Originally posted in CD as Gideon Starorzewski
At the height of the era that nearly destroyed the North American comic book industry, the segment of 1990s best known for the ill conceived notion that Rob Liefield's art was worth paying money for and the dizzying heights of depraved excess that the industry was willing to reach in order to cash in on the burgeoning "speculator" market, the Vertigo imprint found itself at a historic crossroads. Following the wild success of reinterpreting classic superheroes and obscure DC properties into adult oriented fare with the UK's best up and coming creators, they waded into the arena of creator ownership with a comic that would in short order push the boundaries of the imprint and even the medium of comics in ways that had never been done before and have rarely been attempted since.
That comic was Grant Morrison's The Invisibles. Originally conceived as a comic about psychic boy scouts. Eventually morphing into the exploits of a secret society of ontological and physical anarchists calling themselves The Invisibles, it became the codification of many of the ambitious themes and ideas that took root in his earlier work (and still persist to his most recent material), a sequential art alchemical formula for nothing so prosaic as turning lead into gold, but for transforming the reader.
Undertaken as an extended spell that Morrison coined the term "hypersigil" for, The Invisibles was quite intentionally written with the intention of affecting the reader beyond the normal boundaries of fiction as he quite boldy states at the outset of the series:
“I’m the writer you created to produce a comic book so faithful to our thoughts and experiences that it would serve as a Zen-like trigger, bootstrapping you into an illuminated state where you suddenly became even more aware of the overwhelming number of coincidences and synchronicities that hold the world together.”
It's coming up on a year since I unknowingly embarked on a life altering journey when I opened the first issue of the comic, but I'm not here today to relate that or attempt to lend credence to the strange and wonderful power of the comic, I'm here to invite you to experience (or re-experience as the case may be) the series as a group starting on October 31st, 2006 (the one year anniversary of me reading The Invisibles #1).
The reason I want to start the group and do it here is that this forum has shown the remarkable ability again and again to come together and dissect comics with both a keen eye for detail and the talent for creating an inclusive and light hearted atmosphere.
The nitty gritty details of how this will go down are to be discussed and decided by the interested parties in the next fifteen days, such as how much time will be devoted to each issue (keeping in mind those who will be having to budget to buy the trades as we progress). One resource I strongly suggest that everyone make use of is the namesake of this thread, the annotations to the comic published by the Disinformation group. The Invisibles itself is available in seven trade paperbacks. However, the letters pages that are so integral to the series are not included in the collected editions, but will be posted here as each relevant issue is discussed.
Welcome to the conspiracy. biggrin
