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Underground > Comic Books >

The Invisibles broke my head.And I loved every second.

18:02 / 14.07.03

i read it for the first time last night. can someone explain exactly what it did to my head please? i'm not complaining, it feels incredible. i just need the words to explain to my girlfriend why i'm now insane.

18:21 / 14.07.03

i think that everything i'd like to say right now about the Invisibles i said in the Who was Quimper? thread a few weeks ago, which is probably as good a place to start as any.

20:30 / 14.07.03

Which issues did you read? How much in one sitting?

20:38 / 14.07.03

perhaps i should explain myself a little better. yesterday was indescribable. i had the best sex ive ever had in my life. i performed some destruction rituals. of course i didnt know they were rituals at the time. and since they were destruction rituals they were also creation rituals. then i came home and read the invisibles(Bloody Hell in America through to the end.)
and now i'm something else.today iv'e been performing rock and roll magick. just to see how it treats me.

22:30 / 14.07.03

Trying to explain to your girlfriend *why* you are insane is counterproductive to your own happiness. Trust me friend, i've been down that road. Just tell her you're crazy and hand her Volume 1.

22:54 / 14.07.03

Nothing like that happened to me while reading the Invisibles. It all happened while reading Valis and Cosmic Trigger at the same time.

02:02 / 15.07.03

I can relate; volume 3 did essentially the same thing to me. That was my introduction to the Invisibles; I read them as they came out and was left exquisitely confused. And changed. I have no idea how deep that change goes.

In April 2000 I took somewhere in the neighborhood of 23 hits of acid and (among other things) put my hand through a window. Talk about your destructive fertility rituals. Anyway, when the paramedics strapped me to a the gurney I was under the impression that they were preparing me for some kind of inverse crucifiction--I was about to be strung upside down as a sacrifice to usher in a new era. Later I identified this delusion with the scene in vol 3 #2 where Sir Miles kills himself. I have no idea which came first, the acid trip or the Invisibles issue.

On a related note, I *just* finished a reread of volume 3 and realized that I actually have all twelve issues. Previously I'd thought I was missing one. Even when I counted down from issue to issue I had the creeping suspicion that there was one still more, as in a lost number hidden between one and twelve. Which strikes me as totally appropriate to volume 3.

So, weepy, if you're looking for a place to go next, I might recommend the volume 3 paperback, although others might disagree.

03:25 / 15.07.03

isnt the vol. 3 paperback Invisible Kingdom? i was under the distinct impression id read the whole series...
and as for handing my girlfriend volume one, im going to as soon as my friend lets me borrow it.

12:12 / 16.07.03

Well..
My story with the Invisibles is interesting. I first encountered them in 1997, when I read "Bloody Hell in America" at a friend's house. Later, I borrowed more issues, started collecting mid-way through Series 2, and in 2000, I bought Invisibles Series 1, 1-25 on the 'net, off Ebay.

So I've been reading them for some time.. but just this last week I started reading them while smoking ganja, having a lot of sex, dealing with some thorny therapy issues, and praying a lot to the Mother Goddess.

It happened slowly to me.. I read Volume 1 all in one sitting, one day. Then Volume 2, slowly, over a weekend. Then Volume 3 all in the course of a few hours, after having some intense personal experiences.

And I finally *got* it. Something clicked. I was so.. happy for once. I realized that the veil is just a veil - it's not everything. I realized there were more words that I had forgotten. I installed a yak-bone Buddha I bought in India at my altar. I read aloud from the Chandi, the Book of the Moon, the scriptures extolling Mahamaya, the Divine Illusion, the Mother Goddess. I realized I was more than what I was, and this was all just to be experienced for what it was. I learned to give up fear, for it just held me back.

I went online and tried to explain it to some friends of mine. They didn't understand what was going on. But it seemed like all of them were part of the Invisibles, like they were my own personal King Mob or Papa Skat or Mason Lang.

My "Mason", who, strangely enough, is also named Mason, and is also a reclusive multi-millioniare referred me to lex & yacc, and various programming languages. curses.c. It all made sense.

Let's assume that to a Divine Being, creating this universe is like programmer a computer environment.

So why are their bugs in the system? Why is there evil? Why do we make mistakes?

The answer is: We don't, it's part of things. We're in beta-test. Alpha-test maybe. The real release date is probably in 2012, but fuck if it matters to us. We're just avatars created by various QA staff to experience the program before it's ready for release.

Or something.

I'm still figuring it out.

02:30 / 17.07.03

I bought the first six trades after seeing just the cover to VOL 2, issue 17 (? can't remember for sure), the one with Boy with a gun to KM's head. So hat's off to Bolland for an image that compelled me to buy the run.

Anyway.

I read the whole thing straight through on a flight across America. My brain felt like a skid-mark by the time KM blew up Mason's house. I felt like a computer must feel when an important program is glitching. Then "The Invisible Kingdom" came out, and I snapped it up and read it, and THEN my head came unglued.

So I found the Barbelith board, and thanks to the likes of Runce and others I found some pattern to the chaos. I bought "Anarchy for the Masses" as well, and now I can't find any conversation where an Invisibles quote isn't appropriate. Around Christmas time last year, for instance, my daughter asked me who Jack Frost was. I launched into a lengthy and energetic explanation of Dane and his place in the Invisibles. She seemed to dig it, though my wife keeps threatening to get rid of my books. It would end in divorce, I swear.

So, yeah, you're one of us now, the permanently fucked.

08:46 / 17.07.03

I was there from the start.

My comic book dealer (literally) thrust a copy of issue one into my hands and ordered me to read it.

I'm still not sure what happened to the resulting years.

I reguarly re-read the run, one volume at a time. I've attempted to palm the books off to my mates but I'm not so good at convincing them they need to read this series.

I'm doing better with New X-men though.

18:26 / 17.07.03

i think im beginning to get a handle on things. but now my girlfriend is reading it.
this should be interesting....

01:26 / 20.07.03

I first heard about The Invisibles around the time The Matrix came out, and I heard that many of the ideas from the film were actually taken from the comic, and for a couple of years I was always "about" to pick up the comic, but never got around to it. I had picked up the book a number of times and was about to buy it, but never did until May of last year, when I finally got Say You Want a Revolution.

I liked it a lot, and picked up Apocalipstick, where I first really got into the series with Best Man Fall, which was amazing to me, becuase I had been thinking of a very similar story, about the horrible life that leads a man to work for a stereotypical movie evil organization, and then killed by the "hero of the work", for a long time, and then to read it astonished me. At once I was extremely happy because it was an incredible story, but also a bit annoyed because there goes the chance of making that story as a wholly original idea.

Then, I picked up Entropy in the UK which for me is where the book stops evolving and becomes The Invisibles that it would be for the rest of the book. Reading the first Gideon Stargrave story was incredible, and everything from then on I loved.

I finished Volume II last August, and was really annoyed about the wait for Volume III. So, I started a reread in October, and it all started to click together, particularly on Black Science II, it seemed like every single page tied in to something else in the series, and presented an incredible new idea.

So, I went into Volume III thinking that I understood everything in the series, and it wouldn't be that tough to get, however, Volume III completely bended my mind, and I was left in a virtual daze after finishing issue 1. Then, I went here, and began to unravel and understand everything, and I've still been thinking about the series virtually ever day since I finished it in November.