The iNVISiblEs thReAd

so who has read the invisibles? its one of the best comics i've read in a while. basically its about how reality is all one big mind # created by alien reace, and there is this terrorist orginization called the invisibles, who are trying to free humanity from thier tryany. it deals with conspiracies, the occult, mysticism, warfare, sex, drugs, and rock n roll. the wachowski brothers were really in to it and had some influence on the matrix. its available in paperback at most comic stores. go out! read it! and spread the terror!

lord fanny iz hot btw. she is my avatar. she's a tranny.

I've only recently started reading the Invisibles in trade. I'm currently reading the third one, Entropy in the U.K. I am so hooked on this stuff. What's really cool about it is that you can look up some of the things he has his characters encounter and find out that they're real. In fact, looking up Rex 84 (which was in this trade) led me to this website.

I was thinking it remeineded me on the Matrix, and Matrix is kinda based on it... Never heard of it though, sure it's good though...

You are aware of the Barbelith Underground community, right? It originally started as an annotated commentary on the Invisibles comics. It's grown beyond that now that the series has ended, but Morrison's fractured worldview is still present in the community there.

I know this is an old thread,but I felt it was worth reviving a bit considering The Invisibles is definately one of the best comics out there.....period.

If you like conspiracy topics,aliens,magick,etc.This book will be your bible

Also,it's Grant Morrison....so you can't go wrong.

One more sidenote....my sig is taken from one of my favorite existential Invisibles quotes.

Check it out! This is an Invisibles trailer someone cobbled together on youtube....it's freakin' sweet!

Invisibles Trailer

[edit on 17-3-2007 by DocGonzo]

Originally posted by DocGonzo

Check it out! This is an Invisibles trailer someone cobbled together on youtube....it's freakin' sweet!

Invisibles Trailer

[edit on 17-3-2007 by DocGonzo]

That's pretty neat. Just searched for this and can't believe there's only this and one other thread with one post from years ago. There's got to be more than just a few people around here who've read this series. Don't think I've read anything, ever, book or comic, that's inspired me as much as this did. Have always hoped I'd find something else but nothing has ever really touched it, apart from maybe The X-Files.

Seriously, a lot of people around here might like this a lot, but be warned, it's no normal comic book. Think of Cosmic Trigger if you've read it and it took your head to so many different places, well this has the same kind of effect, maybe more so.

This gives a good explanation of many of it's themes, from Disinfo.com, who also published a guide to the series :

Through his seminal stories for Starblazer, 2000 AD, Animal Man and Doom Patrol, Grant Morrison had established a formidable reputation as a writer of seriously dark and adult comic books to rival Alan Moore and Frank Miller. The series that he had always wanted to write--a fusion of every conspiracy theory, counter-culture rebellion and political plot ever--finally became a reality when DC Comic's Vertigo imprint launched the first installment of The Invisibles.

Part of Morrison's sheer genius was to take familiar conspiracy and disinformation culture memes - Philip K. Dick's Vast Active Living Intelligence (VALIS), Terence McKenna's 2012 Omega Point, the Rosicrucian Invisible College, the Rennes le Chateau mystery, Situationism: and re-shape them into radically new scenarios. The Invisibles series is full of encyclopedic cut-and-paste references to films, pop music icons, tabloid controversies, historical figures, fringe science theories and much more.

The first series chronicled the initiation of Dane McGowan transmutating into Jack Frost (and who may be a buddha). Offered the chance to join an Invisibles cell led by the enigmatic King Mob, Frost becomes a key part of their battles against the Cyphermen and the cthonic Outer Church. Morrison hints in places that these two opposing forces fighting to control humanity may simply be two sides of the same coin.

The Invisibles broke new ground with characters like the trans-gender sorceress Lord Fanny and the time-traveller Ragged Robin, but his attention to historical detail (featuring author Mary Shelley, libertine the Marquis de Sade, George Byron and Percy Shelley as characters) and unusual locations perhaps alienated a target U.S. comic-phile audience unused to multi-layered complexity and ambiguity.

Changes were made for series two, positioning The Invisibles cell as a classic DC Comics team. The Dionysian rebels were transplanted to more familiar X-Files settings like UFO lore's Dulce military base (New Mexico) with powerful results (because Morrison still played with audience expectations). Set a year later whilst the Invisibles recuperate in America, the series answered many questions and filled in the relevant backstory to our heroes. But the stories still had a dark edge: Invisibles members are manipulated by subversive mind-control technology, and are torn apart by tension and betrayal. Travelling across multiple time-lines, the Invisibles uncover the multi-dimensional horrors unleashed by Robert Oppenheimer at the Trinity atomic bomb tests (signifying the original Biblical Fall). Virtual assassins, tantric sex rites that warp space-time topography, reslity viruses, immersion tank fiction-suits, Monarch butterflies and aggregate languages spread by alien anti-bodies all feature in a dizzying story arc. This vast scope features an alternative cosmology to the Big Bang where our universe is the phase boundary between an ailing and a healthy universe (suggested by Michael Grady and Hannes Alfvens).

With the third and final series, Morrison again surprised fans by choosing to count down to the millennium and the climatic ground zero (issue one). Self-referential and playfully ironic humour underlies references to Moonchild coronations and British Royal Family conspiracies, which are but minor skirmishes in a perpetual war. And hopefully, the prodigious Morrison will reveal the identity and purpose of Barbelith: a mysterious satellite relic/alien stone orbiting behind the Moon . . .

old.disinfo.com...

okay, just got my hands on this litle jewel two days ago and i haven't stopped reading. it's incredible, really. It helps to reassure you're not the only crazy person in the world.
back to the reading, g'bye!

One of the best comics i ever read, i didnt actually realize the last part was going backwards, i was reading it and at the second last issue it occured to me and it all snapped.
The Filth was also quite amazing, love grant morrison!

Bumpity bump bump!

I have been reading Morrison ever since 2000AD, and "Zenith". You can see The Invisibles trying to break out, even back then. The Invisibles is like the Matrix would have been, if Terry Gilliam had directed it. Every time I re-read it, there's some little nuance I'd previously missed that jumps out. The second and third times I read it, it was like a completely different story. A bit like 12 Monkeys, it's the attention to little details that makes Morrison (at his best) such a staggering talent. It's that attention to detail that also makes him (at his worst) pretty tedious, in stuff like (esp) Gideon Stargrave. But that's just my least favourite of his stuff.

I think his re-boot of "Animal Man" for DC, (and then Vertigo) was a seminal work too. The warmth and depth he brought, to who was a very minor player, from Detective Comics in the 1950s was brilliant. I think he did the first 30 issues, the character of Buddy Baker was rebuilt, from the ground up, in a way that was at once, funny, dark, and politcal. But mostly, Morrison made him likeable. Then Jamie Delano took over, and it became a huge title. Ran for years.