I TEGO ARCANA DEI
(Being an Overview of The Invisibles in Three Parts)
by David Hontiveros

Part 1: “Are You Ready To Wear The Blank Badge?”

“… city’s full of magic, neither bad nor good, just there to be used by the people who know. Cities live and breathe magic. Did you know that if you get a map and join up the sites of all the McDonald’s restaurants in London, it makes the sigil of the Dark Emperor Mammon?”
--Tom O’Bedlam, The Invisibles Vol. One # 3, “Down and Out in Heaven and Hell” Part 2


Grant Morrison’s ultimate conspiracy—in the form of The Invisibles—began on August 1994, when DC’s Vertigo line of comics unleashed the series’ first issue, which sported a day-glo grenade on its cover. Morrison, who had already pushed the envelope of the comic medium in Animal Man, and treated us to the surreal delights of The Doom Patrol, promised a book about occult anarchists, a book whose ultimate pay-off would be nothing less than the secret of the universe.

No one said it would be easy.

Initial low sales and a life-threatening illness were only some of the obstacles The Invisibles had to overcome to get to where it is now, its third volume winding down, the grand and bizarre tapestry begun nearly six years ago nearly in full view.

Most of the characters, themes, and leitmotifs of The Invisibles were established within the first eight issues: “Dead Beatles,” the three-part “Down and Out in Heaven and Hell,” and the four-part “Arcadia” (my personal all-time favorite Invisibles story arc).

Opening with beetle synchronicities and John Lennon as psychedelic godhead (get it? Beetle? Beatle?), The Invisibles then proceeded to delve into the sinister aspects of conformity and the viral nature of cities, before exploding in the brilliant flurry of “Arcadia.” With the assistance of the exquisitely talented Jill Thompson (who, incidentally enough, also illustrated my all-time favorite Sandman story arc, “Brief Lives”)—Morrison filled “Arcadia” with such seemingly disparate elements as Utopia, time travel, the French Revolution, Byron and the Shelleys, Templar lore, the Marquis de Sade, and the head of John the Baptist, and produced a humdinger of a tale.

And somewhere along the way, he also managed to introduce an Invisibles cell to us: King Mob, “the ultimate product of Invisibles training,” Ragged Robin, a neurotic witch whose power is founded on her skepticism, Boy, an African-American martial artist from New York, Lord Fanny, a South American transvestite bruja, and the new initiate, Dane McGowan, a Liverpudlian tearaway who could very well be the next Messiah.

Sadly, it was during “Arcadia” where the book began to lose readers. Having already admitted that “Arcadia” would be the most “difficult” bit of The Invisibles, Morrison pushed on with his ultimate conspiracy, going so far as to enlist the help of Invisibles readers in boosting sales. In issue 16’s letter column, Morrison displayed a sales-boosting sigil which would be charged by the mass wanking he asked Invisibles readers to participate in on the 23rd of November, 1995. This communal magick would then help Invisibles sales. I guess the sigil worked, ‘cause here we are, 41 issues later, with only two more before the tale is fully told. (I shall leave it up to your imaginations, children, to determine whether yours truly took part in said mass wanking.)

Most of The Invisibles’ second year was taken up by the shamanistic trials of Lord Fanny (in the three-part “She-Man”—again illustrated by Jill Thompson-- where the skeleton god Mictlantehcutli said, “We gods are only masks. Who wears us? Find it out!”), Dane (surrounded by his grey aliens—merely another mask), and King Mob (who is tortured mercilessly by the Lost Ones, the otherworldly enemies of the Invisibles).

It was somewhere around this time that Morrison was beset by a bacterial infection that nearly cost him his life, a pivotal event that made him realize the magic The Invisibles was capable of.

“The Invisibles radiates magic. Initially, I didn’t realize this, and I blithely put myself into the book. I figured, King Mob, he’s cool, I’ll make myself more like him. I’ll shave my head and then all the girls who read the comic will like me. So I’m doing all this stuff to King Mob. I wrote the storyline in the first book where he gets captured and thinks his face is being eaten away. Two months later a bug eats through my cheek. It ate right through and I just kept writing.

“Then I put King Mob through his shamanistic experience, where everything that he is gets torn apart. Shortly afterwards, everything collapsed in my life; my girlfriend left me and I end up in hospital dying of a bacterial infection, two days to live. I really thought that was it. And all the stories I’d been writing beforehand were about invasion from beyond by insectile, bacterial beings. Something in my body knew I was writing about it.”

