THE INVISIBLES
Grant Morrison, Steve Yeowell, Phil Jiminez, Chris Weston et al.
DC Comics/Vertigo
Order versus Chaos.
Control versus Free Will.
The Establishment versus the Zeitgeist.
Me and You versus the World.
The Invisibles is about all these things. That, and looking really cool.
The Invisibles (of the story) are a worldwide group of loosely affiliated anarchist cells. The first book (of seven) sets up the series, and tells the story of how one cell - the cell we follow throughout the series - recruits a mean-spirited Liverpudlian teenager to join the group. We follow the teen, Dane McGowan, as he is initiated into the Invisibles, taught magic by an ag�d, doolally tramp, and learns the truth:
That the world is bigger, stranger, sexier and more dangerous than he ever imagined. And that the world is at war.
On one side: the Invisibles, who just want everything to be nice and smooth. They're all for the free will and the love love love, etcetera.
On the other side: the conspiracy. Small "c." The people who want you to believe that you're worthless. Who want you to know your place. The people who want you to be led.
We follow Dane - or "Jack Frost," as the Invisibles come to call him - as he travels from 1990's Liverpool to the French Revolution to the End of the World (22nd December, 2012). Along the way, we learn what the conspiracy have in mind for humanity in general, and the British Throne in particular.
Cue a breakneck chase in five dimensions as the Invisibles and the conspiracy strike at each other again and again and before, leading to a final battle for reality in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey.
The Invisibles, like all classic fiction, can be read on a number of levels: on one level, it's a science-fiction adventure story, superheroes in mufti; it's also a Fortean almanac, blending the latest in magical, supernatural and superscientific theory; and in some respects, it's a love letter to the 20th Century, with all the flashy clothes, ultraviolence and high sex that implies.
The Invisibles is all those things and more.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
King Mob - Bald head. Flash threads. Psychic assassin. Sidereal pimpernel. Women want him. Men want to be him. Or some combination of the two.
Ragged Robin - The Girl Next Millennia. An Invisible with an invisible agenda.
Lord Fanny - Shemale Shaman. Marvellously manicured magician. Fun-loving Femme-homme Festival.
Boy - Martial artist. Former NYPD Blue. And a Girl. But is her dedication to the battle as unshakable as the rest of the gang?
Jack Frost - Scouser. Yobbo. Buddha. The last, best hope for a human race in deep, deep shit.
Sir Miles Delacourt - The opposition. The enemy. The Establishment. He knows every secret handshake, all the magic words. The most dangerous man in Great Britain�until he meets Dane McGowan�
Mason Lang - Billionaire playboy by day, Invisible alien abductee by night. Lang has more money than God, but are his assets big enough to buy the Truth?
Edith Manning - Ninety-six years old, with a twinkle in her eye, and a bong in her hand. She's been around the world and she's been around the block. Her relationship with King Mob is at the core of The Invisibles, in more ways than one.
I'm simplifying matters, of course. But I want you to go out and read The Invisibles, so I'm not giving the game away. Except to say that the book is among the smartest comics ever written. Morrison has absorbed thousands of years worth of weird shit, from a hundred human cultures. And rather than just regurgitate it, at the expense of the story, Morrison allows it to inform the story. There are some genuine moments of intellectual beauty in the series - if you watch out for the character Elfayed, you'll see what I mean.
There's a real sense of Morrison's belief in the material - not necessarily in some of the more...controversial story elements, but definitely in the power derived from blurring the line between fiction and fact. And any book that shows you how to invoke John Lennon as if he were a god can't be bad, right?
(Although, when I tried it, I ended up with Musical Youth. So what do I know?)
More than a dozen artists worked on bringing The Invisibles to life. As you might expect, this means that there's a great variation in tone between the individual stories. Some of the better arcs in the series feature art by Phil Jiminez. Jiminez's art is graceful and detailed, with a powerful sense of anatomy and motion. My personal favourite arcs are Sheman (from Book Two), with art by the wonderful Jill Thompson, and the whole of the first book, Say You Want A Revolution (art by Steve Yeowell).
At the heart of the Invisibles' artistic success is the strength of the character designs: even between such wildly different artists as Chris Weston and The Pander Bros., the iconic nature of the Invisibles and their foes shines through. The aesthetic of the series is bang up-to-date, ultramodern stuff. It's a gorgeous comic to look at.
