Jill Thompson joins Grant Morrison for the 4-part "Arcadia," which reveals many secrets of the organization's anarchic structure. When a time-traveling assassin arrives in London, King Mob and his Invisibles team are sent on a tangled mission to 19th century Italy!
King Mob is in India watching a shadow play with a man named Agus. Agus goes into some detail about the shadow puppets and the puppeteer who is called the "dalang". Agus tells KM that the Dalang is more than a mere puppeteer; he gives each character their own movements and way of speaking. They audience watches what appears to be major battle, but there is no war. Just the Dalang.
Some time in the early years of the nineteenth century, George Gordon Byron(more commonly known as Lord Byron) and his friend Percy Bysshe Shelley ride horses along a beach. They discuss liberty and various other matters. Shelley remarks that as poets they have a duty to show men a better world; Lord Byron however, loves this one. He tells Shelley of a painting by Poussin that depicts a group of shepherds standing by a tomb in the utopia of Arcadia. The shepherds study an inscription on the tomb which states "Et in Arcadia Ego", or "And in Paradise, I Am."
The two poets go for a boat ride and continue their conversation. Byron tells Shelley that he keeps talking about his utopia, but there has never been a utopia on Earth that wasn't built from human suffering. Shelley responds that they shouldn't fall victim to cynicism. They hear the church bells of an asylum; causing Shelley to say that believing in a creator denies the divinity of man. The two continue their boat ride.
Back in the present-day India, King Mob has met with Agus at a temple to Ganesh at 9:00 am. Agus asks him why they had to meet so early. KM tells him that Ganesh is an old friend, and that he likes to make a dedication to him before any major event. Since the number 9 is sacred to the elephant god, he wanted to meet at 9:00. Agus asks the Invisible if he plans on taking a plane back to the UK, but King Mob replies that he'll probably just take a shortcut.
At the Invisible's current hideout, Boy and Dane(now called Jack Frost) are sparring. Boy tells Jack that their agents had been watching him for awhile. They had to bring him into the cell when one of their other members went missing. She tells him that Invisibles cells are five members and each member is assigned a position based on one of the elements: earth, air, fire, water, spirit.
In the past, Shelley and Lord Byron walk through an asylum. Byron tells Shelley that their conversation from the night before reminded him of a talk he had with another member of the Invisible College.
Present: Boy has moved on and is trying to teach Jack yoga. Jack tells her that everybody keeps talking about fighting, but he doesn't really know who they're fighting against. Boy answers by telling the youth that they're fighting the other side: people and forces that want to keep humanity asleep forever. Jack is confused, but Boy tells him that's okay. Some of the Invisibles are extremely paranoid and are so deep undercover that they don't even know that they're Invisibles. This causes Jack to ask her, how do they know then that they haven't joined the other side? Boy is surprised and tells him that's a good question.
In some apocalyptic landscape, King Mob sits and talks to a woman nursing her deformed cyclopic child. King Mob tells the woman that he'll send her a postcard when gets back to Britain. As he walk away, the lady tells him that he reminds her of Gandhi; from the movie.
Somewhere, a man stops at an ice cream truck to buy ice cream for his kids who are playing in a nearby park. On his way back, the father is stopped by a shadowy-faced man in a white suit. The white-suited man makes some cryptic statements about Xipetotec, suits of human skin, and the "land of the unfleshed". The father asks him what his problem is and approaches him behind a tree. The shadowy-faced man steps out from behind the tree, now wearing the father's face as a mask. He goes to the children and tells them to come to him so he can give them his ice cream.
The Invisibles cell are sitting around a table eating dinner. Jack is getting buzzed off a bottle of wine, when King Mob walks in. KM tells the group that they're orders have come down; they're to relocate one of their agents on the "spacetime supersphere". Boy is disappointed and exclaims that she hates time travel. KM replies that it gets worse. He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a postcard that was dropped into their mailbox. The postcard is a picture of the "Arcadia" painting and is signed by Xipe Totec: Orlando is in London. The group goes silent.
The gang quickly gets in KM's sportscar and races to their time machine. Lord Fanny laments the fact that they're going to astral project with Orlando after them. They approach their time machine, which Jack is surprised to find looks just like a windmill. Inside, they sit holding hands in a circle. Jack refuses at first to hold Fanny's hand, but King Mob orders him to stop acting like an idiot. They perform their projection, and everything goes black.
They arrive in front of guillotine that has just claimed it's next victim. King Mob welcomes Jack to the Revolution...
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