(Later on, during the writing of Volume Two, Morrison would use this magic to turn things around.)

Thankfully, Morrison recovered from his illness, some of his experiences during his ordeal captured in issue 23, “The Last Temptation of Jack.”

Returning to earlier issues though, two stand-alone stories of note were released in The Invisibles’ first year: issue 12, “Best Man Fall,” a crackling bit of non-linear storytelling that not only presented a moving tale of a (at best) walk-on character in the Invisibles universe but also managed to retain the grand theme of the book, of life as a game; and issue 11, “Royal Monsters.”

“I knew she was wrong from the very beginning, but what does one do? Have you any idea how difficult it is to find a suitable virgin named Diana in this day and age?
“She lacked fiber, Willie. The breeding just wasn’t there.
“She was supposed to represent the mythical Diana, you see, the Moon Goddess, the Virgin Huntress, but the very concept seemed beyond her limited comprehension.
“Her firstborn was to have been the Moon-Child, the incarnate Shadow-King of a new England, the terrible Messiah of the Dark Millennium.”
Sir Miles, The Invisibles Vol. One # 11, “Royal Monsters”

“Royal Monsters” introduced the plot element of the English government’s conspiracy to maneuver a shambling monstrosity onto the throne, to crown it as the king of the coming millennium, a conspiracy that had Lady Diana as a failed breeding vessel for the intended “Shadow-King.” In issue 25 (“And A Half Dozen of the Other”), we were even treated to the disturbing sight of a Lovecraftian Shoggoth shagging poor Lady Di (all before her untimely death, of course, in an accident that had just enough questions surrounding it to serve as renewed impetus for this story thread, which became the central plot point in the third and final volume). It was, in fact, in issue 25 (the final issue of Volume One) where this thread was returned to, as Division X (an occult-tinged Professionals, if you will) was tipped off to the royal conspiracy.

Towards the end of the first volume, it also became public knowledge that Morrison was set to write the latest incarnation of the Justice League of America. And whilst others gasped at this apparent heresy, I looked forward to the spin the Baron of the Bizarre could bring to DC’s spandex set. (And, as it turned out, writing JLA was also Morrison’s bid to help keep The Invisibles an on-going concern; a successful gambit, as JLA was a HUGE hit for DC, kick-starting a franchise that still rolls on today. More on that in Part 3 of “I Tego Arcana Dei.”)

“The dalang is more than a puppeteer. His skill makes us believe that we see a war between two great armies, but there is no war. There is only the dalang.”
Agus, The Invisibles Vol. One # 5, “Arcadia” Part One: “Bloody Poetry”

The 25 issues of Volume One represent The Invisibles at its best: the dazzling, shimmering image of Morrison’s intent, kaleidoscopic and holographic, an intricate origami figure with endless facets to its paper self, which folds back onto itself at certain points of its structure. Utilizing rotating artist teams (as per The Sandman template), The Invisibles was a book that could, in Morrison’s own words, “… [give] me an opportunity to do anything that comes into my head, as long as it fits into The Invisibles overview. Which most things do.”

That was the intended ideal, which allowed for the heady trip of “Arcadia” and searing one-off of “Best Man Fall.” But adjustments were needed to keep the engine of The Invisibles running. The earliest indication that Volume Two would clearly be a different sort of animal than the first volume was the regular art team of Phil Jimenez and John Stokes (who’d wowed the crowd on the three-part look at King Mob, “Entropy in the U.K.” from Volume One).

The other overt difference was that Volume Two was to be set in the United States, and would focus on the American paranoiac’s mythos, taking a closer look at the conspiracy theories of the Americas. It would also have a decidedly more American tone to it; bigger, brasher, with more bang for the buck. But was this The Invisibles we had come to know and love over the 25 issues of the forst volume?

Be ‘round this neck of the woods for Part Two of “I Tego Arcana Dei” to find out!

Till then, carpe noctem and all that Latin jazz.


“Where will you be standing on the day of the coronation, when the gates come crashing down?” Mr. Quimper (via remote control), The Invisibles Vol. One # 25, “And A Half Dozen of the Other”

(Author’s note: “I Tego Arcana Dei” is Latin for “Begone! I conceal the secrets of God.” It is an anagram of the Latin phrase, “Et In Arcadia Ego,” whose relevance to The Invisibles can be seen in “Arcadia.”)