Patrick Meaney

Our Sentence is Up, first and foremost, does exactly what it intends to do. Patrick Meaney aims to walk you through this work of Grant Morrison’s, and by extension, a little piece of Morrison’s world. He does so, issue by issue, theme by theme, offering some degree of comment and interpretation with each piece. Whenever possible, Meaney gives us citations for his thoughts, and bits of side comment, usually exploring other works of Morrison’s before and after.
Second though, this book acts as a compendium of knowledge about The Invisibles. I don’t know about you, but I was somewhere between 5 and 10 when this series came out. I was only seeing comic books occasionally, and I certainly wasn’t reading interviews with the author in magazines about comics. Morrison gave interviews during that time, in the early internet era, and they are not very well preserved. But their content is key to some readings of The Invisibles, some information which simply cannot be garnered from the comics themselves. Meaney tracks these down, reflects on them with his audience, and ends by interviewing Morrison himself to confirm or deny a whole number of things about the book. The text of that interview, as well as direct quotes from others, forms a substantial portion of the book, expansive and useful for those of us who did not breathe in The Invisibles as it pushed its way into the world.
Really, though, this book is just an excuse to get you to reread, or read a little bit more closely. It’s certainly given me a deeper appreciation of the comic, but more than that, it’s forced me to confront the philosophy behind the comic in no uncertain terms. There is no ambiguity about some of Morrison’s ideas here. This book serves to challenge your attitude, your orientation. Like any book about another work, it leaves you examining your happy memories with a fine-toothed comb, finding new meaning and discovering old ones that you had simply forgotten.
At the end of the day, you should read Our Sentence is Up if you like Grant Morrison, or if you like The Invisibles. The book won’t spell everything out, but it certainly will make some gestures and wiggle it’s eyebrows. And if you’re anything like me, this book will just drive you to reread The Invisibles again. Ultimately, that’s a pretty good thing.
Reviewing something like a textbook is always difficult. I might have babbled a lot more than I meant to. I can’t promise this book changed my outlook on life, or that the comic it is about did. If anything, they just helped me clarify things I had been explaining poorly. I feel better after finishing. Isn't that all we can really ask from written works?… (meer)

I received this book from the Goodreads First-Reads program. This was a quick and interesting read about comic book author Warren Ellis, It didn't have a lot of deep conversation about his ideas that I was expecting and some parts felt a little repetitive. I learned from this book Warren tends to ramble and laugh when feeling put on the spot. But it was interesting learning about his day to day life and hearing the stories about his teenage years, daughter and girlfriend and a bit shocking to realize writing comes so natural to him that he doesn't even remember much of the work he's done.… (meer)