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The Filth #1-13
The Filth
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.
313 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
About the author
Grant Morrison
1,796 books4,368 followersGrant Morrison has been working with DC Comics for twenty five years, after beginning their American comics career with acclaimed runs on ANIMAL MAN and DOOM PATROL. Since then they have written such best-selling series as JLA, BATMAN and New X-Men, as well as such creator-owned works as THE INVISIBLES, SEAGUY, THE FILTH, WE3 and JOE THE BARBARIAN. In addition to expanding the DC Universe through titles ranging from the Eisner Award-winning SEVEN SOLDIERS and ALL-STAR SUPERMAN to the reality-shattering epic of FINAL CRISIS, they have also reinvented the worlds of the Dark Knight Detective in BATMAN AND ROBIN and BATMAN, INCORPORATED and the Man of Steel in The New 52 ACTION COMICS.
In their secret identity, Morrison is a "counterculture" spokesperson, a musician, an award-winning playwright and a chaos magician. They are also the author of the New York Times bestseller Supergods, a groundbreaking psycho-historic mapping of the superhero as a cultural organism. They divide their time between their homes in Los Angeles and Scotland.
In their secret identity, Morrison is a "counterculture" spokesperson, a musician, an award-winning playwright and a chaos magician. They are also the author of the New York Times bestseller Supergods, a groundbreaking psycho-historic mapping of the superhero as a cultural organism. They divide their time between their homes in Los Angeles and Scotland.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 357 reviews
November 12, 2018
“Grant Morrison you crazy biotch what the fuck are you on about?!” - is what I was constantly thinking while reading The Filth (in between yawns)! I love Morrison - he wrote the greatest Batman run of all time and he’s the greatest comics writer there’s ever been - but, holy rice krispie treats, he produces some utterly impenetrable, way-too-out-there stuff sometimes!
There’s a dude called Slade who seems like your average middle-aged guy - but secretly he’s a James Bond-type agent for a covert agency that saves the world on the reg from bizarre threats! There are cars with teeth, entire planets in airplane hangars, women in sexy tuxes living in comics, a Stephen Hawking version of Superman, a “Pornomancer” trying to impregnate Los Angeles, a naked Nixon floating in a fake womb, a city-sized boat where the President of the United States is given a boob job, and a talking Russian commie chimp who shot JFK. Good fucking luck making any sense out of that - I know I completely failed!
It sounds wacky and fun but it’s actually really dull. When you can’t understand what’s going on and why - when everything seems so arbitrary - it’s impossible to care about anything as none of it has any meaning. Plot, character - basically everything you’d expect to find in a book is sacrificed so that Morrison can do weird shit seemingly for the sake of it. Ugh, and I hated the Scottish character whose dialogue is written phonetically like she’s an Irvine Welsh character - a horrible chore to decipher/read!
Chris Weston goes above and beyond bringing Morrison’s fever dreams to life with some really imaginative and highly detailed art, but that’s the only aspect of the book I can say I genuinely enjoyed. Otherwise this is 13 issues of the most incomprehensible comics you’ll ever read that only super-fans of The Invisibles will enjoy.
There’s a dude called Slade who seems like your average middle-aged guy - but secretly he’s a James Bond-type agent for a covert agency that saves the world on the reg from bizarre threats! There are cars with teeth, entire planets in airplane hangars, women in sexy tuxes living in comics, a Stephen Hawking version of Superman, a “Pornomancer” trying to impregnate Los Angeles, a naked Nixon floating in a fake womb, a city-sized boat where the President of the United States is given a boob job, and a talking Russian commie chimp who shot JFK. Good fucking luck making any sense out of that - I know I completely failed!
It sounds wacky and fun but it’s actually really dull. When you can’t understand what’s going on and why - when everything seems so arbitrary - it’s impossible to care about anything as none of it has any meaning. Plot, character - basically everything you’d expect to find in a book is sacrificed so that Morrison can do weird shit seemingly for the sake of it. Ugh, and I hated the Scottish character whose dialogue is written phonetically like she’s an Irvine Welsh character - a horrible chore to decipher/read!
Chris Weston goes above and beyond bringing Morrison’s fever dreams to life with some really imaginative and highly detailed art, but that’s the only aspect of the book I can say I genuinely enjoyed. Otherwise this is 13 issues of the most incomprehensible comics you’ll ever read that only super-fans of The Invisibles will enjoy.
