The Filth

Supercbbox| title = The Filth


caption = Cover to "The Filth" #13
schedule = Monthly
format =
publisher = Vertigo
date = August 2002 - October 2003
issues = 13
main_char_team =
writers = Grant Morrison
artists =
pencillers = Chris Weston
inkers = Gary Erskine
colorists =
creative_team_month =
creative_team_year =
creators =

The Filth is a comic book limited series, written by Grant Morrison and drawn by Chris Weston and Gary Erskine. It was published by the Vertigo imprint of DC Comics in 2002.Citation | last = Irvine | first = Alex | author-link = Alexander C. Irvine | contribution = Filth | editor-last = Dougall | editor-first = Alastair | title = The Vertigo Encyclopedia | pages = 83 | publisher = Dorling Kindersley | place = New York | year = 2008 | ISBN = 0-7566-4122-5 | oclc = 213309015]

Overview

"The Filth" was Grant Morrison's second major creator-owned series for Vertigo after "The Invisibles". Initially starting as a Nick Fury proposal for Marvel Comics, Morrison adapted it as a 13 part series for Vertigo. The title refers both to the police (in British slang) and to pornography (in which Morrison "immersed" himself researching the series). [ [http://www.popimage.com/content/grant20045.html "Grant Morrison: Master & Commander PART 5: Dancing Through Shells"] ] Morrison has said that the series is his favorite among his works. [ [http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=11645 Up, Up and Away with Morrison, Kring, Mignola & Lethem] , Comic Book Resources, October 8, 2007]

The series tells the story of Greg Feely, a bachelor whose main interests are his cat and masturbating to pornography. Feely is actually a member of a shadowy organization called The Hand and their attempts to keep society on the path to the 'Status Q'. (Of note, while the protagonists of "The Invisibles" fight against authority, Feely and his allies fight as representatives of it against a range of absurd foes.)

Publication and critical reception

The series was highly praised for its unique covers designed by Carlos Segura—the covers were initially planned to be traditional comic book covers with art by Chris Weston. However, many found the series sometimes confusing due to its storytelling techniques. Morrison never suffered from the censorship that he suffered in "The Invisibles", but in issues five and six Tex Porneau's erect penis was heavily digitised (although Morrison has stated this was the intention), and one single panel featuring a girl covered in black semen was edited out. Otherwise the comics appeared as Morrison planned in his scripts.

Themes and motifs

"The Filth" can be seen partly as companion piece to "The Invisibles" in that it touches upon similar themes and concepts such as fractal realities, art affecting life, postmodern blurring of the fourth wall and the world as a single, living organism with humans as the cells that compose it. Morrison has stated that he had originally intended to make "The Filth" a thematic sequel to "The Invisibles", followed by a third comic book series, "The Indestructible Man". Fact|date=October 2007 Morrison later concluded that his original "Flex Mentallo" series formed the first in the trilogy. Fact|date=October 2007Therefore the sequence runs: 1. "Flex Mentallo". 2. "The Invisibles", 3. "The Filth". The theme of "The Filth" consists of immersion into and eventual from forces of negativity.

Morrison conceived the series as an exploration (which he made the point of also doing in his life) of the negative forces of the Qliphoth or "Tree of Death" which the occult tradition of ceremonial magic conceives as the negative equivalent of the Tree of Life. Fact|date=October 2007 Accordingly, Qlippothic symbolism (i.e. colors) appear throughout the story.

ynopsis

Greg Feely is a "dodgy bachelor" living in London alone but for his cat. While returning home after buying cat litter and a pornographic magazine from a newsagents, he starts to hear voices telling him "not to fuck with The Filth". The next day at work he is told "The Hand never lets go" by an unknown woman. Returning home he is confronted by a strange woman named Miami who informs him that "Greg Feely" is actually a 'para-personality', in effect a secret identity, and he is in fact Ned Slade, the top agent for an organisation called The Hand, a group of extra dimensional agents attempting to keep society on the path to 'Status Q' (status quo).

