Wow, those pamphlet comics were long in the old days!

I almost read this back in the day. I loved Morrison's Animal Man run - and Zenith, and St Swithin's Day - but got a little put off by the psychedelia, automatic writing and channeling of higher powers that came in with Doom Patrol. Coming back to The Invisibles I see why I passed on it, but still have a slight regret that I did.

I'm surprised how much Sandman there is in it. The densely written, historical sections in particular definitely feel like a reaction to Gaiman's comics.

I enjoyed this first volume, although there is little genuine plot - it's essentially a lot of set up, mostly vehicled through a vivacious delinquent, rude and raw, as he is nurtured by various unlikely shamen, fighting the forces of order and constraint (a few similarities to Stone Junction on that score). ( )

Probably not for everyone, but for those who enjoy Morrison operating in fast forward, this is a real treat. Yeowen, Thompson, and Cramer don't really put it any art to blow your mind, but they do a reasonably good job of keeping up with Morrisons kitchen-sink of a story. Definitely looking forward to more. ( )

This book is very, very 90's. Most readers will either love that, or hate that. I found the art okay, if a bit ridiculous, and very dated. The characters were okay, although I found them annoying in places, and the plot was interesting enough that I'll probably pick up the second trade. ( )

Rating and review are for the series.

The sort of non-conformist stuff that sounds amazing when you're 17. Bright, brash, vulgar, lacking in nuance. I'm pretty sure Dane is a stand-in for the target audience: young, wanting more in life than conformity and an office job but not knowing where to find it, waiting to have his mind blown by the Invisibles' philosophy of radical freedom. (it's no wonder, then, that everyone keeps talking about how special he is, despite everyone else seeming just as special, and having read the whole series I still doubt he has the buddha nature, but anyway...) And the first volume in particular is written to be confusing because both Dane and the reader are out of their depth, thrown into something totally new (and maybe also to make the author sound clever)--though having read the series twice now, it does actually hold together, scenes are pulled from much later in the story but there's a reason they're in both places.

This series touches a lot of subjects, some with less care than one might like. The mentions of buddhism and hinduism have a lot of the 60s orientalism, and I'm not sure vudu was very accurately represented, though I suppose it's a step forward that it's neither evil nor all about the zombies here. And much as I love Fanny, she could lead to some mistaken stereotypes in the young and impressionable--though again, it's a step forward that she's there at all. And I certainly wouldn't want an alleged rapist and child molester designing a sexual utopia.

But despite it's flaws, I still might have given the series four stars: many other people have tried to do the every-conspiracy-is-real storyline, or the creatures-from-beyond-space-and-time-that-we-can't-even-conceptualize storyline, but most do it very badly, but this, as mentioned above, for the most part hangs together--that is, until you get to the end. Now one would expect a certain amount of falling apart at the end of a series like this, as what the creators are attempting to represent is by definition something that is impossible to conceive of in ordinary space and time, but it's like the author completely lost interest in the series about 3 or 4 issues from the end of the last volume. The well-fleshed-out characters start dropping from the storyline and are replaced by other characters that the reader has no time to get to know--some don't even have names. Plot lines are introduced, then dropped without tying into anything. 13 years, more than all the time the series has taken to that point, fly by with apparently nothing happening. I suppose it might have needed an eighth or even ninth volume to do it justice, but having read all that one wants a better payoff than this series delivers. ( )

My favorite collection fo the series. Interesting premise and very trippy. The rest of the series didn't deliver, however. ( )