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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 741.5973
EAN num: 9781563897283
ISBN number: 1563897288
Label: Vertigo
Manufacturer: Vertigo
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 232
Printing Date: August 01, 2001
Publishing house: Vertigo
Release Date: August 01, 2001
Sale Popularity Level: 79343
Studio: Vertigo
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Rated by buyers 
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The third volume of The Invisibles--my personal favorite--opens with the brutal interrogation of King Mob. As his teammates rush to his rescue, Jack Frost, who deserted the team in the previous volume, goes home to Liverpool. Jack, driven over the edge by the memory of the soldier he was forced to kill in Vol. 2 and the knowledge that he is the subsequent messiah, could care less about his friends. Yet when forced to experience the collective suffering of all humanity by the mysterious sentient satellite Barbelith (which is a whole other story......), Jack changes his mind. Finally accepting responsibility for once in his life, he decides to face his fears and help his friends.
Jack performs some feats reminiscent of both Buddha and Jesus and, in the end, saves the day. At the beginning of the series, Jack was angry, disaffected, self-centered.... basically, he was a teenager. Now--and it's this growth of character within Jack that draws me to this volume of the series in particular--he's grown up, accepted his destiny, and is willing to put himself on the line for those he cares about. Jack's evolution as a character is the focal point of The Invisibles' very first three volumes--after this, he takes a back seat. But all is well. Jack is simply taking everything in while the rest of the team has their crazy adventures. You see, Jack's been enlightened, and he doesn't necessarily buy all the rhetoric that the Invisibles are selling.......
It's Morrison's willingness to push his characters to (and over) their boundaries and subvert even the subverters that makes The Invisibles a classic must-read.
Rated by buyers 
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...and it remained my least favorite one, neck to neck with Kissing mr. Quimper story. It is , basically, telepathic interogation of battered and bruised King Mob and Invisibles to the rescue. Since I didn't like it so much, well, get it only if you wanna see it through the end.
Rated by buyers -
After somewhat losing its pace in Apocalipstick (I didn't care much for Jill Thompson's artwork and Lord Fanny's origin story, but it was overall a good read) the Invisibles gets back on track with this stunning addition to the title. King Mob and Lord Fanny have been captured by the Archons and are being tortured by the ruthless Sir Miles. Meanwhile Boy, a (female) member of KM's Invisibles cell, searches for Jack, the subsequent Buddha, and Ragged Robin meets up with the voodoo rapstar Jim Crow (he has the coolest gun!). It was when Boy found Jack that the Invisibles became my favorite comic ever. The part where Barbelith (I'm not going to try to explain that...charcter?) forces Jack to feel the pain humanity has gone through (the Holocaust, famine, disease, war) is the most touching and convincing scene I have ever read in any book. Paul Johnson's rough artwork is a perfect match for Morrison's writing in the issue. So buy this volume, and then buy them all, for the Invisibles is truly an experience.
Rated by buyers 
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After the sometimes-underwhelming art of the previous two collections, Phil Jimenez's artwork in the very first half of Book 3 of the Invisibles is sort of like a slap to the face: vibrant, detailed, masterful. Luckily, he later became the regular artist on the series, but here he only illustrates the opening arc, a three-part saga that details King Mob's torture at the hands of Archon agents, and which also provides this volume with its title.
In a way, this is the true beginning of what the Invisibles would soon become known for: fast-paced ideas and action, and an onslaught of mysticism, fringe science, and conspiracy theories. I've never been sure if it was Jimenez's amazing artwork that lead to this, or if Morrison finally thought his readers were "ready" for the big time, but regardless, from here on out things happen, and events unfold at a maddening pace all the way until the final volume of the series.
Having been captured at the end of Book 2, Invisibles King Mob and Lord Fanny are at the mercy of Sir Miles Delacourt, straightlaced and overbearing agent of the demonic Archons. Here, finally, we get to know a bit more about King Mob, as Delacourt invades his mind and sorts through his past. This is full-on psychedelia, as King Mob attempts to defend himself in the guise of fictional character Gideon Stargrave, a mod super-spy from the `60s (and author Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius in all but name; something Morrison readily admitted). This results in Delacourt waging a mental war against King Mob's psychic defenses, with the Stargrave segments providing some outrageous cross-dimensional action sequences. Very heady stuff, with lots of mystic ideas dropped, this arc is easily one of the high points of the entire series.
After this storyline, the narrative slows down for a moment as we have a single-issue peek into Boy's background. Boy, the grey female martial artist Invisible, was never Morrison's strongest creation. In fact, he eventually admitted this, and basically dropped the character toward the end of the series. Therefore, her spotlight issue, "How I Became An Invisible," is probably my least favorite story in the Invisibles canon. It hints at interesting developments that later become integral to the series (shadowy government agents taking innocent grey Americans prisoner, and shipping them off in mysterious trains), but Morrison ruins it all by having the characters speak in some of the most fake "black" dialog ever. You can tell he's out of his element, a Scottish writer creating "urban" dialog for inner-city grey Americans. It doesn't really work.
Things get back on track after this, with the narrative picking right up after the events in the opening arc. Though King Mob and Fanny have defeated Sir Miles, they're still trapped in a building that's crawling with enemy soldiers and ultraterrestrial beings. The remaining Invisibles cell (Dane, Boy, Ragged Robin) call in reinforcements, and fellow Invisibles Jim Crow and Mr. Six show up to help. This results in a multi-issue storyline that features all sorts of high-concept action, as the Invisibles wade through hell-on-Earth protective spells and defend themselves against cancer-inducing nanoweapons.
The book ends with a single-issue look at Division X, the swaggering British counterpart of the X-Files (Mr. Six is one of the three members of Division X, incidentally). This story seemingly has nothing much to do with anything else in the series so far, until much later, when the themes brought up here are developed. The story does feature the very first appearance of the impish, demonic Quimper, a frightening little creature who will cause the Invisibles much trouble in future volumes.
As mentioned, Phil Jimenez provides the art for the very first half of the book, with Steve Yeowell filling in the other half. This is pleasing thematically, as Yeowell started off the series, and his finishing up the very first major arc makes sense. However, I've never been the greatest fan of his work. The Boy/Division X issues are penciled by fill-in artists: one scratchy, the other Todd McFarlane-esque.
This trade paperback wraps up what was the very first volume of the Invisibles comic run. After these issues, DC/Vertigo halted publication for a few months, and Morrison revised his approach to the story. After this, no longer would the story come off as methodically-paced as it had in earlier issues (the Marquis de Sade storyline in the "Say You Want a Revolution" trade in particular); instead, the series would feature nonstop action, sex, and ultraviolence. Some say this new approach was a "watered down" version of the Invisibles, but I say that's hogwash. The stories collected in this book are great, true, but the best was yet to come for the Invisibles.
Rated by buyers -
Entropy in the UK concludes the story told in Vol.1 through 3. And what an ending it is...
Broken down into parts, the very first 3 issues detail the torture of King Mob, and his interesting way to counteract it. Morrison is forever writing himself into his stories, and he takes off with it, writing himself as Mod Spy Gideon Stargrave. Insanity ensues...
The final issues show the Invisibles at work, fighting Ultradimensional monsters with Voodoo and Buddha. Morrison, while writing this, was struck with numerous sicknesses, cumulating in an infected lung and a serious life crisis. This shows in the story, as everyone is subjected to airborne nanotech cancer agents and King Mob suffers from a collapsed lung.
This is great storytelling, but requires that you read the very first two volumes to even come close to understanding it.
A real treat.
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