| “ | I remember that night. It was late at night—in the daytime one was bothered with the gaping, silly students—and I worked then sometimes till dawn. It came suddenly, splendid and complete in my mind. I was alone; the laboratory was still, with the tall lights burning brightly and silently. In all my great moments I have been alone. 'One could make an animal—a tissue—transparent! One could make it invisible! All except the pigments—I could be invisible!' I said, suddenly realizing what it meant to be an albino with such knowledge. It was overwhelming. I left the filtering I was doing, and went and stared out of the great window at the stars. 'I could be invisible!' I repeated. | „ |
| ~ Griffin explains how he came up with the idea for an invisibility potion. |
Griffin, better known as The Invisible Man, is the titular main protagonist of the 1897 novel, The Invisible Man, by the late English writer, H.G. Wells. He was a young medical student who created a potion that rendered him invisible, enabling some of his worst traits to surface as he abused said invisibility for power.
Biography
| “ | Great and strange ideas transcending experience often have less effect upon men and women than smaller, more tangible considerations. | „ |
| ~ The novel on Griffin. |
Griffin is a young albino who studies optical density as a medical student at a university. His discoveries were supposed to make him famous, and he wants all the credit to himself by quitting the university he's working and continuing his experiments in an apartment-under the fear that his professor, Hobbema, will steal his ideas. In an effort to finance his experiments, he steals money from his father, which drives him to suicide, given the money had not belonged to him. Griffin showed no pity in his father's death, and even remarked later that he had deserved it.
In his studies, he eventually develops a potion that renders him invisible to the human eye. He had done so by creating a formula to bend light and decrease the refractive index of physical objects. This process was made even more easily due to Griffin's condition of being an albino. To test out his experiment, he used it on his neighbors' white cat before using it on himself, and it worked. However, after the cat went missing, its owner complained to the landlord which arouse suspicion. Griffin then packed everything and left-but not before he burnt down his building to dispose of any possible evidence.
During his invisible state, he tries desperately to find a cure. He steals money from people which magnetized him to the authorities. To hide where he takes residence at the Coach and Horses Inn in Ipling, Griffin steals a trench coat, dark goggles, bandages, and a fake nose to conceal his identity. However, he draws more attention when his experiments and billing to the local reverend arouse suspicion.
While escaping Ipling, Griffin forces a homeless man named Thomas Marvel to carry money for him. Marvel escapes the Invisible Man's clutches and runs off with Griffin's money. While in the town of Port Burdock, Griffin seeks help from a former acquaintance Dr. Arthur Kemp in aiding him in a reign of terror.
| “ | "The man's become inhuman, I tell you," said Kemp. "I am as sure he will establish a reign of terror—so soon as he has got over the emotions of this escape—as I am sure I am talking to you. Our only chance is to be ahead. He has cut himself off from his kind. His blood be upon his own head." | „ |
| ~ Chapter 25 on Griffin. |
Refusing, Kemp summons the local authorities including Colonel Adye who is shot and wounded by Griffin. Enraged and determined to punish Kemp, Griffin follows Kemp back to Ipling. Ultimately, Griffin meets his end at the hands of the mob summoned by Kemp. In death, the invisibility effect wears off and he is visible again once more. Marvel uses the stolen money to open a inn "The Invisbile Man"; However, when not running his inn, Marvel tries to decipher the Griffins notes, hoping of one day recreating Griffin's work. However, because pages were accidentally washed clean, and the remaining notes are coded in Greek and Latin, and Marvel has no comprehension of even the basic mathematical symbols he sees in the notes, this is unlikely
Quotes
| “ | "You don't understand," he said, "who I am or what I am. I'll show you. By Heaven! I'll show you." Then he put his open palm over his face and withdrew it. The centre of his face became a black cavity. "Here," he said. He stepped forward and handed Mrs. Hall something which she, staring at his metamorphosed face, accepted automatically. Then, when she saw what it was, she screamed loudly, dropped it, and staggered back. The nose—it was the stranger's nose! pink and shining—rolled on the floor. Then he removed his spectacles, and everyone in the bar gasped. He took off his hat, and with a violent gesture tore at his whiskers and bandages. For a moment they resisted him. A flash of horrible anticipation passed through the bar. "Oh, my Gard!" said some one. Then off they came. It was worse than anything. Mrs. Hall, standing open-mouthed and horror-struck, shrieked at what she saw, and made for the door of the house. Everyone began to move. They were prepared for scars, disfigurements, tangible horrors, but nothing! The bandages and false hair flew across the passage into the bar, making a hobbledehoy jump to avoid them. Everyone tumbled on everyone else down the steps. For the man who stood there shouting some incoherent explanation, was a solid gesticulating figure up to the coat-collar of him, and then—nothingness, no visible thing at all! |
„ |
| ~ Griffin revealing himself. |
