The Filth [Paperback]

Grant Morrison (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2004

The Filth is a groundbreaking, mind-altering voyage of conspiracies and revelations. Since the early 1950s, a secret police force known only as The Hand has been covertly protecting society and making sure that life continues along its prescribed path. But when a rogue agent of the enigmatic organization introduces numerous threats to the social hygiene of existence, the future of the world teeters on the edge of cataclysmic change. Now as the hour of chaos approaches. The Hand's only chance of success rests on the shoulders of their greatest agent, a man who is traumatically fixed in a hypnotic state in which he believes himself to be a fat, balding, middle-aged loser with an addiction to porn. Suggested for Mature Readers.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The mutant child of Alan Moore, Terence McKenna and Robert Anton Wilson, Morrison has emerged as one of only a handful of comics writers with a true voice and vision. He's as fascinated by paranoid conspiracy theories and the Kabbalah as he is by superhero archetypes. They're all played out in this psychedelic science fiction adventure. Like his best-known works The Invisibles and Doom Patrol, this story follows a subterranean organization with terrifying science at its disposal—but in a break from Morrison's previous works, covert government agency the Hand is actually working to maintain the status quo against the mass hallucinations of a society that needs to dream. The story follows Greg Feely, a balding, middle-aged man who wants nothing more than to look at porn and care for his sick cat. It soon emerges that Feely is actually Ned Slade, special negotiator for the Hand. As Feely/Slade tries to decide which personality he really is, he takes on such twisted entities as deviant superman Spartacus Hughes; Anders Klimakks, a porn star with black semen and irresistible pheromones; the Libertania, a giant ocean liner that's its own country; and Dmitri, a deadly communist monkey assassin. Artistic collaborators Weston and Erskine capture this insanity with razor-sharp precision, dead-on characterizations and such memorable vistas as a decaying miniature world and planets covered with machines. The Filth isn't always entirely coherent, but for sheer audacity and density of ideas, it will stand up to many readings.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Morrison follows the multivolume The Invisibles (1996-2002) with another disquieting saga about a shadowy outfit working to save society. The story opens when sad, middle-aged Greg Feely, whose only companions are a dying cat and porn videos, learns he is actually Ned Slade, top agent of the Hand, an organization dedicated to maintaining the social status quo by eliminating unhealthy variations--biological, technological, or sexual. As another agent observes, the Hand "wipes the arse of the world": the likes of Spartacus Hughes, an artificially grown personality who occupies various bodies; Anders Klimakks, an amnesiac porn star with super pheromones; and Max Thunderstone, a sociopath with drug-induced superpowers. Greg-Ned constantly struggles to reconcile his two wildly contradictory personalities. The Dan-Dare-meets-William-Burroughs epic encompasses such standard Morrison themes as nanotechnology, the absurdity of superheroics, a wide range of sexual expression, and, above all, conspiracy theories. Chris Weston's straightforward but imaginative art makes the wildly outrageous story convincing if not always comprehensible. Not everybody's kettle, but ideal for fans of "challenging" comics and sf. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Vertigo (June 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401200133
• ISBN-13: 978-1401200138
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 0.7 x 10.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #114,649 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

61 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Hand Evokes, June 2, 2004

By 

Ian Vance (pagosa springs CO.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Filth (Paperback)

In an interview with Disinformation guru Richard Metzger, Grant Morrison claimed he had moved to Los Angeles to [sic] ''change bull{. . .} into money, turn pure thought into pure cash.'' With Hollywood's recent trend of adapting the counterculture concepts Morrison excels at (recent examples including the plethora of debased Dick, the Matrix, etc.), the transitional move - physically and artistically - of this Glasgow native to the City of Angels probably seemed fortuitous at the time. And *The Filth* is, by all appearances, the hard(core) result of L.A.'s influence on this highly-assimilative pen-prophet: a po-mo epic of human frailty, sci-fi surrealism, over-ambition and gutter abandon, a metaphor-medicine for our junk-glutted species. Or so it attempts, at any rate.

It takes roughly ten pages for the story to erupt into utter weirdness. Before that mark we follow the life-pattern of one Greg Feely, a cubicle serf with a peculiar taste in pornography and a co-dependant affection for his cat Tony. One night he finds a naked black woman in his shower; he half-wittingly engages in a day-glo romp session with the vixen and Feely's ''para-personality'' is stripped away to reveal his ''true'' self, Ned Slade, a policeman - or, more technically, a garbageman - for the Hand, an underground organization which cleans up and disposes all aberrations, perversions, and social threats to the Status:Q. Unfortunately Slade is an amnesiac: due to a severe trauma during a previous assignment, he has regressed so severely into his Feely persona that he's now forgotten the details of his existence. . . or so he is told over and over by the mysterious minions of the Hand.

Like the Invisibles and other media of this nature, *The Filth* benefits immensely from a re-read or three (or, as I did, read the first four issues and start over) - information is given erratically, with purposeful intent, and certain visuals/dialogue will only make sense after one has progressed with the main text. Overall *The Filth* reminded me strongly of a Philip K. Dick novel, or more precisely a conglomeration of the Horselover's stranger entries like *A Scanner Darkly*, *Ubik* and especially *The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich*; the time-distortion/control-resistance/drugs/schizo themes updated with mainstays of 21st century pulp, particularly nanotechnology and the smirking post-modern deconstruction of genre boundaries (a literal deconstruction, in this case). Morrison is no copycat, though, and the Filth abounds with willful debauchery and overt bizarreness: a dope-smoking chimpanzee KGB assassin with a vocal distaste for human beings; nanotech I-Life existing upon a ''bonsai planet;'' brainwashed children compared to ants; and, among the more vulgar moments, a porn-star who possesses black semen of high fertility rate - a seed captured and transformed into a viral weapon by Tex Porneau, a film ''auteur'' obviously based on Max Hardcore (the most overt L.A. reference in the book, IMO). Morrison tackles alternative dimensions, conspiracy theory, bacterial influence, identity crisis, comic-book critique (possibly a reaction to his stint on mainstream titles like X-men and JLA??), and much, much more in this kitchen-sink 13-issue series. But the question remains: does it _work_?

