Philip K. Dick, in his writings relating to the Gnostic revelations shown to him by V.A.L.I.S., observes that the divine must sneak into our reality by hiding in the lowest strata of physical existence, trash. Besides denoting the detritus of civilization, the term "trash" is also employed metaphorically as a term used to attack things which have no perceived value to the speaker. "Stop reading that trash!" is a phrase that has no doubt been uttered by innumerable parents to their offspring for the act of reading comic books.

Like many people of my age and interests, I grew up reading and collecting comics. From childhood through adulthood, I watched the quality of both the writing and artwork in comics continue to increase. In the late 1990's, (although I myself did not discover it until after the turn of the millennium), another thing happened. A comic appeared that was in fact a magickal spell. This was "The Invisibles", created by Grant Morrison.

The use of mass-media as a memetic vector has been analyzed by many skilled authors from various disciplines. Although this co-option is most typically for advertising and marketing purposes, there are other possibilities as well. Through these mechanisms, ideas of great complexity and depth can be passed off as mere entertainment. Encapsulating these ideas in a "low" form of media, one which the conscious mind might easily dismiss as superfluous, may well "open a channel" into the subconscious of the reader. This process can facilitate the delivery of the memetic payload, while passing the experience off as harmless entertainment to the "psychic censor."

Grant Morrison has described "The Invisibles" as being the product of his attempt to describe to the world the concepts of which he was made aware during his abduction by aliens in Katmandu (as described in his short story "It was the 90s'") in 1991. This hypersigil, as Morrison terms it, was an attempt to integrate these ideas, at the behest of his fifth-dimensional benefactors, into the popular consciousness. Whether this scenario actually occurred, or whether it is merely a brilliant marketing plan to sell more comic books is irrelevant. What is important is that Morrison succeeded in buying some "mind-time" in the mass audience, and used this attention to inject his ideas regarding both the struggle for individuality and self-determination, as well as the concept that the opposing sides of such a struggle are ultimately indistinguishable from one another.

The ripples in popular culture that were caused by Morrison's epic have been manifest in several ways. Among works most obviously influenced by "The Invisibles" is the film "The Matrix". The similarity between plot points and stylistic elements of "The Matrix" and "The Invisibles" has been remarked upon in a number of interviews with Grant Morrison, as well as exhaustively dissected by fans of the comics. Morrison stated in an interview that at first he was incensed with the derivative nature of the Wachowski Brothers' film, but upon reflection decided that the film was a testament to the success of his effort to propagate his ideas into the mainstream of popular culture. The Matrix franchise itself has inspired a number of books of philosophy and literary criticism, as well as both online and hard copy comics. It has also served to bring the ideas of Jean Baudrillard, Cornel West, and other contemporary philosophers and cultural critics to a far broader audience then they might ever have known.

Another result of the Invisibles influence was the formation of an online community of fans of the series. The fan board started by Jay Babcock in 1997 ultimately contributed its material to Tom Coates to facilitate the creation of what eventually became Barbelith.com, named after the revelational super-contextual buoy which plays a central role in the plot of The Invisibles. This community began as a fan board, and evolved into what could be compared to a virtual incarnation of the Interzone Meet Cafe'.

The book also had a profound effect on Morrison himself, as he related in an interview by Tom Coates in SubMedia magazine in June of 1999:

"I gave King Mob a shaved head and then promptly shaved my own. I was hoping some of his magic would rub off. But then I did this story-line in which he is shot, his lungs collapse and he goes through a terrible shamanic trial. Three months after I wrote it, my lung collapses and I end up going through a terrible shamanic trial. Then I got a disease that ate through my face exactly as I described it happening to him."

"It was around then that I decided that I ought to do some nice things to him," he laughs. "So I wrote about him having sex with Ragged Robin. Then I met this girl who was exactly like her. It was great. I am now struggling towards a theory in which we are about to make first contact with fictional reality."