August 7, 2011
Who is Greg Feely? Is he a loser whose entire life consists of taking care of his cat and masturbating? Or is he Ned Slade, agent of a secret society called The Hand that safeguards the world against anti-people?
Writing the X-Men must have made Grant Morrison suppress his weird urges because The Fifth is one of the more bizarre comics I've ever read and is in my top three Morrison reads. It's like a cross between Morrison's The Invisibles and Preacher by Garth Ennis, possibly with a bit of Warren Ellis' The Authority thrown in. The Filth started out as a proposal for a Nick Fury comic Grant Morrison wanted to do for Marvel. It's a good thing he didn't because none of this stuff would have been allowed in the Marvel Universe.
I don't even know where to start with this. Agent Nil shows up at Greg Feely's house and tells him he's an agent of The Hand, a secret organization that protects the world. Something happened on Slade's last mission and he doesn't remember his past as Slade at all, only his pathetic life as Greg Feely, a life that isn't his but he can't seem to put behind him as he chases bad guys like Max Thunderstone and Spartacus Hughes.
The level of strangeness in The Filth is off the charts, even for the man who's known for strangeness in The Invisibles and The Doom Patrol. There's a Russian chimp named Dmitri who acquired super intelligence when launched into space and became a KGB assassin, the same assassin who shot JFK. There's Richard Nixon, still alive and suspended in a bubble of fluid. There's a gargantuan severed hand at the bottom ocean clutching a pen whose ink has mutating properties. And those are all the good guys.
Don't get me started on Tex Porneau, the Pornomancer who sends an army of gigantic sperm out to impregnate the women of the world, or The World's Wealthiest Pervert, or the Greg Feely who steps into Ned's life when he's out saving the world. Seriously, there's so many weird concepts flying around in this thing it's unbelievable; dolphins driving cars, city size cruise ships, carnivorous vehicles, you name it.
That's about all I can say. My brain's a bit jammed at the moment. Oh, the art is pretty good. If you like your comics weird, this one is for you.
Writing the X-Men must have made Grant Morrison suppress his weird urges because The Fifth is one of the more bizarre comics I've ever read and is in my top three Morrison reads. It's like a cross between Morrison's The Invisibles and Preacher by Garth Ennis, possibly with a bit of Warren Ellis' The Authority thrown in. The Filth started out as a proposal for a Nick Fury comic Grant Morrison wanted to do for Marvel. It's a good thing he didn't because none of this stuff would have been allowed in the Marvel Universe.
I don't even know where to start with this. Agent Nil shows up at Greg Feely's house and tells him he's an agent of The Hand, a secret organization that protects the world. Something happened on Slade's last mission and he doesn't remember his past as Slade at all, only his pathetic life as Greg Feely, a life that isn't his but he can't seem to put behind him as he chases bad guys like Max Thunderstone and Spartacus Hughes.
The level of strangeness in The Filth is off the charts, even for the man who's known for strangeness in The Invisibles and The Doom Patrol. There's a Russian chimp named Dmitri who acquired super intelligence when launched into space and became a KGB assassin, the same assassin who shot JFK. There's Richard Nixon, still alive and suspended in a bubble of fluid. There's a gargantuan severed hand at the bottom ocean clutching a pen whose ink has mutating properties. And those are all the good guys.
Don't get me started on Tex Porneau, the Pornomancer who sends an army of gigantic sperm out to impregnate the women of the world, or The World's Wealthiest Pervert, or the Greg Feely who steps into Ned's life when he's out saving the world. Seriously, there's so many weird concepts flying around in this thing it's unbelievable; dolphins driving cars, city size cruise ships, carnivorous vehicles, you name it.
That's about all I can say. My brain's a bit jammed at the moment. Oh, the art is pretty good. If you like your comics weird, this one is for you.
July 8, 2019
A postmodern shrug, The Filth is nth degree satire and immersion therapy for sexual perversion, disease, malaise, and surreality. Unfortunately, in its infinite freedom and ambition, it presents too many ideas at once, resulting in bombastic scattershot nonsense, if at least consistent in nihilism. Not for the squeamish moralist or the easily confused.