Morrison's characters are well-realised creations. There's a pleasing ambiguity about the cast that makes them all the more sympathetic. They may act the tough anarchist freedom fighters, but when it comes down to it, they're just people. Morrison doesn't shy away from exploring the occasionally vague and frequently contradictory reasons why people do what they do.
The story itself, if you get a chance to sit down and read it in one sitting, is not just engrossing: it's all encompassing. Drawing the reader in by the gonads and holding on tight. There's a powerful rhythm to The Invisibles: it leaps out of the gate at a gallop, then gets faster and more tense, building up to a succession of stronger and ever more powerful mini-climaxes, before taking a deep breath at the start of the last book and giving it hell for leather into the home stretch. One of the characters remarks, "Have you ever noticed how time seems to be moving faster and faster?" No matter what sort of reader you might ordinarily be, with The Invisibles, you'll be carried along like a top hat in a twister by the end of the book.
Morrison's dialogue is as powerful as his scripting: the cast is instilled with such convincingly unique voices that you'll swear they were written by different people. The dialogue is both elegant and hilarious. Like all truly classic (i.e.: resonant) literature, The Invisibles contains characters who you'll both love and hate, and lines that you'll be chuckling at, or quoting, until your dying day.
The Invisibles is flashy, irreverent and often quite brutal. The violence - usually directed at whatever group of faceless henchmen is closest to hand - is reminiscent of some of the bloodier shoot-'em-ups in movies and video games. Occasionally, the cast stop to consider the consequences of their actions - not in the legal sense, of course, and certainly not in the middle of a fight - in terms of the psychological price they might pay for being so quick to kill. Karma is certainly a theme that runs throughout the series.
The Invisibles, once you view the whole tapestry, reveals itself to be an extremely grand work. Every scene is significant. Every character has a part to play. And while the main cast have their own neat little character arcs, the story itself takes on a life of its own. Indeed, the end of The Invisibles - such as it is - is left very much open to the reader's interpretation.
As strong and as intelligent a book as I've ever seen, the Invisibles is one of the most potent arguments for reading comics that I can think of. The story couldn't be told in such an expert manner, in any other medium. No other medium would take it, for one thing.
If there's a comic to Change Your Life, then it's the Invisibles. It's everything life should aspire to be: sexy, mysterious, and smart. It's memorable, rewarding, and unlike anything else you can think of. It's the comicbook equivalent of a fever dream or an acid flashback. It's one of the best things you'll ever read.
But try to remember: it's only a comic�
(NOTE: The seven volumes
which make up The Invisibles form one straight narrative, starting with
"Say You Want A Revolution," and ending with "The Invisible
Kingdom." While I recommend that these books should be the first and last
ones you buy, respectively, I suggest that you stick two fingers up to
linearity, where the middle five books are concerned, and just buy them in
whatever order you see them. It'll seem like you're putting a jigsaw together
without the picture on the box, but I guarantee it'll be worth the effort.)
THE INVISIBLE LIBRARY:
Say You Want A Revolution - The Invisibles recruit Dane McGowan, John Lennon and the Marquis DeSade. Things start as they mean to go on.
Apocalipstick - Lord Fanny's Secret Origin; the Inimitable Jim Crow; and one of the greatest comicbook stories of all time.
Entropy In The UK - The Secret Origin(s) of King Mob; Dane McGowan discovers that you can't go home again; the Return of Division X; and hanky voodoo.
Bloody Hell In America - The Invisibles take the war to the Colonies, get completely munted in the process, and invade a secret base in New Mexico. Plus, Ragged Robin goes to the desert to find herself.
Counting To None - The comic that The Matrix wants to have babies with; The Secret Chiefs of the Invisible Order; Scat, and lots of it; King Mob blurs the line between Today and Yesterday; and Ragged Robin blurs the line between Fact and Fiction.
Kissing Mister Quimper - Love, Loss and Dancing in the Streets of New Orleans; Mind Games within Mind Games; and The Invisibles have a Change of Heart.
The Invisible Kingdom - It all comes together. Masks come off, truths are told, and the world will never be the same. You won't know it's over until it's over. Unless it isn't.
Anarchy for the Masses: The Disinformation Guide to the Invisibles (by Patrick Neighly & Kereth Cowe-Spigai) - A guide to the series: its themes, cast and creators. Featuring extensive interviews with Grant Morrison and many of the key Invisibles players, Anarchy is a painstaking examination of this most revolutionary and controversial comic book.
Review text (C) Matthew Craig
Originally published in the pop culture magazine Robot Fist