The Invisibles: The Invisible Kingdom [Paperback]

Morrison has been quoted as stating that he wanted to take his readers to different places and challenge them, maybe even changing their lives on the way. He’s certainly succeeded throughout the series. He’s got endorsements from a host of illuminaries on the back cover to add (commercial and artistic) credibility, including chaos mage Phil Hine.

Herein, pop occultism segues with conspiracy theory, ultraviolence, Lovecraftian entities, aliens, theories about reality and the Universe/Multiverse, Karma, sex, drugs, good and bad pop music, 70’s cop shows, 60’s kid’s TV, design, fast cars, body piercing, and lots of self-referentially clever postmodern, situationist (whatever) theorising that would keep a fortunate Phd student in grants for several years trying to unravel it all.

The story jumps you from one reality to another, sometimes seamlessly, sometimes jarringly, but invariably entertainingly. ‘The Invisibles’ was never going to be easy to resolve in its final arc anyway – in essence, it can never end (or begin) given the theories of time it espouses. Garth Ellis similarly found the difficulty of seeking a final resolution in ‘Preacher’, whose ending annoys as many as it satisfies. Neil Gaiman managed the trick satisfyingly in ‘Sandman’, leaving innumerable spin-off opportunities for DC to keep the franchise evolving and generating profits, some good, some atrocious beyond words.

At times Morrison seems to be trying to be too clever for his own good. Sure, it’s thought provoking and enlightening, needing a hyperlinked commentary to help make sense of it and encourage the reader to follow up avenues of interest .... If you have an open mind, and want to learn more about the world, how language both liberates and imprisons us, views on politics and reality, and the very essence of things, The Invisibles is a great place to set off from. Its also a brilliant place to play 'spot the reference', and there's plenty of that here, including The Wicker Man, The Seventh Seal, Glastonbury, The Matrix etc. etc.

But at times the giddy edifice seems near to collapse under its own weight and ever increasing complexity, very much like our contemporary reality, the intersection of two universes, one healthy, one diseased, as postulated in Morrison’s cosmology. Maybe that's intentional, the entropy inherent in the system?

The artwork in the first story arc, Satanstorm, is poor and undermines the quality of the narrative, which concerns a psychic and psychological coup against Sir Miles Delacourt of the Outer Church (the chief bad guy). Phil Jiminez’s superb artwork in earlier arcs conveyed the right kind of warped realism necessary for many of us to buy into the epic.

The idea of using several different artists for each 2 page spread of the apocalyptic finale, set in Westminster Abbey (shades of ‘The Medusa Touch’) is a nice idea in practice but doesn’t actually seem to follow the logic of the story terribly well. Once again, some of the art is superb, some incredibly scrappy (Ms. Thompson, you have done much better in earlier Invisibles, Sandman etc.).

Still, it’s nice to be introduced to our favourite characters again, King Mob, Fanny, Jolly Roger, Orlando the fleshless, face-eating demon, the Division X guys etc. It’s also fun to meet the Marquis de Sade once more. He’s now a ghost, btw, or more accurately, a self-generated thought form (or Tulpa in Tibetan occultism), who sustains himself on crystal water and communion wafers. This is suitably decadent for a libertine trying to free mankind from its self-imposed slavery and restrictions, only in order to plunge them into an erotic dictatorship of his own devising (in which subversive practitioners of conventional sexuality will have their ‘deviancies’ logged, whilst be allowed to continue).

There are nice digs at the British establishment and class system, consumerism, the Monarchy, the (current) government, and some good running gags to test our knowledge of occultism, pop culture etc. As time moves on, these references will give The Invisibles a period feel, just as the series lovingly parodies earlier eras. So the saga has a nice, trippy surreal nature, and in the end, we all end up liberated, within the supercontext of all times and realities. Our sentence is up… for now.

If you've never read The Invisibles series, its high time that you did. It's infuriating at times, it can be difficult to follow its tortuous logic and never-ending cast of characters, and you may need to read it several times to 'get it'. But it is unlike anything else, in comics or literature, and takes you on a real odyssey of discovery, as well as entertainment. If you are a suburban curtain twitcher who trusts the authorities to act in your interests as you bovinely allow yourself to be indoctrinated by the ads on the TV and the editorial in the media, you probably need to read this more than anyone else!

How do I love thee, let me count the ways. Dangerous, anarchic, disorienting, trippy, ultra-violent, touching, sexy, intelligent and wholly wonderful - "The Invisible Kingdom" is my ideal for how all books should be.