The Filth (2002)
July 1st, 2008 by MartinI guess Wizard World wasn’t as good for ReadComics.org posting as I’d imagined. I did read a ton of comics in the last three days, including The Filth, written by Grant Morrison, which I finished yesterday in the car ride home.
The Filth is as interesting as it is incomprehensible. I’d probably have to read this again to fully understand it. I was left wondering, at the end, whether a second read would clue me in to what had actually happened. Did 9th gear take you into another dimension, or just shrink you to the level of germs? Was “the Hand” actually Slade’s hand? Was any of that stuff even real? (And these are the “easy” questions.)
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the book (for me) was speculation about whether the end, in which microscopic man-made creatures (with the ability to cure cancer) take over the world, was optimistic, or pessimistic. They were set to turn everything into a land of flowers and happiness… is that a good thing?
This book felt a bit like a pornographic daydream, perhaps something I would have imagined in my teenage years. (Forcing the president to get breast implants and dance for his crack pipe? Sick and brilliant.) I probably wouldn’t recommend it unless you: a) love Grant Morrison so much that you’re wiling to invest some heavy time into reading and re-reading for full understanding, or b) you’re just in it for the journey, and not going to care that large swaths of pages seem entirely pointless by the end of the book.