The Filth
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The Filth is a comic book 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.
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[edit] 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 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.)
[edit] 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, but many found the series sometimes confusing due to its mindfuck 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) otherwise everything was as Morrison planned in his scripts.
A trade paperback of all 13 issues was released in 2004.
[edit] 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. Morrison later concluded that his original Flex Mentallo series formed the first in the trilogy. Therefore the sequence runs: 1. Flex Mentallo. 2. The Invisibles, 3. The Filth. The theme of The Filth consists of immersion into and eventual redemption from forces of negativity.
Morrison concieved the series as an exploration (which he made the point of also doing in his life) of the negative forces of the Qlippoth or "Tree of Death" which the occult tradition of ceremonial magic concieves as the negative equivalent of the Tree of Life. Accordingly, Qlippothic symoblism (i.e. colors) appear throughout the story.
[edit] Synopsis
The story begins with Greg Feely, a "dodgy bachelor" living in London alone but for his cat. We first see him buying cat litter and a pornographic magazine from a newsagents. On the way home he starts to hear voices telling him "not to fuck with The Filth". He continues his routine of caring for his sick cat and masturbating to pornography, and the next day goes about his normal routine at work before being told "The Hand never lets go" by an unknown woman. Returning home he finds himself being confronted by a strange woman 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 or garbage collectors attempting to keep society on the path to 'Status Q' (status quo).
After telling his 'replacement' to take care of Feely's cat, Slade and the woman, a Hand agent named Miami, travel to The Hand's headquarters to be told why Slade has been brought back to active service. 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. After receiving no answers to who he was before joining The Hand, Slade quits to become Greg Feely again and take care of his sick cat. However The Hand sends Comrade-9 to bring Feely/Slade back and after telling Feely's replacement to make sure he cares for Feely's sick cat, Slade meets up with Doctor Arno Von Vermin, another officer of The Hand.
While travelling in another dimension Slade and Von Vermin's vehicle crashes and the pair are forced 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, which he eventually does.
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 to find out who and what he is. While being asked for a sperm sample by The Hand officer questioning him, Officer Jones, Kilmakks reveals that he began life as a porn star in his native Amsterdam before coming to Los Angeles to star in the films of pornographer Tex Porneau (based upon real life porn director Max Hardcore).
Klimakks informs Jones that Porneau was after his semen, which is strangely jet-black. After being seduced by Klimakks, Jones informs Hand headquarters that Klimakks is an anti-person and Slade and his team are called in to investigate, just as Porneau is transforming his latest batch of prisoners (two male police detectives who stumble upon Porneau's scheme) 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 decides to return 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 by local youths. Slade is questioned by the police but denies he is a paedophile, saying that the pictures are just him experimenting with photoshop. Slade/Feely escapes the police after killing his police interregators thanks to his Hand training. 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 is released after his team from The Hand appear and tell the police to release him.
His team informs him that Spartacus Hughes is back and has declared war on the USA 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" (described as a self-contained colony living on a cruise ship) into violent anti-people who destroy their self-made home 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 (coincedentally, he has killed both twice - President Kennedy and Hughes in another body). Slade and his team then escape from the sinking Libertania.
Slade returns to being Greg Feely again but finds his replacement has not given his cat the drugs he needed to live and that his cat has died. 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 worlds first super hero, Slade returns to being Feely and beats his replacement for letting his cat die. Here Feely finds out that it's 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 remaining, giving the finger to an unseen audience.
Feely returns to The Hand and tells Officer Spector that their Hand personas are implants and sets out to confront Mother Dirt. However he is stopped by Spartacus Hughes, who is now in the body of Max Thunderstone. He nearly kills Feely before Spector saves his life. Feely and Spector escape and Thunderstone dies by dropping into the polluted sea surrounding The Hand's headquarters.
Feely finally confronts Mother Dirt, the leader of The Hand, who is a superintelligent pile of vague 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, that he must spread upon his flowers.
Feely returns home and refuses offers to rejoin a revamped version of The Hand. However Feely continues to work for the Hand as the carrier for I-Life, a role he uses to heal people he comes into contact with. This ties into the series overall message: that no matter how trivial one's life may seem, they can still be a hero when the opportunity presents itself.
[edit] Trivia
- Secret Originals' paralysis upon entering the 3rd dimension may be a reference to the fact that Christopher Reeve, the actor who played Superman in the movie of the same name, was paralysed by a fall from his horse in later life.
- A Minor Character, Real-Admiral Noxinnixon, is shown to be Former President Richard Nixon, a mentally unstable admiral kept alive in a 'Nixonsphere' with metallic implants. Not only does this continue the British Graphic Novelists tradition of having Nixon as a Guest-Star (as previously seen in Watchmen and The Sandman: World's End), but may also be a reference to Douglas Adam's Short story, Young Zaphod Plays It Safe, in which 'Reagans' are shown to be grown in Spheres.
- When his head is shaved, Greg Feely bears a remarkable similarity to Grant Morrison himself...