A Short Note on the “Deluxe” Edition...
Rating: C-
Vertigo went cheap as usual—not much to compliment here. Tight creaky glued binding, super thin semi-gloss paper, and an uninspiring cover hardly better than black paper over board. Other than being larger and more durable, not much better than a paperback.
August 1, 2012
Thoughtless or immature readers too often mistake unintelligibility with profundity. That is, they assume that the harder a work is to understand, the more meritorious it must be. Rarely is this the case. True, myriad (rightly) canonical cultural products are notoriously difficult to consume—Ulysses, Absalom! Absalom!, etc.—but even a cursory overview of Western literature reveals that such works pose exceedingly rare cases, formal experiments that actually manage to justify themselves. Quite a bit more frequently, formal tinkering functions to obscure a lack of content: the author with little to say compensates by saying it in a non-standard way. He manufactures tension and purpose by messing around with the work's spatial or linear organization, withholding information in a blatantly unnecessary fashion, and otherwise flooding his product with flourishes and frivolities sufficient to consume and dazzle the novice consumer, and with luck to convince him that something is going on amidst all that clamorous nothing, and that that something is just beyond the reader's reach. Of this strategy The Filth is an exemplar. It's plot skates the line between non-existence and willful obfuscation. The conspicuous lack of background renders the dialogue infuriatingly meaningless. The wincingly clumsy meta-fictional overtures are never explained and so are reduced in the reader's eyes to target less gestures. But then again, the guy is wearing a clown wig, so The Filth must be good, right? No. The Filth is bad. Worse, it's sleazy—masturbatory nonsense that abuses the reader's good faith. If you haven't read The Filth, don't. If you have, stop essaying to define what is good is about it. It's an impossible task, and you only look foolish undertaking it.
June 25, 2016
Some books are random and zany for the sake of being random and zany. This book would have worked a thousand times better as MIB. Just give us some normal people in suits dealing with crazy mess. Some normalcy to offset and contrast the crazy. But noooo, Morrison has to have a monkey assassin (as a 'good' guy) and a garbage truck with giant teeth that the 'good guys' drive around and other nonsense that does nothing but distract from the story he's telling. Add in that the story jumps around like mad, that everyone in the series as a jerk, and that our MC has no idea what is going on either (and no one will tell him, or us, anything useful), and you have a book I wish I hadn't opened.
January 7, 2010
I read a lot of comics, so please listen to me when I say:
The Filth is my favorite comic book. Ever. Ever ever.
It makes The Invisibles seem predictable. Not that I don't like The Invisibles, because I do.
The thing that sets The Filth apart from other Morrison titles, namely Invisibles, is the ultimate capitulation to the horrifying gravity of late capitalist society. Invisibles doesn't really give in to that, which is compelling, but unrealistic. The Filth is much more pragmatic in its assessment of sociological dysfunction.
The book draws heavily from some of the ideas in Invisibles, but also from Animal Man in the way that it hits that postmodernist target. It is conscious of itself as a comic book. Which is fine, because the story arcs are quite simply the best and most inventive work that Morrison has ever done. His supreme cleverness in this book is why DC taps him to do every big project they can find for him, like 52 and All-Star Supes.
But more importantly, The Filth is everything a good book should be. It's funny, heartbreaking, and awe-inspiring, and on top of all that, it's a big "fuck you" to the status quo.
The Filth is my favorite comic book. Ever. Ever ever.
It makes The Invisibles seem predictable. Not that I don't like The Invisibles, because I do.
The thing that sets The Filth apart from other Morrison titles, namely Invisibles, is the ultimate capitulation to the horrifying gravity of late capitalist society. Invisibles doesn't really give in to that, which is compelling, but unrealistic. The Filth is much more pragmatic in its assessment of sociological dysfunction.
The book draws heavily from some of the ideas in Invisibles, but also from Animal Man in the way that it hits that postmodernist target. It is conscious of itself as a comic book. Which is fine, because the story arcs are quite simply the best and most inventive work that Morrison has ever done. His supreme cleverness in this book is why DC taps him to do every big project they can find for him, like 52 and All-Star Supes.
But more importantly, The Filth is everything a good book should be. It's funny, heartbreaking, and awe-inspiring, and on top of all that, it's a big "fuck you" to the status quo.
