YMMV / The Invisibles

• Base-Breaking Character: Division X is either a cool homage to Department S or a bunch of Scrappy Flat Characters who side-track you from the titular characters and you can't remember half their names. The fact that they take half volume 3 doesn't help.
• Complete Monster:
  • Orlando is a demonic assassin from the dark realms of Mictlan dispatched to deal with King Mob and his allies. Not satisfied with targeting the Invisibles, Orlando is a savage sadist who skins innocent people to wear them, before murdering their entire families. Orlando goes on a killing spree, torturing and killing innocent people, children included, before trying to torture Jack Frost after cutting off his finger. When he returns later, Orlando tries to assist the Archons, all-powerful demons of absolute order, and goes on another killing spree, even preparing to slaughter a group of children as a sacrifice.
  • Colonel Friday is an influential US Air Force officer who moonlights as a member of the Outer Church, a secret society that schemes to bring the Archons to Earth. In charge of the Church's operations in the United States, Friday masterminds numerous schemes to eradicate all except absolute conformity in humans, in accordance with his masters' dogma. He participates in an attempted genocide of the LGBT community by means of germ warfare, even Withholding the Cure for AIDS from the population in his base; has experimented to create misshapen, agonized human-animal hybrids; invented a psychological torture machine that projects its victims' worst fear; and has imprisoned and tortured mysterious godlike being who pain causes disasters among humanity. Friday is also entirely aware of exactly what his masters attempt to do to humanity, and gleefully aids them nonetheless.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Kirk Morrison's "Gideon Stargrave" stories are ridiculously over the top, but special mention goes to his "zen-obsessed extradimensional psychic tulpa" choosing to evade his persecutors by driving off a cliff and escaping "via reincarnation". While having another passanger. Who is more worried that he'll reincarnate as a white man. And they've run over a sacred cow.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Lord Fanny is one to Vertigo as a whole, for being a positive representation of transgender/transvestites in comic books and ridiculously powerful. The fact the artists made her look the most attractive of all characters certainly helps.
  • Pretty much any character from another cell from the Invisible College aside of the one we follow, but more specifically:
    • Jim Crow, for his badass Crazy Is Cool attitude and adverting Hollywood Voodoo.
    • Jolly Roger for being a pirate-like Badass Biker with who carries a BFG and a dry sense of humour.
  • Orlando only has an important role during the first arc, after which he dies. However, his sheer spookiness has made him one of the series' most memorable villain, so he later cameos during the "She-Man" arc and even appears during the finale!
• Epileptic Trees: Loads and loads of it, considering how surreal it all is. As noted in Spiritual Antithesis, a frequent theory is that the Hand and the Outer Church are different branches of an even higher organisation devoted to the Status Quo Is God philosophy.
• Fair for Its Day: The way the text handles Lord Fanny often refers to her as a transvestite, when it is made very clear throughout the series that she is in fact a trans woman, not a gay crossdresser. At the time of publication (1994-1999) this was actually very progressive as representation of either group was nearly non existent in comics.
• Genius Bonus: The work runs on this. If you're well read in Asian religions, occultism, conspiracy theories, 60s psychaedelia, classical literature, The Prisoner, the Illuminatus trilogy, the books of Philip K. Dick, The Cthulhu Mythos, counterculture history, anarchist theory, revolutions, French situationism and punk culture you'll have no problem through this. If you don't... well, you might have some difficulties through this.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In Volume 2, Issue 2, Jolly Roger tells Mob, Robin, and Boy that mind-control nanotech was put in polio vaccines. If Morrison really thinks they were casting a spell, did they intend to magically spur the anti-vaccination movement and the resurgence of polio in several countries?
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • Fanny and Dane bonding through the book. Dane begins the story as a transphobic jerkass against her, but slowly begins to warm to her. During the third volum they're travelling together and even have a dance-off against some gods.
  • King Mob accompanies Edith during her last days, and gently brings her to the Ganges river to die.
  • On a similar note, Fanny refusing to let King Mob die after he has been tortured to near death in "Entropy on the UK". She is willing to die by his side.
  • Before the final battle during the finale, KM, Fanny, Dane and Jolly Roger have one finale supper together, where they express what an honour it has been fighting together. It concludes with King Mob summing their mission perfectly:
  King Mob: * Raising his glass * To chaos.
• Magnificent Bastard: John-a-Dreams is the story's biggest Wild Card, periodically appearing and disappearing and alternately aiding both the Invisibles and Outer Church for mysterious purposes. Once The Ace among the Invisible movement, he vanishes without a trace during an investigation into a dark ritual, only to return years later as a high-ranking emissary of the Outer Church and close confidant of the Archons themselves. He assists Sir Miles and his henchmen in supervising the Moonchild ritual, but once the final battle begins takes no side at all, merely observing. As the Outer Church executives begin to fall, John affably greets his old friend Lord Fanny, revealing that he had attained transcendental knowledge of the best possible ending to the Outer Church crisis: Jack Frost achieving his destiny as the new Messiah. Never truly betraying the Invisibles after all, John skillfully maneuvered the major players of both sides into the positions they needed to be in for Jack to accomplish that goal.
• Nightmare Fuel: Now has its own page.
• Older Than They Think:
  • Despite several thematic similarities to The Matrix, The Invisibles got there first on quite a few things.
  • Ironically, Michael Moorcock developed his own longstanding grudge against Morrison because he feels that King Mob/Gideon Stargrave is a flat ripoff of Jerry Cornelius and that he wasn't given the proper credit from Morrison unlike other writers who've taken from his ideas.
  • The idea of drugs that turn their consumers into mindless zombies via voodoo magic had already been used by Jon Ostrander in his run of Suicide Squad.
  • Kid Eternity by Ann Nocenty stars young teen with powers who is destined to bring about the Apocalypse and fights against surreal threats related to esoterism. It was published a year before The Invisibles saw print. To be fair, some of its themes first appeared in Grant's reinvention of the character in the 1991 mini.
• Spiritual Successor: To Morrison's own run on Doom Patrol, featuring similar themes of chaos vs. order and gender politics. Hell, Ragged Robin is an Expy of Crazy Jane, while Barbelith is one of Danny the Street. The series also ends with the end of our world and the beginning of a new one.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: King Mob blowing up Mason Lang's house is portrayed as him freeing Lang of his restraints and making him change for the better. Problem is, Mason is a very Nice Guy who is financing the Invisibles and hasn't been portrayed as anything but supportive or helpful, so this seems like a Kick the Dog moment.
• Values Resonance: Plenty. Themes like the government's secrets, oversurveillance, gender politics and the balance between freedom and safety are equally important today as they were when Morrison wrote them.