The Invisibles

The Invisibles is a difficult comic to write about but because I know almost nothing about comics I thought I'd give it a try.

For one thing it's sort of about Everything and Nothing, only Everything isn't as far reaching as you thought and Nothing seems like a crowd. It's also weird because the main characters aren't really the point; often they're annoying stereotypical, sometimes spectacularly dated - one of the 'heroes', King Mob, mostly looks like the planks who used to Socialist Work and then spend hundreds of $$$ on fetish wear and urban-primitive chin-spiking chic.

No, The Invisibles works because of the bits inbetween and the characters that circle the main fray; the gaps between the stories are where Grant Morrison really opens up. One segment humanises the nameless baddy hordes with a slice of life from one of the Conspiracy foot soldiers... imagine seeing a Stormtrooper coming home for tea, wifely kisses and grief over his autistic children.

Equally, the minor characters are by far the most interesting; they seem to act around the main heroic ciphers, adding subtle ambiguities here and there and highlighting themes that only emerge issues later (interestingly, was the Invisibles a hit in comic form? Psychbloke? I can't imagine many people would have the patience - or the memory - needed to take all this in month by month).

Characters shed identities like snake-skin boots, clues are everywhere. People emerge in one time-suit, dissolve and then re-emerge in another. They swap sides even when there are no sides to swap, when the natue of Good vs Evil, the bloody Manichaen revenge-suites, is pulled apart and pasted on a Moebius strip.

Some parts are ripped from 70s cop series - not always consciously - with Sweenyesque gut punchers, busty broads and Austin Powers silliness which then somehow transmutes beautifully into deep-set metaphysics, mysticism (East and West - the gang's all here) and gnostic musings. To have the most powerful Invisible dressed as uber 60s mexican moustachioed Jason King is a thing of genius.

There's thin strings of seriousness through the whole affair but it never quite seems to get bogged down - given it's attempting to pull together a world view that includes Satan, Reich, Superstrings, Masonic rituals, Mayan sorcery, Time-Travel, Voodoo, Wittgenstein, Buddha, 1930s Anarchism, magic(k), drugs, alien abduction, utopian dreaming and telepathy that's no mean feat...

And all the above is treated with such matter of factness that it never once descends into the future-world sci-fi that normally allows comics free rein and a get-out clause; it's amazingly grounded and internally consistent, even if you get the feeling that not all of the themes were planned at the off. If anything, I guess this thematic coherency emerges itself as part of the synchronous reality that eventually dominates the action: you know how it's going to end - anything else would have been a Fatal Attraction style let down - but that doesn't stop you going back and re-reading and trying to work out how it gets there. It forces you to work at it and sends you searching; references beget references, which in turn open up further reality tunnels, some of which undoubtedly aren't worth scurrying down but still...it's no bad thing to find yourself suddenly full of triple-yous.

Morrison wears his influences heavily on his sleeve - Pop culture permeates (Grant Morrison seems to have a disappointingly prosaic musical range), the Illuminatus! trilogy looms large - but his writing is fresh enough to prevent the story becoming a 'Best of Technocculture' list and the numerous sly references are generally subtle (or skewed) enough to avoid the feeling that he's trying too hard.

Buy this. You've always wanted a copy of Foucault's Pendulum that is actually good, haven't you?