The Filth #1 to #13
Grant Morrison, Chris Weston, Gary Erskine.
Publisher – DC Vertigo
A couple of days
later and I had retrieved the comics from the “Grant Morrison box” (it’s a thing),
plus a little something else that caught my eye. I started rereading them while I waited for “Curing
the Postmodern Blues: Reading Grant Morrison and Chris Weston’s The Filth in
the 21st Century” to arrive.
It was time to see if it all still stood up.
But first; a
tangential detour via Marvel Knights Double Shot #2.
As the name might suggest
this a Marvel comic containing two short strips based on characters from the
slightly edgier and darker side of the MCU.
In fact, its “VIOLENT CONTENT” is announced on the cover as a warning,
or more likely as a lure, although I think they were flattering themselves.
The issue contains a
Ted McKeever Man-Thing story and a Nick Fury tale spun by Grant Morrison. I would have bought it for all of those
reasons, although if memory serves, I don’t think I particular enjoyed it at
the time. Regardless of that, I kept it
and had filed it away with the rest of Morrison’s comics. Which is why I saw it when I was retrieving The
Filth comics and pulled it out the box as well. And here is the reason why; What I know now,
but didn’t know back then, is that The Filth was originally a story idea
for a Nick Fury strip, but it grew into something bigger and far stranger and so
they decided to keep it and develop it as a creator owned project instead. And not knowing that fact in 2002, the
significance that the Marvel Knights Double Shot #2 came out just a
month prior to the premier issue of The Filth, suggested to me that I
might now find significant parallels between the two, in their intent if not
their execution.
Nick’s World
begins with a flat tyre on a rainy day and with Fury being reminded by the
female agent with him that he has already confessed that he always gets diarrhoea
forty minutes after eating Carbonara… and that that was thirty-eight minutes
ago. The clock is ticking, and the peril is scatological. OK, this is not your
usual Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD shenanigans.
What then follows
is the revelation that an enemy agent is being trained to impersonate Fury and
the quality of that impersonation is being put to the test inside a computer
simulations. The chief scientist in
charge of this experiment is uncompromising and yet the enemy agent is not
achieving any of the desired results. Nanotech removes the Agents eye and two
telepathic three-eyed, dome headed aliens are on hand to assist with the
fitting of the new eyepatch. But then
this isn’t quite the truth either because this is a Grant Morrison story so
there are further layers of reality at play than just that. It transpires the enemy agent is already in
the hands of SHIELD, who are revealed beneath the rubber masked disguises of
the two aliens and the chief scientist, who was in fact the real Nick Fury all
the time. There is brutality and farce, heroics and ridicule. And at its conclusion, the half blind, broken
enemy agent is kicked out into a litter strewn alleyway in his underwear like
just another bit of rubbish. The
laboratory is dismantled revealing itself to be nothing more than theatrical
flats and Fury walks off to get on with his next mission, just as super-agent cool
as you like. The coda comes in the form a comment made by a SHIELD agent,
looking out of the panel and perhaps directly at the reader, who casually
states; “Hey! Its Nick’s world… we just die in it!”
Even with what I
remember from my last reading of The Filth several years ago, I can
already tell my hunch has paid off. And
what’s more, I can now actually appreciate this story for what it is; the first
rough draft of The Filth.
The Filth #01
As someone
who read Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles the first time around, monthly
and in its 3 volumes over a protracted period, I was changed by it and in ways
I won’t go into here. Suffice to say, and however good and mind blowing it was
going to be, The Filth was never going to be that good. Which on reflection was unfair because it wasn’t
intended to elicit the same response.
Epiphanies are not double-decker buses; they don’t turn up in twos. In fact, it’s been said that The Filth
was the antidote to The Invisibles. That might also be why I kept it at
arm’s length; because I didn’t actually want to be cured, not even now.
Which is not to say
I didn’t think it was a brilliant, clever, and sexy comic book at the time it
came out. In fact, I wished The Invisibles had had such a creative and
consistent artist as Chris Weston through its entire run. We might not have had to magic-wank over
sigils to get the sales figures back up!
But back to The
Filth’s first issue.
For my sins, I was
the manager of a branch of Forbidden Planet back then and on the day we
unpacked that issue, every member of staff read it on their lunch break. And
everyone was blown away. There’s a lot
going on it those 22 pages and it’s all so very, very seedy and also so very,
very gorgeous as the everyday reality is peeled away to reveal “the truth” of a
reality policed by The Filth. And that’s
without labouring the erotic shock moment where the Greg Feely para-persona is “extracted”
(I’m avoiding using the word milked!) from out of Agent Slade’s body by the deeply
sexy female Filth agent; Spector, wearing nothing more than a confident comb-over!
Having only that
first issue it was all a bit confusing but with the hindsight of having now
read all of it several times, and knowing the bigger picture, it feels like the
perfect set up for what was to come.
Even the comb-over is justified once you know the relationship between
the two agents.
And either side of
all that first issue setup, are a handful of pages that introduce us to the villain
of the piece, one Sparticus Hughes. At this point he appears pretty arch but as
his stories develop we’ll discover he’s just a little bit further down the road
of understanding than Agent Slade is. The difference between them is how they
respond to the truth.
The Filth #02 to #13
Exactly how big do
I want to make this post? I couldn’t explain it all to you in a dozen more paragraphs. I couldn’t guarantee that we would all take
the same meanings away from it at the end either. For that matter, I suspect I have entertained
a variety of conflicting conclusions upon each reading. What I do know is that its words and pictures
in perfect synchronicity. It’s as fresh and original and relevant now as it was
on first release. And, that in its own strange blood, spunk, spit and skid-stained
way, The Filth is sort of optimistic.
If I haven’t sold it to you yet, then here’s a few visual teasers.
