I discovered something last night and have had no one to share it with. I’m not sure if you’ve read Grant Morrison’s Invisibles, but the “Arcadia” story is a thinly-veiled, very dark take on a Doctor Who story if you really think about it. Instead of a police box as a time machine, they use a windmill, but that idea of the everyday being a time machine is there. They travel to the past and interact with historical figures like in Doctor Who episodes, but rather than the subject of their time travel being someone remarkable like Shakespeare or Van Gogh, it is the Marquis de Sade. The proverbial cherry on top are the villains of the story which are mindless creatures known as the “Cyphermen.”
To further prove the invocation of Doctor Who, one has to look no further than the later arc where King Mob is captured, tortured, and told by one of the villains that they will get the information they require “by hook or by crook.” Of course, this isn’t a Doctor Who line, but rather, from the greatest television series ever produced, The Prisoner. The point is that the deliberate invocation of television series is blatant in the Invisibles, and even though “Arcadia” is a great story on its own, understanding that it is a dark and twisted Doctor Who tale just makes it that much more cool.
I caught the Prisoner reference when I saw the giant, white orb on the beach. As for the Doctor Who references . . . do I lose status as a Morrison fan when I admit I haven’t read The Invisibles? It is on my never-ending reading list.
Invisibles is a comic that you can’t read just once. You HAVE to read it multiple times in order to understand it. It may seem weird at first, but upon multiple reads, it becomes easier and easier to understand which is either a statement on the complexity of the work or on the mental status that is inflicted upon the reader.
Do not forget that the cover of one of the later issues was drawn as if the viewer was looking out while standing inside of a TARDIS (judging by the blue doors at panel-left and panel-right on the cover)… there are other name-checks scattered through the series as well.