September 6, 2017
Sorry, let me pull my head out of the wormhole this insane book shoved me into so I can try to review it. I feel like I've forgotten how the world works, like I'm coming down from some intense acid trip shot directly into my brain via Chris Weston's bananas art. I feel this way often after reading Morrison's stuff, but somehow The Filth takes the LSD cake. It's full-speed bonkers, delivering like 50 massive sci-fi ideas per page.
You have to read this methodically or you'll miss stuff. Weston jams each panel full of important additional information beyond Morrison's words, so if you're trying to breeze through this one, you'll be lost as hell. There were a few times I got lost and flipped back a few pages only to realize, yep, they explained this circumstance visually and I wasn't paying attention.
Now normally describing a book as "challenging" is not exactly a ringing endorsement, but in this the reward is well worth the investment. Morrison establishes such a rich world, brimming with the vilest villains and, well, vilest heroes imaginable, all in an effort to explore society's love of the disgusting and perverse. It's a meta-commentary on the media, existing simultaneously as a work that satirizes violence and sex in the arts as well as flagrantly using them to tell its own stories. It's both a damning indictment of our need for these things and exploration of the most depraved instances of them, all told via an extremely comic-booky sci-fi setup.
It's a little pointless to discuss the plot, since the plot isn't what's best about The Filth. Also, it's twisty and turny and constantly nuts, so it's better just to experience it for yourself. So, the general premise is, there's an impossibly, surrealistically top-secret organization called The Hand that functions as a kind of Men In Black-style group that works within the darkest depths of humanity to maintain the status quo at all costs. If anyone tries to disrupt the natural order of things, the day-to-day function of humanity, The Hand shows up to put them in their place. That's the basic entrypoint, and from there, things get weird as all hell.
There's a porn kingpin who tries to impregnate every woman in the world. There's a superhero (the world's first) who practices a form of "ultraviolent pacifism." There's a nanotech AI that attempts to replace humans' immune system with itself. This book moves FAST with the premises, and it barely gives you time to take them in before its started pushing them to their limits. It's seat-of-your-pants idea exploration, and it's kind of invigorating.
That's not to say it's perfect. The style is so dense here that it can be overly difficult to understand. For instance, one of the characters speaks in a nearly impossible to read dialect, making anything she says take twice as long as it should to make any sense. In an attempt to blur the lines between reality and the main character's potential madness, Morrison leans into some vague plotting and uses of time jumps that aren't made clear when they really should've been. Characters frequently talk about things in a manner that assumes everyone around them understands what they're talking about, and no one almost ever goes "Wait, what the hell is all this?" Pretty much everyone is weird in this world, even the supposed normal people, which means there's no real voice of reason or participant on behalf of the reader, so the whole thing feels about 5% more insane than it needs to.
But, I still found this deeply enjoyable and refreshing. It's clearly a followup of sorts to The Invisibles, which I also loved, and explores similar themes in a completely different way. This is one of my favorite Morrison books I've read, and really displays the kind of wacko shit I love to read from him. It pushes me to come up with sharper, more original ideas in my own writing, and that's a very good feeling.
You have to read this methodically or you'll miss stuff. Weston jams each panel full of important additional information beyond Morrison's words, so if you're trying to breeze through this one, you'll be lost as hell. There were a few times I got lost and flipped back a few pages only to realize, yep, they explained this circumstance visually and I wasn't paying attention.
Now normally describing a book as "challenging" is not exactly a ringing endorsement, but in this the reward is well worth the investment. Morrison establishes such a rich world, brimming with the vilest villains and, well, vilest heroes imaginable, all in an effort to explore society's love of the disgusting and perverse. It's a meta-commentary on the media, existing simultaneously as a work that satirizes violence and sex in the arts as well as flagrantly using them to tell its own stories. It's both a damning indictment of our need for these things and exploration of the most depraved instances of them, all told via an extremely comic-booky sci-fi setup.
It's a little pointless to discuss the plot, since the plot isn't what's best about The Filth. Also, it's twisty and turny and constantly nuts, so it's better just to experience it for yourself. So, the general premise is, there's an impossibly, surrealistically top-secret organization called The Hand that functions as a kind of Men In Black-style group that works within the darkest depths of humanity to maintain the status quo at all costs. If anyone tries to disrupt the natural order of things, the day-to-day function of humanity, The Hand shows up to put them in their place. That's the basic entrypoint, and from there, things get weird as all hell.