After telling his 'replacement' to take care of the cat, Slade and Miami travel to The Hand's headquarters. Slade is told by his superior officer, the enigmatic Mother Dirt, that he has been brought back to help maintain 'Status Q', and to ensure that Slade's friend and former agent Spartacus Hughes fails in his attempts to disrupt the 'Status Q'. Slade sets out to stop Hughes from helping a perverted billionaire control a new form of life called I-Life (created to become a new immune system for humans). With the aid of Miami and Comrade Dmitri-9, a Russian chimpanzee assassin, Slade confronts Hughes and manages to distract him so that Dmitri-9 can shoot him.

Slade returns to The Hand headquarters to find answers to what is going on. Receiving no answers, Slade quits to be Greg Feely again and take care of his sick cat. The Hand sends Dimitri-9 to bring Feely/Slade back. After telling Feely's replacement to make sure he cares for Feely's sick cat, Slade meets Doctor Arno Von Vermin, another officer of The Hand. They travel to another dimension where their vehicle crashes, forcing them to walk across a bizarre landscape to find a way to Hand headquarters. Slade discovers Von Vermin to be an 'anti-person': one who can endanger the Status Q. Slade leaves Von Vermin to die and sets out to reach Hand headquarters on foot.

Slade's next mission involves Anders Klimakks, a porn star who is found by Los Angeles police wandering naked with a bag containing fifty pornographic magazines and DVDs. The police call in The Hand to question Klimakks. Klimakks reveals to Hand Officer Jones that he began life as a porn star in his native Amsterdam before coming to Los Angeles to work for pornographer Tex Porneau (based upon real life porn director Max Hardcore [ [http://web.archive.org/web/20070701060113/http://www.newsarama.com/Filth.htm View Askew: Grant Morrison] (cached), Newsarama] ). Porneau is after his semen, which is strangely jet-black. After being seduced by Klimakks, Jones informs Hand headquarters that Klimakks is an anti-person. Slade and his team are called in to investigate, just as Porneau is transforming his latest batch of prisoners into rubber-clad servants. Upon arriving, Slade is confronted with the giant mutant sperm which Porneau has created as a weapon to kill any woman with a fertile womb. Slade's team manage to stop Porneau but not before hundreds are killed. Klimakks is killed for being an anti-person, but he lives on in the children of the 824 women he had sex with.

Slade returns to being Greg Feely just in time to find his cat Tony's health has become worse. Before he can call the vet, he is arrested by the police who suspect him of being a paedophile due to pictures found in his garbage. Slade denies he is a paedophile, saying that the pictures are just experiments with photoshop. Slade/Feely escapes after killing his police interregators. While escaping the police Slade/Feely finds a tampon in a puddle with the words "help us" written in blood on it. After being arrested again Slade's team from The Hand appears and tell the police to release him. His team informs him that Spartacus Hughes has declared war on the U.S. after kidnapping the President who is onboard a gigantic city ship called the "Libertania". Slade and his team board the ship and find that Hughes has turned the innocent passengers on "Libertania" into violent anti-people who destroy their ship for Hughes's amusement. Slade confronts Hughes and while being told by Hughes that he decided to become an anti-person after seeing "too much dirt" during his days with The Hand, the President and Hughes are killed by Dmitri-9.

Slade returns to being Greg Feely again but finds his replacement has allowed his cat to die. Feely returns to being Slade and is taken on a tour of The Hand by Officer Spector in order for Slade to find some answers to his questions. After a confrontation with Max Thunderstone, the world's first super hero, Slade returns to being Feely and beats his replacement for letting his cat die. Upon returning home, he finds Sharon Jones, a young British businesswoman who had witnessed the fall of the I-Life. After bringing Tony back, she reveals that 'Sharon' is dead, and the I-Life are manning her body as a 'bio-ship'. Feely finds out that it is Slade who is the fake personality and has been all along. Now he is classed as an anti-person and Dmitri-9 is sent to kill Feely. He kills Feely's replacement by mistake and the real Feely attacks Dmitri-9. As he is being attacked Feely's neighbours storm his home and Dmitri-9 escapes into the street to be beaten and thrown in front of a speeding train. Only his hand remains, giving the finger to an unseen audience.

