Our Sentence is Up: Seeing Grant Morrison's The Invisibles

by Patrick Meaney, Grant Morrison, Timothy Callahan

Grant Morrison's THE INVISIBLES has been hailed as an ambitious comics masterpiece, the key to Morrison's entire body of work, and the inspiration for THE MATRIX. But it's also frequently written off as incomprehensible.

Using a conversational, accessible style, Patrick Meaney (director of GRANT MORRISON: TALKING WITH GODS) opens up THE INVISIBLES through in-depth analysis that makes sense of the series's complicated ideas, fractured chronology, and delirious blend of fiction and reality. Meaney also explores how the series's fictional conspiracy theories fare in the wake of 9/11 and the War on Terror. The book includes an extensive interview with Grant Morrison and an introduction by Timothy Callahan (author of GRANT MORRISON: THE EARLY YEARS).

From Sequart Research & Literacy Organization. More info at http://Sequart.org

Genres: Comics, Nonfiction, Essays, Ebooks, Graphic Novels, Criticism, Reference

357 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Patrick Meaney is a writer / filmmaker based in New York. He is co-founder and president of Respect! Films, where he's producing, among other things, feature-length documentaries for Sequart Research & Literacy Organization.

Reviews

[Brendan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this, alongside The Disinformation guide to The Invisibles, as a companion to my most current reading of The Invisibles. This is a fantastic resource, and I'd say it's got a slight edge to the Disinformation guidebook. The issue-by-issue analysis is fantastic, and the supplementary interview with Morrison is one of the more in depth talks with him I've read. Recommended.

[Neal · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good issue-by-issue guide to the comics series, and a great interview with Grant Morrison in the back. If you've read and liked The Invisibles, you should check this out. Otherwise, go out and read the graphic novels before considering this.

[Grahm Eberhardt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great interpretation of The Invisibles with a focus on the false dichotomy of the war and shifting personas of the characters. I didn't always agree but it was fun to read alongside the comic. The interview with Grant Morrison was excellent.

[Lloyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely expertly written and indispensible companion for further studies of Grant Morrison's hyper-sigil masterpiece.

[Terry Quirke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent companion read to the series, highlighted a lot of things I had missed in the series as I went along and added to the enjoyment. Great series to read.

[Kirk Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a deep dive analysis. It is great, but you have to really know the source material for it to be worthwhile. If you are, I highly recommend it.

[Rust · Rating 4 out of 5]

The invisibles is the real thing. I just, at last, read this book, along with my third (maybe fourth?) re-reading of the invisible saga. The book is a fine commentary, it is organized in chapters that follow the comic’s ones so it’s possible to read together “Our sentence is up” and the comics, chapter by chapter. That’s the most effective way to read this book. And, let me say it’s good. The invisibles is probably the most complex and dense book I ever read. Not just among comics. So, I knew I needed help to understand some more of the things contained in the stories, and I found on the web some books; i chose this one and I’m not disappointed. The author focus on the meaning of the story, and tries to find a sense in the main plot just as in the minor events, putting all pieces together, and really helps to understand something. At least, he presents many of the even more possible interpretations. He doesn’t spend much time in analyzing and reporting all of the quotes that is possible to discover in the comic, which is good because a work like that would have been too time-consuming and somehow sterile, risking to lose the general and important meaning getting lost among details. He talks about what’s important in the comics, in a simple and very illuminating way. In the appendix, a also very interesting and complete interview with Grant Morrison that is fundamental to understand the mind that gave birth to this masterpiece.

[Dylan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interview with Morrison at the end of the book was the most interesting thing for me.