There's a porn kingpin who tries to impregnate every woman in the world. There's a superhero (the world's first) who practices a form of "ultraviolent pacifism." There's a nanotech AI that attempts to replace humans' immune system with itself. This book moves FAST with the premises, and it barely gives you time to take them in before its started pushing them to their limits. It's seat-of-your-pants idea exploration, and it's kind of invigorating.
That's not to say it's perfect. The style is so dense here that it can be overly difficult to understand. For instance, one of the characters speaks in a nearly impossible to read dialect, making anything she says take twice as long as it should to make any sense. In an attempt to blur the lines between reality and the main character's potential madness, Morrison leans into some vague plotting and uses of time jumps that aren't made clear when they really should've been. Characters frequently talk about things in a manner that assumes everyone around them understands what they're talking about, and no one almost ever goes "Wait, what the hell is all this?" Pretty much everyone is weird in this world, even the supposed normal people, which means there's no real voice of reason or participant on behalf of the reader, so the whole thing feels about 5% more insane than it needs to.
But, I still found this deeply enjoyable and refreshing. It's clearly a followup of sorts to The Invisibles, which I also loved, and explores similar themes in a completely different way. This is one of my favorite Morrison books I've read, and really displays the kind of wacko shit I love to read from him. It pushes me to come up with sharper, more original ideas in my own writing, and that's a very good feeling.
February 7, 2017
How insane is The Filth? Well, there's a talking Russian chimp assassin for a start. There's black semen because I don't know why! What else, superheroes who can't go past a fiction wall (because they can't go beyond the comic book pages or else they will splat-die) in the sky, death by giant sperm cells, a hero called ultra-humanitarian, a giant hand with a fountain pen, dolphin ink harvesters, an eye hit by -- okay the list goes so just check it out. Be warned that The Filth is offensive and too graphic at times.
December 17, 2018
This was quite the odd little book. The story was interesting and the art was great, though it did drag on for a little too long with some issues that were just kind of padding.
June 28, 2013
I have always loved the idea of viewing our various bodily systems as tiny worlds inside of us, as if every person contains their own shrunken outer space with unique organisms living lives in a rapidly changing (and in my case, expanding) universe. It seems easier somehow to imagine life on an enormous scale; you rarely think about the possibilities at a submicroscopic level. To this day, every time I take some kind of cold or headache medicine, I anthropomorphize the drug travelling through my digestive system as some kind of warrior, valiantly defending the innocent tissues and cells of my body from dastardly infection.
This has always been a good way to try and explain basic scientific concepts to kids - I'm pretty sure every episode of the Magic School Bus had some variation of shrinking down in order to go up someone's nose and find out what causes a cold - but I still think the concept is a valuable way to think about life, and the complex possibilities inside even the smallest of living systems. Grant Morrison, having the boundless imagination that he does, takes this idea to the extreme in this immensely interesting and difficult story, that left me alternately scratching my head and then consequently pondering what kind of mini-reaction this head-scratching was causing in the cortex of my hair follicles.
We are thrown into the world of Greg Feely, a guy who spends his time obsessing over his cat and watching tons of pornography, who turns out to have a concurrent personality that is a top agent with the Hand, a secret organization that gets called in for cases that are way too nasty and weird for the police. Some of these types of situations include stopping a rouge black super-sperm created as a defense against declining fertilization levels, and sentient immune systems that use people's bodies as their own bio-vessels. Weird stuff. There is, appropriate for a book called the Filth, a ton of sex, semen, shit, and other unmentionables, often utilized in ways you never thought possible (or ever wanted to), and Feely's job is to maintain the Status-Q by eliminating all threats to the normal flow of organic life.
Unfortunately, Feely can barely keep his sanity due to the overlapping personalities, not to mention his frustrations at being unable to comprehend who or what the Hand actually is. As things are slowly uncovered, the fourth wall is blurred, meta things turn multiple levels of meta, and the world is revealed as a single organism with human beings and other terrestrial life as parts of its own body, desperately trying to fend off the opposing forces looking to disrupt the Status-Q.
