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Underground > Comic Books >

Anarchy For The Masses

21:43 / 19.05.04

Anarchy For The Masses: The Disinformation Guide To The Invisibles

"Anarchy For The Masses dares to romp with the living, knob-encrusted monster that is the six-year-long Invisibles experiment. If, as intended, the series is a stained paper section through the body of some vast, soft intricate entity made of time, then Anarchy is an historic first probe, a plucky Voyager bringing back and making sense of the many dripping, weird-angled splinters and fully authorized facets found deep in the hide and guts of my captive mega-terrestrial". - Grant Morrison

Translation: Its a guide to a comic.

Question is, is it any good? How much detail does it go in to? Will it stop people posting Invisibles related questions on this board?

"Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles was the most ground-breaking and controversial comic book series of the last decade. A must-have for comics fans, this Guide features exhaustive, detailed analysis of the full six-year series as well as all-new, exclusive interviews with Morrison and many of the series’ artists and editors". - Description from Amazon.com

22:05 / 19.05.04

I liked it. While it felt a bit lightweight overall, there were some decent interviews and articles. The best thing about is the handy placement of the (quite good) annotations in the margins of the book, making reading them along with the comics a breeze; just place the open comic or trade paperback right on top of the open Disinfo Guide and lift the edges slightly to read the annotations as you come to the pages or panels under discussion.

23:35 / 19.05.04

I enjoyed it. Especially the annotations and the GM interview. But it won't stop people asking questions about the Invisibles on Barbelith. Nothing ever will.

00:23 / 20.05.04

Yeah, I found it a bit lightweight too. And dare I say it, anal... Still good stuff on Jon A'Dreams and " Satan " - I never really got what was going on there particularly, and I did enjoy the interview at the end.

02:08 / 20.05.04

Nice and smooth. Makes you look at the fine print as it were. And cleared up things i missed completely no matter how many times i re-read the whole series.

V. Cool.

02:21 / 20.05.04

I'd say it's every Invisibles fan should already have a copy if only for the great interview near the end.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

13:22 / 20.05.04

This is why God gives us a search function.

15:51 / 20.05.04

I have both editions...I noticed the annotations aren't identical.

15:57 / 20.05.04

Still good stuff on Jon A'Dreams and " Satan "

i'm not entirely happy with their stuff on "Satan" or that they insist on calling him "Satan" all the time. i mean, he is Satan but he's also the Gnostic Christ, and i think Satan gives him too sinister a spin. i think "Blind Chessman" is a bit less loaded.

16:59 / 20.05.04

Mario, is it worth owning both or do you recommend one over the other?

17:06 / 20.05.04

That's a tough question. The Disinfo edition (with the Quitely cover) has more art, and covers the changes made in the last trade, but I think the older edition has some slightly more detailed annotations.

If I had to choose one, I guess I'd go for the Quitely cover. But it's a tossup.

04:33 / 21.05.04

I'm personally more dissapointed with Quietley's work on the cover for this book than any other. Dane looks like a caveman, Robin's makeup looks like she's wearing a mask (which never sat right with me for some reason), Boy has about as much expression as your average mannequin, and Fanny looks like she outweighs oh, maybe, your average Ethiopian. King Mob is the only one I think he got even close to right there.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

05:18 / 21.05.04

Yes, but IIRC he was doing this for free, right about the time he was still working on New X-Men.

And I suspect they refer to Satan as Satan because that was what he was called in the scripts, and an excerpt from grant's script for somewhere around 2.15 was published in a book talking to comic writers about their techniques.

17:52 / 03.06.04

i think the best bits were the interviews with Grant and the artists. my favorite Grant quote was roughly.. read the Invisbles for the invisible backstory of Audrey Murray.. a woman who refused to let the shit of life get her down.

worked for me.