Unfortunatly, no. . . not quite. From a recent interview, Morrison states: ''The Filth can be seen [sic] a healing inoculation of grime. I'm deliberately injecting the worst aspects of life into my reader's heads in small, humorous doses of metaphor and symbol, in an effort to help them survive the torrents of nastiness, horror and dirt we're all exposed to every day - especially in Western cultures, whose entertainment industries peddles a mind-numbing perverted concoction of fantasy violence and degrading sexuality while living large at the expense of the poor of other countries.'' Yeah, I agree, Grant. However, while *The Filth* does bring up some nice points and climatic thought-caps to the wretched build-up of humanity at its nadir, Morrison neither captures the truly _worst_ aspects (censors wouldn't allow it, though any and all are easily accessible these days via the Pandora's Box that is the Net), and, more importantly, his revelations are too few, too far between, and too sparse in content to really make an effective impact. I blame the kitchen-sink approach. There is so much here to digest - not a bad thing in itself - but the side-tangent stuff tends to bloat and lessen the overall intent. The comic-book deconstruction elements are a good example, as they seem to me almost unnecessary. I understand what Grant was getting at here, in the metaphorical sense of perfect ideal/stasis superman vs. the corrosion of realty alongside the ''need for suffering'' drive; I just don't feel he achieved it as well as he might have in so limited a space, so crammed a vessel. The art is nothing spectacular, either, very workmanlike and lacking most of the innovative framing and visual/symbolic depth of the *Invisibles,* although according to the author this was intentional.

It's difficult not to compare *The Filth* with Morrison's past conspiracy-theory magnum opus: when done so, I'm afraid this graphic novel really does far short of the mark *The Invisibles* set. But, as an artist myself, I fully understand and support the need to grow, to take a directional change. . . at least as long as it delivers in a new and interesting way. . . and this comic certainly does that in spades.

Four stars.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bizarre, strangely moving, and vintage G-Mo, August 2, 2004

By 

John A Wright "Lover of Books N' Beer" (Cincinnati, OH United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Filth (Paperback)

So, one day, Grant Morrison decided to pen a creator-owned limited series that incorporated themes, raw ideas, and scenes from all of his previous best work. No, not JLA or New X-Men, but stuff from Animal Man, Doom Patrol, and The Invisibles. Cribbing liberally from himself, he spun out a typically disturbing psychedelic tale of paranoia, conspiracy and pornography.

And does it work? Heck yeah, it does.

The Filth strikes me as a re-imagining of the seminal series The Inivsibles. Bald bad-ass pervert protagonist? Check. Secret society controlling the fate of the world? Check. Bizarro organic cyber-punk psychedelica? Check. Kinky sex out the wazoo? Again, check.

This time, Grant also throws some bones to his old Animal Man fans with some nice post-mod super-hero subplots. It's almost like he's winking at himself -- an early scene with characters stepping out of comic book panels so closely mirrors the stunning post-mod twists of his early DC work that you'll either find yourself laughing (at the blatent rip-off) or groaning (at the blatent rip-off.)

So what makes this worth reading if it's so deriviative? Well, it's Grant, so the writing and plotting is superb, and the art by Chris Weston and Gary Erskine really grabbed my by the proverbial curlies. More importanly to me, however, was the running subplot concerning Slade/Feely's relationship with his cat, Tony. As usual, I'll save you the spoilers, the rest assured that this part of the story grounds the fantasmagoric aspects, and serves as an odd little paen to the power of love in our completely messed-up world. It's the emotional center of the story, and adds some sentimental feeling to Grant's paranoid and scary work.

Plus, I just love kitties myself.

Pick this up, and read it twice... three times if you must. It's really that darned good.

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Morrison does it again, August 26, 2004

By 

N. Durham "Big Evil" (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Filth (Paperback)

Grant Morrison's 13 issue maxi-series, the Filth, is possibly the best piece of material to ever come from the strangely gifted, critically acclaimed writer. The story centers around Greg Feely, a man who wants to do nothing more than look at pornography and care for his ailing cat Tony. However, Greg soon learns that he is actually Ned Slade, a special negotiator for an organization called the Hand which cleans up the unhealthy variations and messes made in the world. Feely's search for his identity brings him across a talking communist chimpanzee named Dmitri who boasts that he killed JFK, an adult film star named Anders Klimakks whose black semen is made into a biological weapon by depraved director Tex Porneau, and brainwashed children which are nothing more than ants. The art by Chris Weston and Gary Erksine brilliantly capture the sheer weirdness of it all; perfectly capturing Morrison's characterizations. Beneath the intense graphic violence and sex, Morrison weaves a tale like a tree, branching out with ideas reminiscent of that of a Philip K. Dick story while challenging the confines of what is a comic book. The Filth is brilliant, shocking, and the best thing to come from DC's Vertigo imprint since Preacher and Morrison's own Animal Man, and is much like Alan Moore's Watchmen was almost twenty years ago: sheer comic brilliance that will be cherished for years to come.