Review by Frank Plowright
The Filth is among Grant Morrison’s more challenging projects, but it’s a rare review that mentions how funny it is, and a sense of humour is something Morrison isn’t often credited for. One imagines Morrison gleefully constructing the opening chapter just to see how much the Vertigo editors would accept in the name of pushing the boat out. A middle-aged man buys a wank mag from the local newsagent, makes good use of it, and later reads out the section headings from another, apparently sent to him in error. It turns out Greg’s life’s a sham, a false identity created as a holiday, and the filth Morrison’s referring to in the title isn’t his reading habits, but his previous life as Ned Slade, a cleanser for a secret organisation with global reach operating from the world within the crack. It gets far filthier.
Morrison certainly sets the concept bar high, throwing in all kinds of great ideas such as the hyper-intelligent Russian chimp assassin, while the accompanying technobabble terms fly far and wide as he takes a look at what’s considered normal via an organisation ostensibly protecting normalcy. However, that’s only one interpretation, and because The Filth is a constantly shifting miasma lacking any kind of anchor, never mind a definitive explanation, it’s there for you to make of what you will. The amount of ideas Morrison packs into a couple of pages would serve an entire graphic novel from other writers, but enjoyment of The Filth depends on your need or not for a coherent plot.
Actually, that’s not entirely true as it discounts the monumental effort Chris Weston supplies. He’s not an artist able to step back and consider his efforts in terms of a living wage, so travels massively beyond the bounds of necessity, filling the pages with gorgeous extraneous detail down to the creases in clothing hanging in the background of panels. However, the concentration on that can lead to stiff figures. Weston also has a talent for designing the impossible: ocean liners with a capacity beyond 100,000 people; bizarre helicopters with teeth and boats piloted by dolphins in water pods. And then there’s the sex, plenty of it in multiple permutations, but thankfully none featuring po-faced art pranksters Gilbert and George, although Weston pastiches them well.
The Filth is astonishingly self-indulgent, with Morrison referencing his own past work and deliberately reducing comprehension via techniques such as a character speaking in a broad Scottish accent having their dialogue phonetically spelled out. He wrote it before AI was on the agenda, but this is like the incoherent result of asking the AI of 2023 to produce an action SF superhero fantasy rooted in Coronation Street. On the other hand, because Morrison’s so creative, an unstructured string of ideas popping forth connected with multiple meanings of the title term has considerable attraction, especially as there’s no thought of boundaries.
Ultimately it’s for you to decide whether a middle-aged man in a terraced house is having a breakdown over the death of his cat or whether humanity has a wipe clean mode.
The preferred format, though, is surely the 2024 DC Black Label edition with Morrison’s comments.
