The
Invisibles Omnibus – Grant Morrison (1994-2000)
The Invisibles Omnibus collects all
the issues released of the Invisibles series which ran from 1994 to 2000. Compiling comic books like this can be an
issue as many are created to be open-ended, allowing the story to continue with
new writers and artists indefinitely. In
the early 90’s a wave of comic book writers started to break away from the
corporate comic book structure, in which anything created is the sole property
and responsibility of the parent company.
They wanted to control, to “own” the content they were creating, without
having to resort to the comparatively limited publishing and distribution
capabilities of small presses and underground publishers. This allowed some of the industry’s top
people to set up deals with the big publishers, where they would hold the
rights to the material and essentially have free rein as to what stories they
wished to craft, and where the stories would lead to and ultimately end. Neil Gaiman took this and ran with it in the
Sandman series. Alan Moore did so as
well with a sequence of amazing titles.
One of their contemporaries was Grant Morrison, the British writer that
penned the entire run of the Invisibles for the Vertigo imprint.
Both Moore and Morrison are fringe
thinkers, interested in the esoteric, occult, and mysterious in the world we
exist in. Both draw from the mass of
occult literature and their own personal studies into the weird to write their
stories. Whereas Alan Moore’s work has a
serious, intellectual feel to it, as if you are being told a preposterous story
by the world’s wisest man, Grant Morrison’s work is like spending a month with
a LSD-addled speed-freak who wants to share everything they have
heard/seen/read/experienced regarding the Occult and esoteric, and whose
narrative cannot be fully trusted due to the disjointed, haphazard nature of
his mind. It is an odd difference, and
one which has divided the two writers.
The Invisibles is an exciting book,
for the most part. It is an interesting
tale, for the most part. It is clever
and witty, for the most part. Perhaps it
would have benefitted me to read just one issue’s worth of it every month like
comic book fans have to do. Since I do
not have that luxury of time, I had to read it over the course of a month. The story, like so many others, builds and
builds as we meet new characters, explore their lives, both past, present, and
future, and discover countless conspiracies, secrets and horrors, until it
comes at you like an onrushing tsunami, unstoppable and violent. It really does “fry your brain” at times with
the vast amount of freaky conspiracy and magic, all with double and triple
meanings and outcomes. This tempo and intensity are not sustainable in a work
of literature of this length. The book
drags heavily around the ¾ mark, and the ending is nowhere near as inspired as
the earlier parts of the book. Perhaps,
having aged many years since he began the work, Grant Morrison’s anarchic
sensibility was tempered by time and wisdom.
Who knows? All I can say is that
for all the wild information contained within, I do not see how anyone who was
not already deeply familiar with the weirdness presented in this book would
enjoy the story, which is the standard “secret society exists to fight another
secret society, both of which are mortal enemies of each other, or ARE THEY?” Boring.
The Invisibles is one of those works
where the creator decided to throw everything including the kitchen sink at the
page and see what sticks. While I was
entertained mostly, and informed very slightly (I already knew about nearly
every aspect of weird that Morrison details in this book), I was left with an
empty feeling. There is no real
substance behind this book. I do not
think it will hold up well as the years go by.
It in fact becomes a tedious read toward the latter parts. Part of this is due to the inability of
Morrison to craft an ending as satisfactory and weird as his beginning and
middle, and part of it is due to the lack of cohesive focus in the way the story
is presented.
The very best work is crafted by
either an individual or by equal partners who see things through from beginning
to end. The Invisibles did not use the
same artist for the run of the comic. In
fact, many issues have 4-6 different illustrators drawing the story, which to
me distracts from the tale being told.
Art and the decisions made in the process of making Art require purpose,
actual purpose. Neil Gaiman’s Sandman
epic did not use the same artist for every tale, but it did use the same artist
for all the cover art, and the same artist for each complete “chapter” of the
stories. This adds a cohesion that is
absent in the Invisibles. The book
suffers from this greatly. Comic books
are the ultimate combination of Art and Words.
The very best of the genre is created by dedicated teams. The Dark Knight Returns was a masterpiece,
and it was only helped by the fact that the same writer (Frank Miller), artists
(Frank Miller, Klaus Jansen), and colorist (Lynn Varley) handled every panel of
every page of every issue. Alan Moore’s
The Watchmen also benefitted greatly from the partnership of Alan Moore and
Dave Gibbons. Having the artist and the
writer share in the design, layout, and creation of any comic greatly improves
it.
While there are many cool things in
this comic, it never captured me, and I never felt any affinity to any of the
characters involved. Much of it seemed overly complex, and
disjointed, for no discernible reason. Every
two pages the story flips from one sub-plot to another, creating a very shitty reading
rhythm. It’s like Grant Morrison tried to create magic through a comic book and
did so purely by regurgitating every single occult and conspiratorial idea he
had ever run into, but without the humor and intelligence of The Illuminatus
Trilogy for example, or the deep exploration of history found in Alan Moore’s
From Hell, a far more disturbing and beautiful book. Oh well.
Live and learn. On to the next
book.(This book can be purchased here: The Invisibles Omnibus )
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