The Invisibles

Here's another Londonist graphic novel: Grant Morrison's The Invisibles. The Invisibles (aka The Invisible College) are an underground movement of time travelling psychic warriors engaged in a centuries long struggle against a conspiracy intent on total control and enslavement of the human race.



Volume One of the series (The Invisibles: Say you want a revolution, 1995) features various radical and libertarian references including Timothy Leary, de Sade, Kropotkin, Shelley and the Situationists (a key character is named King Mob - named after the 1960s pro-situationist group who ironically used to detourn Marvel comics with radical slogans), not to mention an implicit debt to William Burroughs.

Then of course there are the mysteries of London, into which a young Invisibles recruit is initiated by a wise homeless beggar. The latter rants 'Two Londons there are: there's the one you can see all around and there's the other city under the skin of this. The hidden city, sunless and silent, if you really want to learn, I'll take you there. I'll show you things to make your hair stand up'. Later underground they visit 'the buried London... the city's dark twin.... reached by secret processional ways; obsolete subway tunnels, the cellars of long-demolished buildings, lost stations and stairways'.

Vinyl Underground: Watching the Detectives

Vinyl Underground: Watching the Detectives by Si Spencer and Simon Gane (2008) is very much a self-consciouslly Londonist graphic novel. It talks of 'London, city of mobs and murder, massacres and mysteries' and is crammed full of the kind of references that suggest the authors have spent many hours listening to the Robert Elms show.

Harry Beck's 1931 tube map? Check. Fictitious locations in Phyllis Pearsall's London A-Z? Check. Mention of 'psychogeography of London'? Check. Brooding image of the river? Yes, several, for example: 'countless ghosts, teeming like tadpoles in the murky poison of the Thames'.



The tale features a cool gang of 'occult detectives' and avengers hanging out in an abandoned tube station, tracking down child killers in between DJing at Northern Soul nights in Stockwell. Its plot takes it starting point from the real story of the discovery of a child's dismembered body in the Thames, but the suspected ritual killing turns out to be something else involving London gangsters...

Can anybody suggest other Londonist (particularly South Londonist) graphic novels? By this I don't just mean stories set in London, but those in which the city itself - or a particular location within it - is a key element. Alan Moore's From Hell is an obvious example, as to a lesser extent is his V for Vendetta. But there must be many others.