| “ | "Why!" said Huxter, suddenly, "that's not a man at all. It's just empty clothes. Look! You can see down his collar and the linings of his clothes. I could put my arm—" He extended his hand; it seemed to meet something in mid-air, and he drew it back with a sharp exclamation. "I wish you'd keep your fingers out of my eye," said the aerial voice, in a tone of savage expostulation. "The fact is, I'm all here: head, hands, legs, and all the rest of it, but it happens I'm invisible. It's a confounded nuisance, but I am. That's no reason why I should be poked to pieces by every stupid bumpkin in Iping, is it?" |
„ |
| ~ Griffin and Huxter. |
| “ | "Pull yourself together," said the Voice, "for you have to do the job I've chosen for you." Mr. Marvel blew out his cheeks, and his eyes were round. "I've chosen you," said the Voice. "You are the only man except some of those fools down there, who knows there is such a thing as an invisible man. You have to be my helper. Help me—and I will do great things for you. An invisible man is a man of power." |
„ |
| ~ Griffin and Mr. Marvel. |
| “ | I was invisible, and I was only just beginning to realize the extraordinary advantage my invisibility gave me. My head was already teeming with plans of all the wild and wonderful things I had now impunity to do. | „ |
| ~ Griffin |
| “ | [The invisible man said:] "After a time I crawled home, took some food and a strong dose of strychnine, and went to sleep in my clothes on my unmade bed. Strychnine is a grand tonic, Kemp, to take the flabbiness out of a man." "It's the devil," said Kemp. "It's the palaeolithic in a bottle." "I awoke vastly invigorated and rather irritable. You know?" "I know the stuff." |
„ |
| ~ Griffin and Dr. Kemp. |
| “ | My mood, I say, was one of exaltation. I felt as a seeing man might do, with padded feet and noiseless clothes, in a city of the blind. I experienced a wild impulse to jest, to startle people, to clap men on the back, fling people's hats astray, and generally revel in my extraordinary advantage. | „ |
| ~ Griffin |
| “ | So last January, with the beginning of a snowstorm in the air about me—and if it settled on me it would betray me!—weary, cold, painful, inexpressibly wretched, and still but half convinced of my invisible quality, I began this new life to which I am committed. I had no refuge, no appliances, no human being in the world in whom I could confide. To have told my secret would have given me away—made a mere show and rarity of me. Nevertheless, I was half-minded to accost some passer-by and throw myself upon his mercy. But I knew too clearly the terror and brutal cruelty my advances would evoke. I made no plans in the street. My sole object was to get shelter from the snow, to get myself covered and warm; then I might hope to plan. But even to me, an Invisible Man, the rows of London houses stood latched, barred, and bolted impregnably. | „ |
| ~ Griffin |
| “ | Practically I thought I had impunity to do whatever I chose, everything—save to give away my secret. So I thought. Whatever I did, whatever the consequences might be, was nothing to me. I had merely to fling aside my garments and vanish. No person could hold me. I could take my money where I found it. | „ |
| ~ Griffin |
| “ | The more I thought it over, Kemp, the more I realized what a helpless absurdity an Invisible Man was—in a cold and dirty climate and a crowded civilized city. Before I made this mad experiment I had dreamt of a thousand advantages. That afternoon it seemed all disappointment. I went over the heads of the things a man reckons desirable. No doubt invisibility made it possible to get them, but it made it impossible to enjoy them when they are got. Ambition—what is the good of pride of place when you cannot appear there? What is the good of the love of woman when her name must needs be Delilah? I have no taste for politics, for the blackguardisms of fame, for philanthropy, for sport. What was I to do? And for this I had become a wrapped-up mystery, a swathed and bandaged caricature of a man! | „ |
| ~ Griffin |
| “ | "By Heaven, Kemp, you don't know what rage is! To have worked for years, to have planned and plotted, and then to get some fumbling purblind idiot messing across your course! Every conceivable sort of silly creature that has ever been created has been sent to cross me. "If I have much more of it, I shall go wild—I shall start mowing 'em. As it is, they've made things a thousand times more difficult." "No doubt it’s exasperating," said Kemp, dryly. |
„ |
| ~ Griffin and Dr. Kemp. |
| “ | "You have been amazingly energetic and clever," this letter ran, "though what you stand to gain by it I cannot imagine. You are against me. For a whole day you have chased me; you have tried to rob me of a night's rest. But I have had food in spite of you, I have slept in spite of you, and the game is only beginning. The game is only beginning. There is nothing for it, but to start the Terror. This announces the first day of the Terror. Port Burdock is no longer under the Queen, tell your Colonel of Police, and the rest of them; it is under me—the Terror! This is day one of year one of the new epoch—the Epoch of the Invisible Man. I am Invisible Man the First. To begin with the rule will be easy. The first day there will be one execution for the sake of example—a man named Kemp. Death starts for him to-day. He may lock himself away, hide himself away, get guards about him, put on armor if he likes—Death, the unseen Death, is coming. Let him take precautions; it will impress my people. Death starts from the pillar box by midday. The letter will fall in as the postman comes along, then off! The game begins. Death starts. Help him not, my people, lest Death fall upon you also. Today Kemp is to die." | „ |
| ~ Griffin's letter. |
In Other Media
Films
- Main article: The Invisible Man (1933)
- Main article: Michael Griffin
- Main article: The Invisible Man (2020)
Comics
Gallery
 Villains
| ||
|
Book Comics Movies | ||
 Villains
| ||
|
Terrordrome: Rise of Boogeymen Terrordrome: Reign of The Legends Cutscenes only Others | ||