While I had dove deeper into the pile last week than I ever had before, I had only actually gotten to the first part of a larger series. Invisible Kingdom and its vast universe isn’t just confined to a single volume as it ran for fifteen issues, sort of. We’ll get around to talking about those final five issues next week, but for now, we’re going to plunge through the strange space that occupies G. Willow Wilson, Christian Ward, and Sal Cipriano’s second volume of Invisible Kingdom.

Since the events of the previous volume, Grix and her crew were on the run from both their employer, Lux, and the Renunciation church. And from said church they have a new person on their crew, the wayward None Vess that has found a direct monetary link between the biggest company in the system and her new monastery. Since then, the team have been either looking for aid on Vess’s home world or hiding out in the junk rings on the edge of space where Lux throw their accumulated garbage. But in the garbage piles there’s always something else—scavengers in this case. With their ship taken over by Captain Turo and the crew of the Riveter, Grix can only sit and plan while trying to figure out what to do before their ship is melted down into scrap. 

Invisible Kingdom‘s stakes and escalation throughout these first ten issues. keeps the momentum high and the characters moving. We go immediately from our state in the previous arc to Vess’s home planet, to the junk rings, to the ship being taken over, and onto the scavenger ship within the span of roughly thirty pages. Without this movement, we’d have too much time to stop, think, and assess what’s happening, but this isn’t the kind of story that works with a character like Grix. Her continually jumping into situations and causing issues for her crew has been the engine at the center of this story and the pacing reflects that like a mirror. It shows how so much of the medium can work to reinforce certain ideas and character traits—if the character is impetuous, the story needs to reflect every aspect of that and what that does to the world they create around them. 

The deeper into Invisible Kingdom I get, the more I understand why the series had originally won so many awards. As a series, it’s the kind of comics that makes the medium feel fresh with different ideas and approaches to genre storytelling while taking full advantage of the unique aspects of comics to better heighten and highlight the characters at the center. There is a significance to every action that does have a payoff, leading us right to the final stinger before the final volume of the story. 

Get excited. Get expanded.

Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, 510, 651, & 674) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida.