The Invisibles, Vol. 6: Kissing Mister Quimper

The Invisibles #6

by Grant Morrison

In the sixth volume of the INVISIBLES collection, the group of freedom fighters must deal with the aftermath of their battle with the Hand of Glory. But as the Invisibles look to rest and regroup, they soon discover that this fight had far greater effects than their physical casualties. With King Mob growing even more violent and their leader Ragged Robin continuing to hide many secrets, the Invisibles find themselves dealing with time distortions, secret government installations, and their own warped pasts as they try to uncover the truth about the mind-controlling dwarf called Quimper. Collects Volume 2, Issues #14-22

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Comix

224 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1999

About the author

Grant Morrison has been working with DC Comics for twenty five years, after beginning their American comics career with acclaimed runs on ANIMAL MAN and DOOM PATROL. Since then they have written such best-selling series as JLA, BATMAN and New X-Men, as well as such creator-owned works as THE INVISIBLES, SEAGUY, THE FILTH, WE3 and JOE THE BARBARIAN. In addition to expanding the DC Universe through titles ranging from the Eisner Award-winning SEVEN SOLDIERS and ALL-STAR SUPERMAN to the reality-shattering epic of FINAL CRISIS, they have also reinvented the worlds of the Dark Knight Detective in BATMAN AND ROBIN and BATMAN, INCORPORATED and the Man of Steel in The New 52 ACTION COMICS.

In their secret identity, Morrison is a "counterculture" spokesperson, a musician, an award-winning playwright and a chaos magician. They are also the author of the New York Times bestseller Supergods, a groundbreaking psycho-historic mapping of the superhero as a cultural organism. They divide their time between their homes in Los Angeles and Scotland.

Reviews

[Sam Quixote · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book just yesterday but held off from writing a review immediately to see if I could recall enough of it today to see what had stuck. Can you guess how much I retained? I promise I was paying attention the whole time, like I do with every book I read, but, wow, is The Invisibles just a load of nonsense!

In this book, The Invisibles fight the evil psychic dwarf Quimper, while Mason, the guy who’s been bankrolling them since the start, turns out to be evil or something. In between that, there’s precious little else!

I’ve been reading The Invisibles steadily now since the start of the year and I’m completely unsure of what the point of the series is. I know broadly it’s the fight between the Invisibles, who’re some kind of hippy terrorist cell, and the evil secret government of the world or something, but in terms of basic things like plot and motivation, I’m completely lost as to who wants what or how they’re going to achieve it.

Quimper’s evil because - I’m not sure why. He’s a dwarf? He wears a noh mask? He has a cane? Mason’s evil because - I don’t know. He’s rich? He’s bored and likes to mess with people? What are their goals as villains - destroy the Invisibles (I think)? Why? What’s the relevance of the time machine or the Hand of Glory which were so important in the last book? What is all of this building up to and what does any of it mean?

I’m not even sure who the main character is! From the first book you’d think it was Jack but he’s been a background character since then and Morrison’s scattershot approach has focused on various characters in the group. Either way, I don’t care about any of them succeeding in whatever the hell they’re doing - saving the world? Let’s just go with that.

Most of this book focuses on The Invisibles in New Orleans having sex and doing acid. There’s some stuff about Jack and Boy hooking up, and a bunch of forgettable tripe that just happens: they attack a train, there’s a psychic battle with Quimper, King Mob fires his gun a lot, explosions, the end.

I understand some of the sex/acid stuff in New Orleans is to prepare for their attack on Quimper but why is he going after them in the first place? Are they that much of a threat? They did successfully attack a military base in Area 51 in Volume 4 - a scene I’m beginning to think more and more was a hallucination, because the Invisibles are complete idiots! King Mob (a name I’m thinking is stupider the more I read it) and Robin spend about half the book running around the sewers literally jumping at shadows - these clowns are a threat to the secret world government?!

Amidst the bizarreness are some typically Morrison-esque ideas about the book that jump out at the reader randomly, like The Invisibles is actually a book written by a woman who looks a lot like Robin and the whole thing lives in her mind as incredibly vivid fiction, or that the entire book is a hallucination that either King Mob or Robin are having and they’re still in the New Orleans hotel room in the first chapter. Maybe the entire series is a symptom of Robin’s mental illness? Yeah, I guess that’s interesting… kinda… but it doesn’t make up for the whole book being so damn boring!

Because that’s the side effect of being so deliberately vague and pretentious - so little work is done on things most readers look for like interesting and convincing characters and an engaging plot. I appreciate Morrison has a wide range of interests and he explores a lot of them in his work (albeit very briefly), but I’m totally disinterested in reading his semi-focused ramblings on reality and magic. Fourth dimension, creatures from beyond, true freedom, conspiracies, yadda yadda yadda, I get it - you’ve been saying these things for six volumes now, when the hell is any of this going to pay off?! It’s not nearly as interesting or eye-opening as you think it is, seriously, and it’s become a bore to read over and over.

Chris Weston’s art is fantastic - beautifully detailed panels, startling imagery, imaginatively constructed scenes, eye-catching figures, subtle but clear facial expressions; it’s really masterful illustration especially in the face of Morrison’s challenging script for portraying the extraordinary.

Normally by the penultimate book in a series, you’re anticipating a finale where various plot threads meet and characters’ arcs complete. Think Y: The Last Man when the group discover whether men will ever exist on Earth again, or Transmetropolitan when we see whether Spider lives or dies; with The Invisibles I have no idea what’s going on and have zero expectations for the last book.

Actually I do know one thing I’m looking forward to - the series will be over with and I won’t have to read any more of these books again! I love Morrison, I do, but The Invisibles has been a very unrewarding reading experience.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the sixth installment the Invisibles penetrate another facility to acquire “The Magic Mirror' and I can't go into more detail or I'll give it away.. Boy and Jack Frost get more serious. Ragged Robin deals with Mister Quimper and then has to make a choice with time travel. It was a bit down from the previous volume but still a worthy read.

Note that while it isn't required it helps to have some knowledge of the following for this particular volume: astral projection, time travel, H.P. Lovecraft, Gnosticism, mind control, shamanism, voodoo, conspiracy theories, cinema, pop culture references, transvestites, virtual reality, metaphysics, Christianity, James Bond stories, The Liberty Bell, White Supremacy, Death Cults (especially New Orleans style), chess analogies, alternate realities, aliens, alternative sexual expressions, authors and the characters they control, Tarot, UFOs, Dante's “Inferno”, Punk Rock and I'm probably leaving a few other things out. This is considered one of the classics and was said to have shaken up a stagnant period for comics/graphic novels. BBC started a TV series but it never saw the light of day. This series may have very well influenced movies like THE MATRIX and other such types.

ARTWORK: B to B plus; STORY/PLOTTING: B; CHARACTERS/DIALOGUE: B plus; THEMES/INNOVATION: A plus; WHEN READ: end of March 2012 ; OVERALL GRADE: B plus A minus.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

By this point in The Invisibles, the cast have all been well-established so the focus can fall on the plot and existential weirdness. This penultimate volume features a plot climax about three-quarters of the way in, when the team once again break into a secret military base in Dulce. I think it's the same one as before? After several volumes of Quimper demonstrating creepy mind-control powers, Lord Fanny and Ragged Robin trap then neutralise him. Robin uses her psychic powers to draw him in with a fake memory of childhood sexual abuse, then Fanny disguises herself as Robin and feeds Quimper (to?) that magic mirror substance (chaos?). This scene is brilliantly dramatic and it's good to see problem-solving that doesn't involve King Mob shooting someone.

During this re-read I picked up on the reference to The Sting, which I didn't notice last time as I hadn't seen it. Meanwhile Jim Crow tells the fable of the scorpion and frog magnificently and Dane chats with the enigmatic John O' Dreams. The latter quarter or so of the book circles back to explain how the grift was set up and do some character development. Robin says her farewells before getting back in the time machine to 2012, Boy leaves the team entirely, and King Mob throws away his gun and starts wearing a suit. Mason remains shifty; you can't trust anyone that rich and I appreciated King Mob blowing up his mansion.