Miami reports to her superior, Officer Mandrill (a woman whose upper torso is inexplicably swarming with extra mammaries), and claims that had they been more careful with Tony the Cat, Feely would have adapted to the Slade persona. Mandrill replies that they will have to hunt Feely down; now that they have taken back Spartacus Hughes and adapted his persona, he is their professional hunter, and his abilities have increased upon being placed in the body of Max Thunderstone.

Feely returns to the newsagents, discovering that it leads to a Hand storehouse - a room in which millions of alphabetized parapersonas are shelved. Officers Spector and Mercury try to convince him to come back, only for him to give them a startling revelation: their Hand personas are parapersonas. Whenever the Hand needs a new agent, they pick up an innocent bystander and make them into the new Slade. Enraged and bitter, he declares death to Status Q. However, before he can begin he is stopped by Spartacus Hughes, who has broken into Slade's apartment, raped and killed 'Sharon Jones', and done something to the rejuvenated Tony. He nearly kills Feely before Spector saves his life. Feely and Spector escape and Thunderstone dies by dropping into the polluted 'Sour Milk' sea surrounding The Hand's headquarters.

Spector is killed; the area around the Hand's base ages a person by several years, and she formerly had six months to live due to lymph cancer. Feely snaps her neck to spare her from her death agonies. Back in his house, Feely writes in his journal that no-one believes him; they claim he killed Tony with neglect and made up the whole 'Hand' fiasco to cope. The police come to his door just as his deliberate overdose of painkillers kicks in; his journal states that he was beginning to believe the Police himself, even as he sees the unutterable truth. The Hand Organisation is not part of some dystopian future; it is actually a third of a centimetre high, erected on a mess of food spilled outside his fridge. Hand agents are not sent to another place, but are thrown back in time and shrunk. The reason that the environment of the Hand's base ages people is because they are living years in the space of seconds. The Giant Hand and Pen which the Organisation focuses on is Feely's own.

At the beginning of the final chapter, Feely, mysteriously alive, breaks into Hand Headquarters carrying the Thermovolver. He kills several people, including those who mix the Parapersonas, reveals to Miami that he never had any feelings for her, and unmasks LaPen, an African woman who was raped and immolated in Chad. At the center of the Hand base, Feely confronts Mother Dirt, who is a super-intelligent pile of compost-like material. She tells him that the selection process for her agents is ruthless but necessary to maintain the Status Q. He was always meant to have a special role within The Hand, just not what he had been led to believe at first. She offers him a part of herself, claiming that she must be spread upon his flowers.

Feely returns home and refuses offers to rejoin a new version of The Hand. However, Feely continues to work for the Hand. He reveals that the I-Life saved him from suicide after Sharon Jones died. He now serves in a benign role, using the I-Life (who have further evolved into intelligent beings vaguely resembling Vulcans) to heal people he comes into contact with. In the final frames of the story, a screen is shown with Greg's head and his cat Tony, explaining the importance the I-Life had played in preventing him from succumbing to The Hand's attempt at controlling his personality. This ties into the series' overall message: no matter how trivial one's life may seem, one can still be a hero when the opportunity presents itself.

Collected editions

A trade paperback of all 13 issues was released in 2004 (ISBN 1401200133).

ee also

*"The Invisibles"

Notes

References

*gcdb series|id=10186|title="The Filth"
*comicbookdb|type=title|id=1739|title="The Filth"

External links

* [http://www.grant-morrison.com/ Grant Morrison homepage]
* [http://www.crackcomicks.com/ Crack Comics-companion site to Morrison's homepage]
* [http://www.ninthart.com/display.php?article=919 "The Filth" discussed at ninthart.com]
* [http://www.popthought.com/display_column.asp?DAID=861 Grant Morrison interview at popthought.com]
* [http://www.popimage.com/content/viewnews.cgi?newsid1088410910,18322, Filth Review at PopImage]