posting a page or two a day, otherwise an issue will take an entire year.

Tomas is terrific. He's even more insane for detail than I am. I'm sending him references of NYC architecture and he asks for close-ups of garbage cans to ensure accuracy. We're both in it for the long haul.

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Brendan McGinley — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 23:31:48 -0800

New page are up at the start of every week as of today: Invisible, Inc. and Heist, and that's the first and last notice you'll get from me on the matter.

And yeah, I'm still going to have another go at those InvInc caption boxes. They need to feed into the imagery more.

I need sleep.

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Brendan McGinley — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 14:47:54 -0800

I moved all the code and we're much advanced on the HEIST pages, so I guess today is the official release date rather than the preview it had been.

I feel yay.

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Brendan McGinley — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:59:43 -0700

I'm a fan of letter columns. They've evaporated with the rise of the message board, but I think it's good to include a symposium in the serialized edition. It reinforces the shared experience.

So, with captions revised, I prep Invisible Inc. #1 for print, I'm putting together a letter column. If you've read it, I'd appreciate your chiming in, so long as you're okay with your letter ending up in the printed version. It's fine if you hate it, just hate it articulately. Here's the final print version.

You can either reply here, or email me b r e n d a n -->at<-- indeliblecomics.com

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Fan — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:35:04 -0700

> And all I ask in return is you tell me what you think.

I think I understood most of the story, but I didn't understand many of the characters (which is OK), and didn't understand a lot of the dialog and monologue (which is less OK).

- The opening characters: are they superheroes? I didn't get that until second reading; they look like villains.
- What "paradigm"? What "strange man from another world"?
- When you write "what moves your hand to turn these pages", are you breaking the 4th wall, otherwise who is "you" and what are "these pages"?

Etc. (there's plenty more I didn't understand).

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Brendan McGinley — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 13:18:01 -0800

Issue #2: "Widowed Lines" is complete as of today.

Enjoy!