Product Description

The final days...this is where it all comes together. The final battle between The Invisibles, freedom fighters on a mission to save eternity, and the Archons, the timeless forces of control who would see us all forever enchained. Now King Mob, Ragged Robin, Lord Fanny, Jack Frost and Jolly Roger must prevent the crowning of the 'Moon-Child' at Westminster Abbey, with the help of Mister Six and Division X; while, in future, a radically changed King Mob and Jack prepare for the end of history...Revelations and resolutions abound in the final volume of this classic series; nothing is what it seems, and everything you know is wrong. Apart from which side you're on!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28327 in Books
• Published on: 2002-12-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Grant Morrison's Invisibles is the ultimate conspiracy epic, tying together every urban myth and every Illuminati-inspired wacko plot, into the story Naomi Klein was too scared and/or uninspired to tell you. And as if that's not enough, it's not just a story; Morrison's intent was that it would act as a kind of magical virus, reprogramming the mind of anyone who read it by stripping out all the false assumptions they've been fed from birth. The strangest thing is, he succeeded. The Invisibles has been collected into seven books, of which The Invisible Kingdom is the conclusion; in other words, it's not a good starting point. For that, there's the secret history of London in Say You Want a Revolution, or the Matrix-inspiring wire-fu lunacy of Bloody Hell in America. But this is where it all comes together. This is where, having learned about the Invisible Order fighting to free the world from their Conspiracy enemies, it becomes apparent that everything wasn't that simple.

Oscillating between a 1970s cop show pastiche, the low-key story of an old woman saying her last farewells and a Lovecraft-in-Hollywood showdown with the extradimensional King of All Tears, The Invisible Kingdom contains more ideas on any given page than you'll find in the average book. As the head of the Technoccult corp says while preparing to unleash new product The Invisibles: "It's a thriller, it's a romance; it's a tragedy; it's a porno; it's neo-modernist kitchen sink science fiction that you catch, like a cold." With the flawed art from the original serial corrected The Invisible Kingdom is an essential purchase for anyone interested in what lurks in the world's shadows--and what hides in plain sight. --Alex Sarll

About the Author
Grant Morrison is one of comics' most innovative writers. His long list of credits include JLA, Animal Man, Doom Patrol and Judge Dredd. He is also the author of the award-winning Batman: Arkham Asylum, and is currently writing Marvel Comics' New X-Men and DC Comics' The Filth.

Customer Reviews

Grant Morrison's Gotterdamerung...
‘Thus ends the eternal work’ commented Wagner at the completion of Der Ring des Nibelungen. And so ends ‘The Invisibles’, Grant Morrison’s inventive and irreverent comic book saga.

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!

Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are All Invisible!
The long awaited conclusion to the Invisibles series is now out in graphic novel format, and is as brain-stunning as anticipated. I decided to re-read all of the comics prior to digesting "The Invisible Kingdom", and I am still trying to piece my head back together.

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.

The end of a brilliant series fail to deliver
As the final chapter in the up until now brilliant "The Invisibles" series, this book is a big disappointment. The writer seems to have made so many story arcs that is impossible to conclude in a coherently manner. He seems to have written himself out on a limb, and then to be able to finish, he cuts of the limb he sits on. I have really loved the series up until this last book. And I had such great expectations. But for me it failed completely to deliver. The use of some illustrators that are quite frankly not good enough for this kind of work also pulls the result down.