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Friday Recommendation: The Invisibles

By | August 17th, 2012
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This week saw the release of the meganormous “Invisibles” omnibus from Vertigo Comics, collecting the entire series in one giant volume. A tremendous epic from Grant Morrison and a bevy of talented artists, it’s a highly influential and incredibly important series within the comic medium. Telling a wide-spanning tale of a group of anarchists on a grandiose mission to save the world (and that’s just scratching the surface, really), the three-volume 59-issue series is an absolute landmark, and a must-own book for any fan of Morrison’s work.

And, to be quite frank, it’s a book I truthfully was hoping I would never write about.

There are a few reasons for this. One is that there’s already been a Friday Rec for “the Invisibles” here on Multiversity, written by Carina Enright way back when the site first started in 2009. Another is that there are far better essays on the book than I could ever do, including entire books written about the series from Tim Callahan or the guys behind Disinformation.The final and biggest reason, though, is that as much as I have confidence in my writing, there’s no way that I think I could properly encapsulate the series or how I feel about it in a way that’s ostensibly new, or even close to as good as those two books right there. I like the book, but I’m not sure how I could convince you over anything anyone else has said.

Yet, still, I’ll give it a bit of a go.

To sum up “the Invisibles” in the least direct/least spoiler-y way I can imagine, let’s look at it like this: in this comic, a band of counter-culture hoodlums spread their own breed of chaos in the shadows of our universe. Their goal is both to spread enlightenment and protect us from an enemy too horrific to even imagine, one that’s slowly clawing it’s ways into the seams of what we perceive as reality, all the while locked into a war beyond anything Heaven and Hell ever found themselves locked into. Through conspiracy theories, time travel and a literary/musical odyssey that travels (quite literally) all over the map, King Mob and his band of ruffians are here to fucking save the day in whatever way they see fit.  It’s tremendous, it’s funny, it’s impossibly bleak and it’s just the damn coolest thing that’s ever popped out of Morrison’s weird brain and onto the page.

“Invisibles” is a veritable smorgasbord of ideas. Jam-packed on every page in every corner is some kind of reference, either to pop- or counter-culture, popular myths, urban legends and beyond, all of which is masterfully hand-picked and incorporated into the book by Morrison as reality. While both reflective of his life and the world he immersed himself in (which, for those curious, is captured in a really fascinating light in both his book “Supergods” and in the Talking With Gods documentary), “the Invisibles” stands out as one of those books that manages to effectively reevaluate and absorb the works of others into an entirely new piece of fiction, similar somewhat to Moore’s “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” series. The major difference between the two, however, is the way in which Morrison executes it all, and that’s through a fast-paced high-concept sci-fi book that’s barely contained within the pages it’s illustrated onto.

And the art! Oh, the art. The list of artists involved in this book alone should make you want to read it: Steve Yeowell, Jill Thompson, Chris Weston, John Ridgway, Steve Parkhouse, Paul Johnson, Phil Jimenez, Tommy Lee Edwards, Mark Buckingham, Duncan Fegredo, Michael Lark, Philip Bond, Ivan Reis, Warren Pleece, Sean Philips, Frank Quitely, Cameron Stewart and Brian Bolland. Each artist brings something different to the pages, from the opening of the series by Steve Yeowell to the spy-thriller issues done by Philip Bond to the involvement of Frank Quitely in the finale of the book, every artist brings something unique to the table in a tremendous orgy of sequential art. “Invisibles” v2 #22 with art by Chris Weston is a particular favorite of mine, although I won’t get into why too much to avoid spoilers. It’s one of those things you just need to see for yourself, and the art packs quite an emotional pay-off.

Continued below

Of course, to some folks that’s a detriment. Suffice it to say, if you’ve ever come across one of Morrison’s comics and felt like you needed Cliff Notes just to understand the first page, “Invisibles” is certainly no different. In fact, a days worth of reading about conspiracy theories and “general weird shit” on Wikipedia might be similar, albeit without the central narrative. Yet despite that, it’s a fairly engrossing read. There’s a lot to take from “the Invisibles,” in perceptions of reality and music and magic and art and science and history to simply the empowerment of the self. “Invisibles” is a very liberated comic, existing within a realm sufficiently defined within and by itself, and the way that it all comes around in the end to a big bang of a finale is such a sight to behold. As lazy as this may seem to say, if you’re willing to let Morrison take you an oddyssey, this is the ride to take.

However, the best thing about the title for me has always been that despite the “weird” or the “crazy” or whatever that’s contained within it, it still makes for a personal read. It’s been some time since I read “the Invisibles” last, but every time I go back to it I end up picking out something new. Maybe I learned something new about Morrison from reading an interview or his book, maybe I just happened to learn things about life or art for the simple sake of learning, but the more I come to understand about the world around me has always influenced how I approach the book. The first time I read the final volume, it came off as a spastic splatter of ideas and loose concepts, but repeated visits earned different understandings and appreciations for different reasons. Now the final page of the entire story rests among my personal list of Best All-Time Series Endings, and while “Invisibles” may not be my favorite Morrison work overall (that’s “All Star Superman,” surprise) it’s definitely a book I can’t imagine not having read.

The point is this: if you haven’t given “Invisibles” a try for whatever reason, now is certainly the time. With the entire series in one humongous tome, it is truly a fantastic representation of an epic for the ages, and an absolute blast of a sci-fi story. “The Invisibles” should be required reading for the medium to the same extent that people are beholden to “Sandman” or “Watchmen” (DC, don’t go getting any “Before Invisibles” ideas now), and even if the third volume ended up a tad bit esoteric, the book just goes to show how much mileage you can get out of a well-crafted series, and it is by far one of my favorite works of fiction that I’ve ever read, comic or otherwise.


//TAGS | Friday Recommendation

Matthew Meylikhov

Once upon a time, Matthew Meylikhov became the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Multiversity Comics, where he was known for his beard and fondness for cats. Then he became only one of those things. Now, if you listen really carefully at night, you may still hear from whispers on the wind a faint voice saying, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine is not as bad as everyone says it issss."

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