Another fascinating weapon is introduced and deployed both by and against the Invisibles: the Scorpio Resonator. This makes you see and experience your fears, inducing psychosis and panic attacks. I find these world-building details very effective at driving home the existential questions that underpin the series: what is reality? Who decides what it is and controls our experience of it? Is reality narrative, fractal, linear, chaotic, ordered, good, evil, stable, evolving, decaying, or all of them at once? More specifically, who is writing the story of the Invisibles? Could it be Robin, Mason, or John? ‘Be careful what you write. It might come true.’ I love the disorientating ambiguity of this series, evoked by a fantastic combination of writing and art.

[Sesana · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me this long, but I think I'm finally getting the hang of The Invisibles. The key thing that I think I was missing before is that I don't have to get it all. There are people who will understand everything that Morrison is alluding to, and my hat's off to those people. I can get enough to follow along with the action on the page, and that's enough to enjoy what I'm reading. This volume in particular has a very action movie feel to it, which probably helped me just go with the flow instead of trying to puzzle everything out.

[Titus · Rating 1 out of 5]

While reading the first four books of this series, I was quietly scoffing at all the people I'd seen describe it as incredibly complex and hard to follow. There were some cool esoteric concepts and plenty of psychedelic wackiness, but very little that I'd describe as obtuse – and, instead, a lot of vacuous, generic, fairly straightforward action stuff. With the fifth book, I was pleasantly surprised to finally see things get gratifyingly confusing and non-conventional. With the sixth book, Kissing Mister Quimper, I can say that Morrison has finally succeeded in leaving me perplexed.

Unfortunately, this isn't the good kind of confusion that I get from complex, enigmatic comics like Mil and Cyrrus by Andreas Martens, or The Night by Philippe Druillet. Instead, I just don't have a clue what's going on. Each of the characters seems to have a secret master plan and be deceiving everyone else (and the reader) into thinking s/he doesn't, but it never really becomes clear who succeeds in tricking whom in this messy web of deception. Non-chronological storytelling and random cutting between scenes (features I enjoyed in the last book) just muddy the waters further.

Maybe I'd be able to make more sense of things if I read through the whole book again, but honestly I just don't care enough to do so. The characters remain uninteresting and underdeveloped, the art is nothing great, and the whole thing is plagued by a preoccupation with being a very juvenile version of "cool". In other words, the same problems present at the outset persist, and I'm losing patience for them as it becomes apparent that the early promise of engaging philosophizing is not going to be realized to a great extent.

[Hilary "Fox" · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel the need to mention again how much I thoroughly adore this series.

This series actually reminds me a bit of LOST, in that the longer it goes on the more coherent it gets if you care to pay that much attention to it. I feel the need to connect with others who have read this title, and see their thoughts on it, their insight. I feel the distinct need to hunt down the annotated version that keeps getting tossed around the internet, but am loathe to do so until I finish reading it through sans annotation first (as I fear spoilers.)

The way that Grant Morrison consistently ties seemingly mindless events from the beginning and imbues them with symbolism is fascinating. I am still hoping that someone has compiled an INVISIBLES reading list out of all the books that are referenced throughout the series. I don't feel, as some have commented, that Grant Morrison is too opaque and dense to be easily understood, but rather that his work demands analysis, discussion, and interaction.

Just like LOST - there's the easy to follow story on top of a bunch of esoteric intricacies which can be analysed, parsed, read into a ridiculous amount, and thoroughly enjoyed. I love a series with depth, and this one consistently delivers.

I hope my graphic novel loving friends won't shun me for converting to the Church of Morrison.

[Keith · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the point at which things become excessively meta. Given certain scenes in this volume, I'm increasingly convinced that this was composed under the influence of powerful psychoactive substances. The thin thread of plot heretofore barely in evidence seems herein to have become, not incomprehensible exactly, but essentially incoherent. Or maybe, like a Fellini film, it's deliberately that way to induce confusion (or mere frustration) in the reader. Anyway, I'm glad there's only one volume remaining, or I'd probably cut and run here.

[Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

This series just gets trippier and trippier. Love it.

