The Invisibles is a comic book created by Grant Morrison for the Vertigo imprint of DC Comics. This article is a list of all characters in the series.
The Invisibles The Invisibles are an organization of a freedom fighters at war with the oppressive Outer Church. Many members are psychic or possess some kind of supernatural ability.
Main cast
Jack Frost Jack Frost is the alias of Dane McGowan, a rebellious teenager from Liverpool, England. Early in his childhood, Dane McGowan affects the cold, violently rebellious persona of "Jack Frost" in order to cope with his shattered home life. After trying to burn down his school, Dane is sent to Harmony House, a reeducation facility for young boys run by the Outer Church, the villains of the series. The Invisibles free Dane from Harmony House and arrange for him to be mentored by Tom O'Bedlam, an experienced Invisible. Under Tom O'Bedlam's guidance, Dane realizes that the "Jack Frost" persona is restricting his growth, a realization that allows a softer, more compassionate Dane to emerge. Dane is contacted by Barbelith, a mysterious sentient satellite featured in the series, during this time, though his memories of contact are repressed until he is ready to access them.
After being injured on a mission, Dane abandons his teammates and wanders through London, eventually returning home to Liverpool. While on the run, his hidden memories are triggered and he learns that he is a messiah. At first he rejects this responsibility, but he soon finds that he cannot ignore the empathy he now feels for the rest of the world. Later on, he remembers that during his first contact with Barbelith he was forced to endure the collective suffering of humanity throughout time. This memory spurs him to return to the Invisibles so that he may set things right. While Dane rejects their violent methods and their dualistic perception of the world, which he finds just as flawed as that of the Outer Church, he stays with them because they are his friends. Over the course of their adventures together, he is revealed the truth behind time, the creation of the universe, and his place in it. When he is ready, Dane starts his own Invisibles cell and, in 2012, oversees the end of the physical world as foreseen.
Dane is a powerful psychic and has many other undefined supernatural abilities.
King Mob
Once a horror writer named Gideon Starorzewski, King Mob is the leader of the cell of the Invisibles. He is the agent who recruited Jack Frost, and he is the lover of Ragged Robin.
Ragged Robin Ragged Robin is the Invisibles' psychic operative, sent back from the future to bring the science of time travel to the Invisibles. She later becomes the group's leader when they (randomly) reassign their elemental roles.
Born in 1988, she joined the Invisibles at the age of 20 in 2008, when Mason Lang found her in a mental asylum. In 2012, she returned to 1990 in a "timesuit", making her the first person to travel by time. She was then found by the Invisible John-a-Dreams, who brought her to the cell she had previously joined in the future.
During the 1990s, when most of the story is set, she is still a member of the same cell. She becomes romantically involved with its new leader, King Mob, before replacing him as the leader. After explaining her futuristic past, she reveals the timesuit, still hidden from when she first returned. An Invisible scientist researching time (who would later build the timesuit and send her back in it) named Takashi repairs the timesuit and returns her to the year 2012, minutes after her departure.
Her name and look are based on the Raggedy Ann doll. She has some mental difficulties related to her time traveling – she introduces herself to Jack Frost by saying, "Hi, I'm Ragged Robin – I'm nuts".
Boy "Boy" is Lucille Butler, an officer of the New York Police Department. Her brother Martin, also a police officer, was working for The Conspiracy, a fact known to a third brother, a gang member named "Eezy D", but not to Lucille. In a battle against the Outer Church, Eezy D is killed and Martin is taken prisoner. Lucille's life is saved by her partner, although he cautions her that the Invisibles will be looking for her. Hoping they will help her rescue her brother Martin, Lucille allows herself to be recruited by the Invisibles, who give her the code name "Boy", who becomes somewhat of a mentor to Jack Frost, and their relationship eventually develops into a romantic one. Boy later steals an artifact known as the "Hand of Glory" and goes searching for the secret prison camp in which she believes Martin to be detained. Boy is abducted by the Outer Church and informed that her identities as "Boy" and "Lucille Butler", among others, were entirely fabricated, and that she was secretly an operative sent to retrieve the Hand of Glory for the "Lost Ones", who plan to use its power to destroy the sun. Boy, however, still refuses to kill King Mob. Following this, it is revealed that the ostensible agents of the Outer Church are in fact members of Invisibles Cell #23, who have been deprogramming Boy to defuse a previous hypnotic suggestion from the real Outer Church. When she realizes that there is no way to save Martin, and there never had been, Boy quits the Invisibles forever, and she starts a new life in New York, where she later has a child.
Lord Fanny
Lord Fanny is a trans woman sorceress who was recruited into the Invisibles by John-a-Dreams. She is shown to be quite powerful, destroying Mr. Quimper and banishing the demon Orlando. Born male into a matrilineal family of brujas, she was raised as a girl and put through a blood rite of passage as a child where she faced Mictlantecuhtli, the Aztec god of death and gained magical powers and the knowledge of their whole life.
