Zeb Larson reviews Invisible republic #3…

Arthur McBride discovers Maia’s secret…and her act of compassion could get them both killed.

Invisible Republic has a lot of promise as a political take on the sci-fi genre. It’s an insider take on the fall of a dictatorship. These are always juicy in real life, so why should this be any different? The problem is that we’re not being given enough information on the politics to really be drawn into the story. Dictators are interesting figures because we want to know what created them; in essence, what makes them different from us. We’re not really getting that here, even in the kind of oppression that the young Arthur faced. Additionally, we know too little about the future to pick out the relevant details about Arthur’s past. I will be discussing spoilers in this review, so consider yourself forewarned.

Croger, still dangling from a ledge from the last issue, drops the bag containing the journal to distract his attacker. A couple of helpful pedestrians help him off and he takes off after his attacker, finding him in the middle of a food distribution crowd. When the packages are dropped, Babb manages to snatch his bag back and retreat to a safe place. In the past, Arthur is furious with Maia for letting the soldier live. His fury gets them noticed, however, and in the ensuing chase he tosses Maia into the river. Maia is then left to wander the city, unnoticed by the other citizens.

Part of the problem with this issue is that there isn’t enough dialogue from the characters or narration from Maia’s diary to draw the reader in. Most of Croger’s dialogue is his refusal to give up the journal and his determination to get it back, which doesn’t tell us anything extra about the Malory government. When Arthur and Maia are talking, it focuses almost solely on Maia’s refusal to kill the soldier from the first issue and his anger at not taking care of the “problem.” This reinforces what we already knew about Arthur’s personality and ruthlessness, but it doesn’t give us much more in the way of information. One can applaud Hardman for not using the narrator to give us all of the background and context easily, using unrealistic exposition to cheaply explain what’s going on, but a political drama like Invisible Republic would be stronger if there were more meaningful dialogue going on.

We’re three issues in and we don’t really have a firm feel for Arthur’s motivations, which should be the crux of this book. We know that the prior government of the planet was oppressive and was using its own citizens to repress the population, but none of that explains why Arthur and Maia should care. Some detail would liven this up, but all we can say is that the government was oppressive Dictators are usually men with a prior notion of reform (albeit through drastic means) or just crass opportunists and thieves. Arthur doesn’t come across as either, and at least at this point, he appears both apolitical and strangely unmotivated for the kind of personal gain that creates dictators.

Babb’s sections would also be useful for offering some details on the present-day situation. You could use this to offer up subtle clues as to the nature of the Malory government without giving it all away, but we haven’t had any of that yet. Political dramas require some kind of context. Without it, you don’t fully appreciate the significance of the players’ actions. How important is this planet, and why do its neighbors care about it? Is the presence of outsiders an attempt to prevent a humanitarian crisis? Without this information, Croger is investigating a guy who we know next to nothing about and whose overall significance is unknown.

If this series wants to live up to its promise as a compelling political drama, we need some kind of exposition on the past or the present. It doesn’t help this issue that a substantial part of the narrative is watching people running, which can easily be skimmed over. Anybody reading histories of dictatorships is given some kind of idea where the regime ended up, whether it’s Hitler’s Nazi Germany or Mobutu’s government in the Congo. The author then explains how the dictator and the dictatorship were created by historical circumstance. That isn’t to say that we need to know everything about the series, but if we don’t know more about the circumstances that created Arthur McBride, it will be hard to care about what he became.

Zeb Larson