This is by far Morrison's weirdest and hardest to understand work (which is really saying something), but there are lots of rewards if you read carefully and stay patient until the end. It really stretches your own imagination to keep up with the story. The best part about it is that you start to apply "right" and "wrong" to abstract concepts, with no definitive answer as to what is what. This isn't good guys versus bad guys - it's nature versus nature, on a scale that isn't typically thought about.
I wouldn't recommend this to the casual reader, and I'm going to have to read this a few more times to grasp what is going on in certain parts (if possible), but Morrison throws some of his craziest ideas yet at the wall, and the impact of the things that don't stick still might resonate for quite a long time.
This has always been a good way to try and explain basic scientific concepts to kids - I'm pretty sure every episode of the Magic School Bus had some variation of shrinking down in order to go up someone's nose and find out what causes a cold - but I still think the concept is a valuable way to think about life, and the complex possibilities inside even the smallest of living systems. Grant Morrison, having the boundless imagination that he does, takes this idea to the extreme in this immensely interesting and difficult story, that left me alternately scratching my head and then consequently pondering what kind of mini-reaction this head-scratching was causing in the cortex of my hair follicles.
We are thrown into the world of Greg Feely, a guy who spends his time obsessing over his cat and watching tons of pornography, who turns out to have a concurrent personality that is a top agent with the Hand, a secret organization that gets called in for cases that are way too nasty and weird for the police. Some of these types of situations include stopping a rouge black super-sperm created as a defense against declining fertilization levels, and sentient immune systems that use people's bodies as their own bio-vessels. Weird stuff. There is, appropriate for a book called the Filth, a ton of sex, semen, shit, and other unmentionables, often utilized in ways you never thought possible (or ever wanted to), and Feely's job is to maintain the Status-Q by eliminating all threats to the normal flow of organic life.
Unfortunately, Feely can barely keep his sanity due to the overlapping personalities, not to mention his frustrations at being unable to comprehend who or what the Hand actually is. As things are slowly uncovered, the fourth wall is blurred, meta things turn multiple levels of meta, and the world is revealed as a single organism with human beings and other terrestrial life as parts of its own body, desperately trying to fend off the opposing forces looking to disrupt the Status-Q.
This is by far Morrison's weirdest and hardest to understand work (which is really saying something), but there are lots of rewards if you read carefully and stay patient until the end. It really stretches your own imagination to keep up with the story. The best part about it is that you start to apply "right" and "wrong" to abstract concepts, with no definitive answer as to what is what. This isn't good guys versus bad guys - it's nature versus nature, on a scale that isn't typically thought about.
I wouldn't recommend this to the casual reader, and I'm going to have to read this a few more times to grasp what is going on in certain parts (if possible), but Morrison throws some of his craziest ideas yet at the wall, and the impact of the things that don't stick still might resonate for quite a long time.
June 8, 2020
Grant Morrison and Chris Weston's clever sci-fi thriller about an undercover 'reality' cop finding out that there's a lot more to his job than meets the eye, when suffering from amnesia, he looks more into his role and the people in charge. 7 out of 12.
March 1, 2022
I was totally onboard with the unexpected meta-mindfuckery of The Filth, even if I found myself lost amidst the multi-dimensional madness at times. Chris Weston’s illustration for this is phenomenal, with many a panel leaving me slack-jawed in amazement. Fantastic stuff.
March 2, 2018
I didn't enjoy this, and I actually struggled to finish it. But I'm a believer in finishing something once you've started it. The plot seemed all over the place and it was too weird for my tastes.
November 8, 2022
(Zero spoiler review)
Although to be honest, I don't know enough about whatever the hell this is to spoil it even if I wanted to. I've read a fair bit of Morrison now, and by far and away, his disappointments and dire efforts far outweigh his better work. Admittedly, I'm saving one or two that I'm hoping is some of his best stuff. God help me if even they turn out to be as abstract, impenetrable and downright ridiculous as this. I'm sure there are a moderate amount of people on this site praising this as some misunderstood work of sheer genius, although I would strongly advise caution before listening to such unwarranted flattery. Its delusional at best and dangerous at worst. This is shit. Pure randomised, unfiltered, mind boggling shit. Wipe away three quarters of this haphazard dialogue, leaving only the sparse segments of it which form something approaching a cohesive story, and you might be left with something readable. Maybe even something pretty good. But this may as well be alphabet spaghetti thrown at the wall, for its little more than gibberish.