[Tomás Sendarrubias García · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aquí las cosas se ponen confusas, no por el contenido (eso es confuso desde el principio), sino por el continente, y es que no es exactamente este tomo el que estoy leyendo, pero entiendo que es el que se corresponde, ya que lo que estoy haciendo es la Biblioteca Grant Morrison de ECC, y el tomo es el cuarto, pero el contenido cuadra...

En fin, independientemente del continente, vamos al contenido. Y bueno, normalmente la historia de Los Invisibles siempre es peculiar, pero en este tomo han entrado en liza los viajes en el tiempo, y aquí ya ha llegado un momento en el que creo que el cerebro se me estaba saliendo por las orejas. Ojo, de forma guay, todo sea dicho, insisto en que salvo en muy contadas excepciones (como El Asco), el desafío que supone Morrison me atrae mucho y es una de las cosas a favor del escritor que voy a puntuar siempre. En el tomo anterior habíamos conocido al telépata Mister Quimper, una especie de criatura rechoncha y con máscara, al servicio de las siniestras conspiraciones del gobierno de EE.UU derivadas de lo acontecido en Roswell y que se había hecho con una parte de la mente de Ragged Robin, que estaba invadiendo casi de forma vírica. Y esto coincide con la máquina/armadura de viajes en el tiempo de la que disponían (y que al tiempo es una especie de desarrollo de una vieja obra de papiroflexia realizada por un lama). Y bueno, no es que pueda contar muchas más cosas, ya que más allá de esto, todo es spoiler. Sí que se aprovecha cierto impasse narrativo para desarrollar las relaciones entre los personajes, especialmente entre Boy y Jack, y entre Robin y King Mob; Lord Fanny, como de costumbre, va a su bola...

En fin, tengo muchas ganas de que salga ya el quinto tomo y ver cómo acaba esta historia.

[Miguel Angel Pedrajas · Rating 4 out of 5]

La cosa se complica en todos los ámbitos. Especialmente en el guion. Tanto que, pese a que tiene escenas memorables, muchas veces es difícil entender los derroteros por dónde camina la trama, con cambios en los tiempos narrativos, personajes que están y luego no, suposiciones… Por suerte, el dibujo de Chris Weston e Ivan Reis es buenísimo.

Creo que la ambición (y las psicotrópicas ideas) de Morrison a veces se va de madre. Quiere contar muchas cosas a la vez. Lo ves en los detalles de cada viñeta, tanto en los diálogos como en los movimientos, escenas, fondos y vestimentas de los personajes. Hay mucho mensaje subliminal que cuenta más de lo que se ve a primera vista. Pero, pese a que el cómic es una vía comunicativa poderosa y casi omnipotente, creo que a Morrison se le queda corta. O que al lector medio, como yo, le queda demasiado grande. Pese a todo, engancha, fluye y es interesante. Creo que no llego a captar ni a entender ni la mitad de la mitad de lo que quiere contar Morrison. Pero aún así, me flipa y me mola.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I was tying to make sense of everything in here I'd probably go crazy, but just riding through the various meta plots and psychological double-crosses and time travels - it's pretty exciting.

[Joe Kraus · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m reviewing all six of the first Invisibles collections here; the seventh seems to me a different animal, though, and I’m still working my way through it.

The premise of The Invisibles is spectacularly adolescent. Somewhere in another dimension there is a race of aliens intent on controlling all human minds. They want us to conform to some easily governed social norm, and they’ve taken over most of our human institutions.

Against that assault stands a coterie of charismatic rebels, The Invisibles, who think for themselves and risk everything to keep a spark of individualism alive. It’s sci-fi/philosophy with a shot of libertarian fantasy.

The story starts when the group recruits a young man to be their potential savior, or maybe Buddha, and then it gets really weird. There’s time travel, psychic warfare, mutant dwarves, unwitting stooges, tentacle-faced creatures, and kinky sex. There are ultimately so many simultaneous narratives going on that it’s often overwhelming. I read this episode by episode as I was getting ready for bed, and I could rarely be sure what I’d just read or what I was about to read next.

Many of the stories are simply too bizarre to follow. I’m still not sure exactly how the Hand of Glory is supposed to enable our heroes to bend time, nor am I clear on who’s been stealing it or why.

