I just reread the Invisibles last week, and reread Anarchy for the Masses too. It's decent and worth picking up, but I second the comment to not expect too much. The annotations are for the most part shallow and rather obvious, but the interviews are good. I don't actually mean this in a bad way, but the authors don't seem intelligent enough or "cool" enough to deal with the Invisibles on its own terms... they're kind of like sending a couple of Hootie and the Blowfish fans to write reviews of a Grateful Dead tour, or asking Ryan Seacrest to do annotations of Naked Lunch by William Burroughs.

So instead of annotations or analysis of some of the (meta)textual aspects of the series, or the way it's constructed or deals with time, gnosticism, binary thought, psychedelics, or some of the trickier plot points, etc., you get annotations that point out stuff like "1984 was a novel written by George Orwell, published in 1948, which posited a dystopian future" etc. etc.

Note: get the second edition, the one with the Frank Quitely cover that Disinfo published. The first edition (with a black and green cover) is pretty lame.

I'm hoping the new book coming out will be much better.

If you haven't checked out this site, it's the best online (IMO) for Invisibles stuff, with most of the annotations written month-by-month as the series was coming out:
http://www.barbelith.com/bomb/

But anyway, yeah: get Anarchy for the Masses if for no other reason than some good interviews, and some good, concise character bios at the back of the book.


Last Edited By: neuron23 Dec 22 09 8:57 PM. Edited 2 times.