Our Sentence Is Up

An accessible look at Grant Morrison’s complicated and ambitious comics masterpiece, paying attention to its themes, philosophy, and how it changes with each reading.

Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles has been hailed as a seminal comic series, as the key to understanding the themes and philosophy that underline virtually everything else he’s written, and as the inspiration for The Matrix and countless other works that followed in its wake. But it’s also frequently written off as incomprehensible, or just too out there.

Our Sentence is Up opens up The Invisibles through an in-depth, issue-by-issue analysis of the series, drawing attention to key moments and the way themes are developed throughout the series, as well as making sense of the series’s fractured chronology and delirious blend of fiction and reality. The book also explores the real-world relevance of the series’s themes and the way that much of the fictional conspiracy theory from the series became reality in the 2000s.

Written in a conversational, accessible style, the book is the perfect companion to a reread of the series, giving readers one interpretation of the series and guiding them in developing their own.

The book also features a wide-ranging interview with Grant Morrison, stretching from the formative childhood experiences that found their way into the series, through the psychedelic ’90s, when his life and the series became inextricably intertwined. The interview also explores Morrison’s thoughts on the series in retrospect, its relevance to the War on Terror era and the new Obama presidency, what he currently thinks will happen in 2012, and where he’ll be when it goes down.

The book also includes an introduction by Timothy Callahan (author of the bestselling Grant Morrison: The Early Years).