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Say You Want a Revolution (The Invisibles, Book 1)

Say You Want a Revolution (The Invisibles, Book 1)

List Price: $19.95
Your Price: $13.57
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Isn't there anything higher than 5 stars?
Review: I used to think I hated comics, then I read The Invisibles on a dare. Now I own every issue. Ultrahip, ultracool, and ultraweird!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Brilliant, but even better with the rest of the series
Review: If you like R.A. Wilson, Lovecraft, Moorcock, Crowley, the Beatles, voodoo, chaos magick, or anything else on Earth, then pick this up. Morrison questions everything and he does it in style. These stories read better in arcs, and get better each time you read them. They confuse some people, but this is easily remedied by anyone willing to do a little research that will ultimately prove to his or her advantage. This book may change your life. Are you afraid of that?

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Passing strange, indeed....
Review: It surprised me that I was drawn to this series. I should have hated it, since I'm middle-aged, middle-class, and from the middle-west. Yet, I read them all, or at least the six that I am aware of. Strange. Perhaps it is because I saw myself in "Tom-o-Bedlam" in this first volume. Perhaps it was the world-behind-the-world underpinnings, ala Phillip K. Dick (if you like the Invisibles, try the Valis trilogy.) Or maybe it was because there were so many synchronistic "hits" with my own life in issue after issue that I briefly wondered if I was slipping into schizophennia....
In any case this series was a delight. It was written with intelligence and erudition. There is just so much concentrated input on every page, both verbally and visually. As for the politics- this is also strange, for I have come to very simular conclusions. Perhaps that is adding paranoia to the schizophrenia....
There is an excellent bit of dialog when King Mob tells of how one of the other major characters read a story called "The Invisibles" and wrote herself a part in it. Yes, that is how magic happens....

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: It's bloody brilliant, ya wag!
Review: It's brash, it's trippy, it's violent, and it's very, very literate. Grant Morrison has definitely pushed the envelope of comic-book storytelling with this one. With fascinating, well-drawn (pun intended) characters, a tight narrative, and references I still don't get after the third read, it's a great read. Beware- this isn't for the narrow-minded.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A more innocent time
Review: Reading it now, the first 8 issues of the Invisibles seem almost childish. The conspiracy is painfully upfront with little mystery. The Acadia story arc that makes up the bulk of the issues is plodding and really quite dull.

But if you look closely, in the little cracks, you can see a sort of incredible sincerity and a real desire to create something special. Jack Frost is a wonderful character, Buddha as british hooligan.

Grant Morrison was trying to mold all of his greatest influences into one bold series, but it really comes off as a mess. But it's a great mess but a mess nonetheless. Morrison's effort on this was A1 and it's very obviously a great work of love.

This is where it began, and it only gets better to get a little bit worse in the end.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Stolen by The Matrix
Review: The Matrix stole their sad watered down plot idea from this series. It's really too bad that they could not have stuck closer to the Invisibles as it would have made the Matrix series much better. However, perhaps now someone else can still make a film of the Invisibles series.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Could very possibly change your perception of reality.
Review: This book is a MUST read for anyone with Deconstructionist or Discordian views. It is a comic book, but don't let others opinions of comics and their content sway you. This is no juvenile super-hero in tights smash-em-up for 23 pages. The Invisibles is about subversion of the status quo, deconstruction of patterned and controlled thought and trying to make sure everyone benefits from the end of the world. This book could hold some very real changes of perception for you. As the young Dane McGowan/Jack Frost is initiated into the Invisibles, so are you, given small tidbits that the reality we're all being held to is only that way because it benefits others for you to see reality in this light. You create your reality, this book can and will show you that. There are large and sinister forces behind a lot of very shady dealings in government, business, entertainment, etc., not just in the U.S., but in the world. Don't take my word for it, start looking around, question aut! ! hority and what you see on TV, you might start to see what I mean. Grant Morrison has an eye that sees past all of this. If you really get into the Invisibles, it will seem like you're being let in on a very big secret. Admittedly, it can be a very cryptic and challenging read at times, but if you're willing to put in some effort, and research this work outside of this collection or the monthly issues, you may just start to find and see "the big secret" I've described. This book could change your life, and may start us all on the road to true physical and spiritual freedom.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: The Most Overrated Series In Comics History
Review: This is a piece of fiction which characterizes the Marqui de Sade as a hero and advocates disobedience to authority (with all authority figures in the series given corrupt personalities by Morrison)as the pathway to "salvation" for mankind. The book earns 5 stars for offensiveness and 1 star for the artwork, which is lackluster. The writing, from the provenly talented Grant Morrison, rates a surprizing -5. It's that bad. Avoid this series like the plague.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Nice and smooth.
Review: This may not be the ideal representation of it, but the Invisibles is a great comic novel. Sure, everyone knows the stereotype of comic books: big guys in tights hurting each other. But this is so much more. Transexual shamen hurting otherdimensional insect-armour women! Nectar-sucking bemasked other-dimensional dwarves! And quite possibly the first story to contain both John Lennon and the Marquis DeSade in plot-advancing roles. If you enjoy this particular chunk of the story, it gets better both plot-movement and art-wise in the later issues, which should be reprinted in trade format soon. Entropy in the UK is particularly good, and the second volume is starting any day now. Bloody Hell in America indeed.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Which Side Are You On?
Review: This seditious series is definitely comics' most bizarre example of anarchy from the U.K. A decidedly different sort of superhero group, as part of a millennia old secret freedom fighting cult, the Invisibles hide their very existence from the public; their only identifying mark, occasionally worn by some members, is the "blank badge" (a plain, round, white button-the slogan-bearing kind, not the shirt-closing kind). "The only rule of the organization," as explained in one issue, "is disobedience."

