The Invisibles is my favorite comic. This might be my favorite page from The Invisibles.
Works on its own, with no context. Kind of tells a story. Feels like a pin-up and a narrative at the same time. Punches my emotions in the gut. This is the “For sale: baby shoes, never worn” of comics. Six sad words.
(Written by Grant Morrison. Drawn by Phil Jimenez and John Stokes. Click to see it larger.)
Pretty sure this is my favorite comic book page of all time.
I think of this line from Kill Your Boyfriend by Grant Morrison and Philip Bond every time I see someone make a confused, dumb face.
Grant Morrison (from here)
Aww.
Happy birthday to both of the British troublemakers I idolized when I was 16.
These are pages 17-20 of The Invisibles #1, written by Grant Morrison and drawn by Steve Yeowell. They are also a great example of how changing the physical format of a comic can change the entire meaning.
Most of this comic is drawn in a realistic style, as you can see in pages 17 and 20. The colors are muted, and the characters spend most of their time on dark streets or in drab buildings.
Pages 18 and 19 are completely different, drawn in a psychedelic style reminiscent of a Peter Max poster. This change in style is done for a reason: a character has taken LSD and performed an occult ritual to contact the spirit of John Lennon. This shift in art style reflects not only the character’s experience, but the difference between normal, mundane existence and the shift in consciousness brought about by drugs and magic.
In the original comic, pages 18 and 19 are presented side by side: 18 on the left, 19 on the right. This creates an intentionally jarring effect: you turn the page to 18 and 19, and everything has changed, almost like you’ve entered an entirely different comic. Like the character, you’ve left behind the way things used to look and entered a world that’s suddenly bright and magical. Then you turn the page again, and you’re right back in the world you’d left behind.
In the collected edition, this effect is lost. Page 18 is on the right, and when you turn the page, page 19 is on the left. In each case, you have a real-world page on one side and a trippy page on the other side. The story still works, the plot is unaffected— but the simulated feeling of entering and then exiting an altered state of perception is not preserved.
And when you read this comic in a digital format, you’re likely reading only one page at a time— which means there’s no left or right. This is probably close to the original intention, because you’re seeing the psychedelic pages by themselves, without any real-world pages intruding. But it might feel subtly different, because you lose the experience of turning the page once, changing things, and then turning the page again and changing them back.
let’s do 2013
