Publication History
The Invisibles was Morrison's first major creator-owned title for DC Comics and it drew from his Zenith strip as well as 1990s conspiracy culture. His intent was to create a hypersigil to jump-start the culture in a more positive direction.
The title initially sold well but sales dipped sharply during the first series, leading to concerns that the series might be canceled outright. To counteract this, Morrison suggested a "wankathon" in the hope of bringing about a magical increase in sales by a mass of fans simultaneously masturbating at a set time.
Morrison became seriously ill while writing the book, something he attributes to working on the title and the manner in which its magical influence affected him, and has stated that his work on the comic made him into a different person from the one who started it. He has also said that much of the story was told to him by aliens when he was abducted during a trip to Katmandu.
The third and final series was meant to be a countdown to the new millennium but shipping delays meant the final issue did not appear until April 2000. All of the series have been collected in a set of trade paperbacks.
Morrison saw the series censored due to the publisher's concern over the possibility of paedophilic and child abuse content. The first such case was in volume one, issue 7 ("Arcadia part 3 : 120 Days Of Sod All"); dialogue was altered in one scene where a group rapes and degrades several nameless characters, and the term lost souls was used to ensure the characters could not be identified as children, as in the Marquis De Sade's original 120 Days of Sodom, the book the characters find themselves trapped in. Later in the series the names of people and organizations were simply blacked out, much to Morrison's dismay. DC had one line that originally read "Walt Disney was a shit" blacked out at the suggestions of their lawyers; many of these examples of censorship were restored when reprinted in trade paperback.
The title was optioned to be made into a television series by BBC Scotland, but neither this nor an optioned film version have been made. Morrison wrote The Filth for Vertigo in 2002, which he describes as a companion piece to The Invisibles, though there is no other connection between the two titles.
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