The series follows a particular Invisibles activist cell made up of: King Mob, a bald, tattooed and multiply body-pierced tantric magician and master assassin; Jack Frost, a teenaged, foul-mouthed, psychokinetic alien abductee; Boy, an African-American former policewoman and deadly martial artist; Ragged Robin, a mime-faced, time-displaced, clairvoyant witch; and Lord Fanny, a glamorous drag queen and Aztec shaman.

The series ran from 1994 to 2000, totaling 59 issues divided into three volumes. Fortunately, the entire series has been collected in the form of seven easily accessible trade paperbacks. Say You Want a Revolution, collects the first eight issues of volume one, which focus around the recruitment of Dane "Jack Frost" McGowan: the story begins in a reformatory where juvenile delinquents are indoctrinated into a life of mediocrity by extradimensional beings hoping to harvest their souls, and ends in revolutionary France where the team recruits the Marquis de Sade. Apocalipstick(issues 9-16 of volume one) is about Jack Frost's attempt to flee from his role as an Invisible and how Lord Fanny was indoctrinated as a shaman when still a young child. Entropy in the UK (volume 1, issues 17-25) tells the story of how Lord Fanny and King Mob escape imprisonment and torture by the agents of total Control. The next three books collect the entirety of volume two. Bloody Hell in America (issues 1-4) follows the groups invasion of a top-secret military installation in the New Mexican desert to rescue the AIDS vaccine being kept there. Counting to None (issues 5-13) deals with bad karma, time travel, and brainwashing, and Kissing Mister Quimper (issues 14-22) covers a return to New Mexico, making amends with the past, and setting the stage for the final conflict between the forces of control and freedom, which takes place in The Invisible Kingdom (this collects the entire third voulme, which ran backwards, from issue 12 to issue 1, counting down to the new millennium). Having recently reread the entire series from beginning to end, I was struck by the intricacy of the plot, and the way that events in the first volume of stories foreshadow and continually intertwine with later events.

Although presented as a mind altering, spy thriller, roller coaster ride of conspiracy theories, metaphysics, (often extremely) graphic violence and slightly less graphic sex, the thin veneer of allegory barely conceals the more commonplace tragedies beneath the surface that occur in the real world every day. The surreal scenery is simply a backdrop for the true goal of the Invisibles (both the characters and the comic book): to purge the dominant paradigm and awaken people to their own human potential (Grant Morrison actually envisioned the series as spell of liberation).

Like the protagonist of Alan Moore's graphic literary masterpiece "V for Vendetta," the Invisibles are true to their roles as 21st century Robin Hoods, redistributing the only wealth of importance in the Information Age: Knowledge is not only power, it is freedom. As people become self-aware, they become self-reliant, and soon they become unwilling to prostrate themselves before the trappings of authority. Grant Morrison is only trying to make Visible the unseen strings that subtly manipulate us all.


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