Anarchy For The Masses: The Disinformation Guide to The Invisibles [Paperback]

Patrick Neighly (Author), Kereth Cowe-Spigai (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2003

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.

Already featured in Disinformation: The Interviews and the accompanying TV series and DVD, Grant Morrison has been heavily promoted as a contemporary pop culture star, the first comics writer to be included as one of Entertainment Weekly’s top 100 creative people in America. We will market the book aggressively to Morrison fan sites and comics, skate and punk zines.

Journalists and Invisibles fanatics Patrick Neighly and Kereth Cowe-Spigai reside in Bethesda, Maryland, and Orlando, Florida, respectively.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...very useful to prove...those comics you read actually have as much depth as Shakespeare or Buffy. Go Buy." -- Comics International, May 2003

About the Author

Patrick Neighly is a journalist currently working on an original graphic novel about his experiences in Bangkok. Kereth Cowe-Spigai an author and long-time fan of Morrison, is now at work on her first comic book.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: The Disinformation Company (April 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0971394229
• ISBN-13: 978-0971394223
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 6.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,466,186 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars All and nothing at all, September 17, 2002

By 

Fabio Rossi (Milano, MI Italy) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Anarchy for the Masses: An Underground Guide to 'The Invisibles' (Paperback)

...or almost.

Fact is, this very well-designed book is divided up in small chapters - one for each Invisibles issue. Every chapter is in its turn composed of small interviews (the bulk of them being with artist Jimenez), two separate fan-like comments from the curators and an occasional small quote from Grant Morrison himself.
Finally, in the sidebars of each page, there is a very detailed comment to each relevant panel or phrase. "Very detailed" meaning that the authors even go to the lenghts of reminding the reader that "Marylin Monroe was a big sex symbol in the late Fifties and onward..." etc etc.

I actually liked this "take nothing for granted" approach, but with it come a number of problems. First and foremost, there are no visual references, so you have to keep the orginal Invisibles book at hand to follow the notes. Then, this much detail means lots of text, which in turn had to be printed very small to fit on the sidebars - reading it might be tiring to many.

The final interview with Grant Morrison is priceless, altough it replicates much stuff that you can easily find on the sites devoted to The Invisibles.

So is this book worth the buying? My answer is maybe not if you're already heavily into fringe counterculture, as you'll already know about everything there's to know. In any other case, go for it as it can make your Invisibles reading experience much more layered and interesting.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Okay...but..., July 9, 2002

By 

"bryan_krol" (tempe, az USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Anarchy for the Masses: An Underground Guide to 'The Invisibles' (Paperback)

I was hoping for a more "traditional" style dissection of the themes and events in 'The Invisibles'. Or at least some more in-depth interviews regarding the series. To be fair, the new Grant Morrison interview is pretty good, and it is nice to have the annotations in one volume (opposed to the online sources like Jaybabcock.com and Barbelith.com), but I guess I was expecting a more serious, perhaps even literary, view of the series.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Needs more critical depth, August 31, 2005

By 

Lucien the Librarian (Toronto) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Anarchy For The Masses: The Disinformation Guide to The Invisibles (Paperback)

This guide is better than no guide at all, given the (probably intentionally) confusing nature of many chapters within Grant Morrison's non-linear magnum opus. However, the page-by-page annotations are repetitive (I don't need *constantly* to be told that "Life as film is a recurring theme") and often assume the readers have spent their entire lives in a cave (I *know* who Ringo Starr and Richard Nixon are, thanks!). At the same time, missing from the annotations is any serious discussion (beyond brief mentions) of chaos magic, anarchist theory or other key themes and influences. The authors' one-paragraph reviews of each issue occasionally contain genuine insight, but more often focus on praising or nitpicking the artists' work, fanboy-style. Surely in such a profound work as *The Invisibles* it's the writing that's of primary importance?

This guide merits two extra stars: one for the helpful, editorially neutral issue-by-issue plot summaries which clear up many ambiguous moments in the series; and one for the engrossing Morrison interview at the end. Interested readers should consult the Invisibles section of Barbelith online and the Grant Morrison pages on Disinformation online; you'll find much more intelligent discussion than found in this guide.