Product Description

The Invisibles, Grant Morrison's brilliant series of magickal underground tales, exposes the naked spirituality of good and evil throughgut-wrenching, psychedelic violence. Apocalipstick, the collected issues from midway through volume 1, tracks the career of new kid Jack Frost after he runs away from his wary pals in the Invisibles to come to terms with his power and his adulthood. Along the way we see humans hunted for sport, interdimensional monsters that would make H.P. Lovecraft puke, and a leisurely look at Lord Fanny's childhood. The penciling, always appropriate to Morrison's moods, ranges from brutal scratchings to startling clear drawings. While it's probably true that comics, like literature generally, can't be truly subversive any more, Apocalipstick shows how it could be done. --Rob Lightner

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10355 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04-01
• Released on: 2001-04-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

From Amazon.com
The Invisibles, Grant Morrison's brilliant series of magickal underground tales, exposes the naked spirituality of good and evil through gut-wrenching, psychedelic violence. Apocalipstick, the collected issues from midway through volume 1, tracks the career of new kid Jack Frost after he runs away from his wary pals in the Invisibles to come to terms with his power and his adulthood. Along the way we see humans hunted for sport, interdimensional monsters that would make H.P. Lovecraft puke, and a leisurely look at Lord Fanny's childhood. The penciling, always appropriate to Morrison's moods, ranges from brutal scratchings to startling clear drawings. While it's probably true that comics, like literature generally, can't be truly subversive any more, Apocalipstick shows how it could be done. --Rob Lightner

Customer Reviews

Best. Title. Ever.
The Invisibles hits an early peak with this collection, which features issues 9-16 of the series' first volume. It kicks off in slightly arbitrary fashion with 23: Things Fall Apart, which surely would have been more comfortable nestling up at the end of Say You Want A Revolution as a coda to the Arcadia story-arc reprinted there.

Still, beginnings as endings is a recurring theme throughout the series so it's just possible that the editors in charge of the Invisibles' release in graphic novel format are less incompetant and insane than the books' slapdash release schedule would seem to indicate.

Even this early in the title's run Grant Morrison is already going out of his way to shade our perception of the story and its protagonists, sowing seeds that will only grow to full bloom a year or more down the road. This can be seen first in the characters' varying reactions to the bloodbath of the opening issue, but it's telling that Morrison is willing to take (almost) an entire issue away from his main characters to continue the process, resulting in one of the best, most innovative stories of the entire series - the elegant, borderline-heartbreaking Best Man Fall.

From that high (or possibly low) we're immediately picked up and pitched straight into another. The She-Man arc is an example of that rarest of comic-book beasts - a back-story that actually serves to make the character involved more interesting. It helps of course that the character in question is the dazzling Lord Fanny ("I'm an international freedom fighter AND a photogenic witch, darling. I'm the most glamerous creature you'll ever meet!") and helps even more that the immensely talented Jill Thompson is on pencilling duty, but the net result is a story of initiation that's both brutal and - no pun intended - magical. Oh, and for good measure it concludes with the biggest, sheerest cliffhanger of the series so far, one that'll have any sane person scrabbling to get hold of Entropy In The UK, the collection that concludes Volume 1.

Throw in the always-fun Jim Crow making his scholck-horror debut, Jack/Dane trying (and mostly failing) to come to terms with his new place in the world, and a couple of absolutely belting covers and all in all you've got what is, despite strong competition, probably my favourite Invisibles graphic novel.

Plus it's got the best title of anything, ever. This isn't even open for debate.

My own fault
I bought Invisibles book one (Say You Wanna Revolution) because I am fan of Mr. Morrison's work. By the end of the title, I was quite confused.
No point, generic kooky characters, mind-boggling powers with zero explanation or reason, fighting the corrupt system because its what all good unrealized geniuses talk about. This couldn't be the Grant Morrison I knew. His stories have points and, you know, don't suck.
Something had to not be right. It had to be me. I just didn't get it. That's what it was. I didn't get it. I didn't have enough to sink my teeth into to find my place.
Easy solution: get book two. With more of this incredible story, I'll realize what Mr. Morrison is up too and I'll enjoy it like I was told I would.
So I got book two. It sucks, too, but then a sudden realization came over me. It wasn't that I didn't get something. I got it: rage against the machine, wear leather and be a sex god. It's that it was bad. It's slow and dull and goes out of its way to claim that black is white and white is black and if you don't know then you'll never know. It's as deep as the average middle schooler.
I give it two stars instead of one because its my own fault for haveing bought the second book.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...

Something special this way comes
Apocalipstick, oh so cleverly named, is the second book of Grant Morrison's Invisibles series. After the drearily necessary Acadia story arc, these short stories are really what this series needed.

There are some real great single issues, particularly the Best Man's Fall, a story told through the eyes of a military peon.

The main arc, Apocalipstick, centers on Lord Fanny, the transvestite member of the Invisibles. I have to say, this is great stuff, all of the craziness seems rooted in reality, and makes the comic much more human and reasonable.

Morrison's characters are fleshed out in these stories, and these stories show a real desire on his part to get on track and tell some great stories. One of Morrison's weaknesses is to get too lost in the details, but that doesn't happen here.

A real enjoyable read, highly recommended.