Name: The Invisibles
Rating: 4.227272727272728 (22 reviews)
ISBN: 9781401245993

Grant Morrison

"Originally published in single magazine form in The Invisibles #13-25."

The Invisibles

say you want a revolution

Tim Pendry

This was a little disappointing as the first volume in a series widely touted as innovative. Of course, looking at something in 2010 is not going to be the same as looking at in 1994 when it was first published but it does not stand the test of time in the way that the Sandman series of Neil Gaiman or the work of Alan Moore has done. Morrison is not stupid. He plays well with the tropes of Chaos Magick (never mentioned but central to the thinking behind the book) and with the psychogeography of London. He is well within an English tradition of mixing magic and public culture, one that has been a highly fertile source for American popular culture and whose literary output comprises such luminaries as Ackroyd, Sinclair and, most recently, with 'Kraken', China Mieville. But the graphics are conventional and Morrison himself can be wordy. He stretches things out a bit on occasions so that you end up asking 'where's the beef?'. No graphic novel should ever permit the stifling of a yawn as one does while listening to the self-indulgent wittering of 'Old Tom'. It also leaps around too much with an odd rhythm - too much meandering in one part and too much jump-cutting in another. I would like to think that this was some deliberate strategy to mimic Chaos Magick theory but, if so, it fails. Chaos Magick does not work through external but through internal narrative. Here, you never get the chance to sustain an engagement that will shift your mental gear into new paradigms - you are, too often, being preached at, the exact antithesis of the Chaos mentality. So much good work has been done around the idea of a second magical and sinister London under the skin of the one that we see (if we are resident) every day that this one seems pale in retrospect. This first volume is a violent and post-modern concoction that owes a great deal to the spirit of Foucault - a sort of creative version of those near-contemporaneous graphic accounts of philosophy provided as cribs by Icon Books and others. The unfairness of this review is the unfairness of over fifteen years of shelf life. There are striking images and ideas but there is something adolescent and gratuitous about it ... a text to show how Vertigo managed to open up new themes and ideas for the generation born in the 1970s, much different from Alan Moore's own embedment in that same dystopian decade, but not one that truly 'enlightens'.

counting to none

rumbledethumps

The art is outstanding and the storytelling is great. Particularly enjoyed the last chapter, focusing on the "red shirts" who were simply target practice for the protagonists in a earlier chapter.

But the story gets bogged down with too many arcane religious ideas and conspiracy theories to make it completely enjoyable.

Imagine if every paranoid fantasy, every conspiracy theory, every alleged cover-up and government deception, every tabloid story you've ever heard ...were true. Discover a world where paranoia is a survival skill and the only hope for mankind is a group of unconventional occultist freedom fighters-The Invisibles.

Counting to none

Sean West

bloody hell in America

entropy in the U.K.

A. D. Knapp

"The world is not what it seems. Behind the curtain of everyday existence, a vast and unholy conspiracy is at work, twisting and deforming reality to pave the way for colonisation by hideous extra dimensional powers. Facing this onslaught is a laughably small resistance movement scattered across space and time- a handful of subversives known as The Invisibles. This silent guerrilla war has raged for millennia, shaping the very fabric of the universe. But now the countdown to the final battle has begun, and soon everyone will have to make their choice: crushing, soul-rending conformity, or radical, anarchic freedom."--Page [4] of cover of Book 1.

The Invisibles

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