As the team coalesces, though, there’s something really compelling. There’s our new recruit, Dane/Jack Frost, who rapidly grows out of his naïve phase into a sometimes more interesting voice of the working class. There’s Boy, an African-American police officer who’s caught up in a history of loss. There’s Fanny, a transvestite beauty who’s also a South American shaman. There’s Ragged Robin, an agent who’s come back from the future to help lead the team but who should otherwise be only eight years old. And there’s King Mob, the bad-ass balding head of the group who always has an answer, even when he has to wrestle with his own growing love of violence.

The art is a little uneven because Morrison employs a handful of different artists, but by the sixth volume, this is really clicking. The stories retain their crazy, you-readers-can’t-keep-up frenzy, but they’re framed by a clearer conflict than earlier. Ragged Robin’s ultimate mission becomes all the more central, and that gravitational heart makes the crazy tangents more connected. In the end, there’s something at stake, and something resolved.

I had brief hopes that this might live up to the highest standards of Warren Ellis’s Transmetropiltan. It’s not that good, but it’s satisfying in a lot of ways and occasionally flat-out brilliant.

[Lloyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is the sixth graphic novel in the series and the final book of Volume Two of the series.

This sixth book and Volume Two as a whole had a whole lot more of the blockbuster action feel to it. There was a lot more extreme violence, a lot more explicit sex, and even rampant mention of several films specifically. All this was accentuated by the frequent mention of life as a film, fiction as reality, and life as a game, which did put an intelligent spin on those themes as only Morrison could have done.

With all that said, there was still an abundance of the mind-bending themes we've all grown to love in reading this series. Many references to time occuring all in the same instance and time travel are supplemented by staple themes such as shamanism, voodoo, conspiracy theories, and the "magic mirror" (you might have to read this to understand that last one) to make this book a very rewarding excersize for the mind as well as a great story.

This is also the volume where artist Chris Weston really takes the reins of the series. Phil Jimenez contributed the art that I think I'll always enjoy the most in the series, but Weston has a nice style, as well.

The pages collected in this volume are, as with all other volumes, parts of a story that becomes less of a story and more of an experience with each one of those pages that you turn.

"The Invisibles" gets deeper with each volume, greater with each subsequent reading of those volumes.

[Bonnie G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very satisfying psychic warfare!

[Tommaso Querini · Rating 1 out of 5]

Chaotic and quite boring.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I certainly hope people get ideas from these books.

[Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is still one of my favorite series, it gets SO wild but it's honestly a perfect comic for our times.

[Elh R' · Rating 2 out of 5]

This comic is a hell of a reading, and I mean it in a way that this is a pain in the ass to read it.

Look, I love extreme comics, avant-garde stuff, surrealism, and things that are out of the box ... but this comic, I can't stand it, I couldn't even finish it. I get to a point where I don't care about the characters, neither the story, and I was forcing myself to read it.

The problem with this comic, I think, is that it tries too hard to be interesting and out-of-the-box, and fails. The characters are not interesting. The story is not interesting. This comic is not interesting.

Now, I like Grant Morrison. I like what he did with Doom Patrol, that was a good surrealistic story, the characters where very interesting, and the reading flows. The same with what Morrison did with X-Men, I loved it. But this comic, The Invisibles ...
... I started reading this with so much enthusiasm. I really wanted to like it. I even liked the first volumes. But, progressively, I get bored, and I get to the point where I don't really wanted to read it, because I don't really cared, not for the characters, neither for the story.

What can I say ? I bet this comic is not for everyone. For sure, this is not for me.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I said, amid the big ideas, the structure's very classic. The baddies have set a trap, but no, the Invisibles have created a trap within that trap. Nice reveal with Fanny undoing Quimper in the finale, and despite the jumpy nature of the "Robin goes back to the future" with it time-jumping, Morrison crafted an emotional farewell, giving some depth to Robin and King Mob's previously almost-entirely-carnal relationship.

Reis fills in one issue, but otherwise, it's all Weston's show. Another score for consistent artistry. Vol. 7 has about twelve different pencillers, and I think Frank Quitely's the only one to draw an entire issue (the finale).