Most frequent allies In addition to the cell of five first led by King Mob, then Ragged Robin, there are other Invisibles (from other cells) who frequently work together with the main characters.
Jolly Roger is a member of the all-lesbian cell of the Invisibles known as the "Poison Pussies". She discovers a hidden station in Dulce, New Mexico run by the United States government with the assistance of "ultraterrestrials" called "Lost Ones". The station contains the remains of her deceased lover, but also the secret vaccine for the AIDS virus. Mind controlled (to an extent) by Mr. Quimper, Roger convinces the Invisibles to storm the station. She later, when Quimper's control of her is broken by Ragged Robin, operates with King Mob's group like a steady member. Her other operations involve a (this time successful) assault on Dulce, and the crashing of the Moonchild ceremony. She is murdered by Miles Delacourt. Jim Crow: A houngan and musician, Jim Crow is first encountered by the Invisibles investigating a new variety of crack cocaine that turns its users into mindless undead. Crow later learns that the leaders of the pharmaceutical company behind the drug are using it to experience the brutal acts of the zombies vicariously. Crow kills them all with this assistance of a scorpion-shaped loa called "Baron Zaraguin". He later goes on to further missions with the Invisibles. Crow is one of the most morally ambiguous characters in the series, since he does what he feels is right, but during operations he must always make a sacrifice to the Death God, and at one point risks killing off the entire American Southwest to satisfy the urges of Zaraguin. Helga is a Scandinavian linguist and computer code expert who creates a language program for the Invisibles to use against the Outer Church, and a "cut and paste" (partially photography-based) grimoire that is essential to take control over the Moonchild ritual. She appears to be somewhat of an overachiever in linguistics, having translated Winnie-the-Pooh to !Kung and experimenting with alien languages to great physical risk. She tortures Sir Miles through a combination of alien glossary and a serum that allows words to be perceived as immediate truth. Her destabilizing of and language-hypnotic control over Miles is instrumental in bringing him down. Her real name is Olga Tannen. Mason Lang: Billionaire sympathizer with (and financer of) the Invisibles' cause, Mason Lang received information in a dream (or alien abduction) about the possibilities of storing information on molecules of water, a science which becomes his life's work. He tricks the United States government into retaining his services to help them understand a prototype time machine. He also sells software and technology to the government, in which he installs back door access, which eventually puts the entire military-industrial complex under his control. In 2012, the proliferation of "smart drinks" makes it seem as if Lang eventually succeeded with his water molecule project. It is stated in the third volume that he died sometime before 2012, although it is never specifically revealed how. Takashi Satoh is a time-scientist who works for Mason Lang on his time machine group. Part of Ragged Robin's mission is to bring back some items in time that will trigger Satoh's inspiration for building the time machine, making her mission a causal loop. He is seemingly killed in 2012, as the Archons breach the laboratory. Elfayed is a Middle-Eastern high master in the Invisible College. He takes charge of Jack Frost's training later in the series after Jack accepts his fate.
The 1920s Cell Queen Mab is a psychic woman, Beryl Wyndham, from circa 1924 who is a leading figure in Edith Manning's cell. She is romantically involved with both Edith Manning and King Mob I. She is betrayed and murdered by Sir Miles in 1965. King Mob I is an anarchist revolutionary, Ronald Tolliver, from circa 1924 who is part of Edith Manning's entourage. King Mob (II) remarks that he is the only one in his cell who is not obviously English upper-class. He is killed during the Spanish Civil War in 1937. "Ron Tolliver" is the name of an off-camera conspirator in Robert Heinlein's novel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. Edith Manning is a "flapper" of the Roaring Twenties who helps the Invisibles obtain an artifact called the "Hand of Glory". She also helps King Mob activate it by anointing it with their bodily fluids from a sex act. She remains an active member of the Invisibles until her natural death at the age of 99. Apparently her family have a tradition of Invisible activity, her uncle (Tom O' Bedlam's father) being a 'Grand Magus' in what appears to be an Occultist Invisibles cell. Tom O'Bedlam is a repressed, arrogant and rather snobbish boy from the 1920s, who is drawn into the libertine Invisible cell of his cousin Edith Manning partially due to his crush on her, partially as a form of rebellion against his father's more conservative (in terms of ritual) brand of invisibilism. He goes mad during the Hand of Glory ritual, and is later in life seen as a semi-mad derelict. He helps Jack Frost realize his powers, for all purposes being his mentor. Tom commits suicide by leaping off a skyscraper, in order to awaken Jack. He hints that his mission of mentoring Jack was the only thing that kept him from seeking death. After Tom's death it is revealed that he became the most powerful magician of his species (fulfilling the stated goal of Edith's callous treatment), the inference being that other races exist, surpassing human psychic ability. Billy Chang is a Chinese mystic who is part of Edith Manning's entourage. He is an expert when it comes to relics, and understands a great deal about the Hand of Glory. He disappears without a trace following the Hand of Glory ritual.
Division X