This book could almost be a finale. A few baddies are still out there, but Robin's gone, Boy leaves the team, millionaire Invisibles financier gets his mansion blown up, and King Mob swears off violence (I don't recall the last book (which I'll start reading tomorrow) very well, but whenever things got too slow in the first six books, Morrison could always have Gideon shoot something!)

[Vittorio Rainone · Rating 1 out of 5]

Grant Morrison è troppo cervellotico, scrive mediamente male, e non capisco come si possa osannarlo. The Invisibles ha personaggi potenzialmente molto interessanti affossati in strampalatissime saghe che volutamente si attorcigliano su loro stesse grazie a maledetti paradossi temporali, senza che nessuno si preoccupi di spiegarci la successione degli eventi, e anzi, con l'impressione che le frasi dei personaggi siano parte di un gioco dell'autore per mantenere elevatissima la nostra attenzione, gioco che si traduce in una notevolissima difficoltà di lettura. Alla fine si percepisce, più che capire, che tutta la storia è stato un viaggio di Ragged Robin nel passato, ma molti particolari si perdono, anche provando a rileggere.

[Centauri · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to read something different - not Marvel or DC; and I definitely got that
I may be an old fogy, or small-minded, or whatever, but I was lost the entire time.

The jumps between panels and scenes sometimes felt like something was missing from the story. On top of that, I had no real idea what the story was supposed to be. I understood the conspiracy edge (the idea that some otherly forces control everything and we should not conform as a species), but that was literally all I got out of this tale.

maybe if I were introduced to this universe with its origin tale I would not have had such a bumpy ride? I don't know, and I don't feel I have a desire to even find out. For me, this volume was a one and done story

[B. Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Time travel antics complicate the already complicated battle between the Invisibles and the forces they fight- including themselves. The most difficult volume of the series to follow, I found myself wondering if I should chart out the various storylines and attempt to read them chronologically , or if that is even possible (or already done somewhere (DM me if you actually read this and know the answers)).
If you, like me when I first read these issues in comic form in the nineties, enjoy the counter-culture aesthetics and action, it doesn’t need to make sense. Just ride with it.

[Ives Phillips · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was that one alarmingly and amusingly bad panel between Gideon and Robin (you know the one) that docked a star from my initial rating for this volume. The writing didn't plummet to volume 1 levels, and heck, the blossoming relationship between Jack and Boy spiced things up a bit, but...eh...it was still a bit of a struggle to follow and enjoy this volume, too. The art couldn't save this one; crud, it may have been detrimental to the graphic novel.

[Dane Divine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I kinda need break from these. But I also feel like I have to finish the series. However, I just started book 7 last night, it seems better so far. As for book 6, the whole 'movie' thing was a bit dull, what with the 'ooooh we never guessed that' twist. Yes, yes that was sarcasm. Book 1 was definitely the best so far. But still got 1 left.

[Jean-Pierre Vidrine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Old plot points are questioned, the whole narrative is turned on its ear, and the most baffling volume yet becomes my favorite thus far. I was already enjoying the book immensely when, in the last chapter, characters made intriguing points about thought, stories, and magic. I was blown away.

[Travis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yeah, the usual brilliance. I normally do a quick capsule review here, but enough ink has been spilled about Morrison's pop fractal, so I'll just say give it to a young friend whose aspirations top out at "influencer". Perhaps it'll inoculate them. Can't hurt.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am clearly not alone with mixed feelings about this series in general and this volume in particular. Ultimately I gave up trying to understand any plot coherence or even character continuity but have been left with highly creative visuals and moderately interesting musings about reality.

[damnjonesy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Remains captivating but I think this has been the weakest section yet. A lot of self-implosion in the group and then the Quimper stuff coming to a head is all cool but the writing was all over the place. I liked how it ended but I feel like I got there mostly on the fumes of context clues

[_Liebert · Rating 5 out of 5]

"That's real life to me. Better than anything I ever had." / "I can change what I do that easily. It's almost the same thing."

Here at the end, is where Morrison is becoming as free as he was at the start. God B;ess America.

[Dave · Rating 1 out of 5]

Made it maybe around 30 pages. Complete and total crap. I now see why this was on the discount rack.