Its not intelligent, its not well thought out, its not deep. Its gibberish, and its shit, and I now know not to trust a book with Grant Morrison's name on it. It's like he read the god awful mindfuck that was The Incal and said hold my beer, I can do better (worse) than that. Even more shameful, is how Morrison not only managed to shit the bed, but managed to waste some amazing artwork in the process. 2 points for the art, and nothing for Morrison's infantile ramblings. Seriously, don't bother. 2/5
OmniBen.
Although to be honest, I don't know enough about whatever the hell this is to spoil it even if I wanted to. I've read a fair bit of Morrison now, and by far and away, his disappointments and dire efforts far outweigh his better work. Admittedly, I'm saving one or two that I'm hoping is some of his best stuff. God help me if even they turn out to be as abstract, impenetrable and downright ridiculous as this. I'm sure there are a moderate amount of people on this site praising this as some misunderstood work of sheer genius, although I would strongly advise caution before listening to such unwarranted flattery. Its delusional at best and dangerous at worst. This is shit. Pure randomised, unfiltered, mind boggling shit. Wipe away three quarters of this haphazard dialogue, leaving only the sparse segments of it which form something approaching a cohesive story, and you might be left with something readable. Maybe even something pretty good. But this may as well be alphabet spaghetti thrown at the wall, for its little more than gibberish.
Its not intelligent, its not well thought out, its not deep. Its gibberish, and its shit, and I now know not to trust a book with Grant Morrison's name on it. It's like he read the god awful mindfuck that was The Incal and said hold my beer, I can do better (worse) than that. Even more shameful, is how Morrison not only managed to shit the bed, but managed to waste some amazing artwork in the process. 2 points for the art, and nothing for Morrison's infantile ramblings. Seriously, don't bother. 2/5
OmniBen.
September 22, 2011
Es difícil pensar algo de The Filth, esta es la cuarta vez que lo leo y cada vez creo tener una idea más segura acerca de la temática principal pero estoy seguro que la vez pasada tenia una idea más segura de que trata. En muy amplios rasgos The Filth es acerca de Ned Feely, un tipo sólo interesado en cuidar a su gato y la pornografía, hasta que es arrastrado a una organización secreta llamada The Hand encargada de eliminar a los anti-ciudadanos/anti-personas y mantener el Status Q.
Pero The Filth es mucho más, y lidia con textos y sub-textos bastante extraños, si te empeñas en leerlo y no dejarlo pasar, serás arrastrado a un mundo de realidades y personalidades fractales, temas aún más extraños como pornoterrorismo, sistemas (nano|macro) inmunológicos artificiales, sistemas de des/control social y anti-heroes.
Debo decir que es un trabajo bastante complejo y requiere su paciencia entenderlo y leerlo, que es algo a lo que no estamos acostumbrados en los comics, solo vemos las imágenes, recorremos el dialogo y pasamos la página y aunque The Filth puede ser leído de esa manera, estoy seguro que lo encontrarán aburrido sin ningún sentido, requiere realmente atención y algo de reflexión.
Aún así, el guión escrito por Morrison no está salido de una obra de Shakespeare sino que es bastante visceral (el titulo del libro será tomado literal) pero la gracia de Morrison recae en lo abstracto y subliminal y para eso explota de manera increíble el medio del cómic para lograr cosas nunca antes vistas y el trabajo ilustrativo de Weston/Erskine le hace justicia, es asombroso, parece de instancia el dibujo clásico de un cómic de super heroes pero cuando se le pide apartarse del genero lo hace con bastante habilidad.
En fin, cuatro estrellas serán suficientes porque seguro la próxima semana lo volveré a tomar, lo volveré a leer y me preguntaré "¿por qué no capté eso la primera vez?" Soy yo, el cae en un fractal.
Pero The Filth es mucho más, y lidia con textos y sub-textos bastante extraños, si te empeñas en leerlo y no dejarlo pasar, serás arrastrado a un mundo de realidades y personalidades fractales, temas aún más extraños como pornoterrorismo, sistemas (nano|macro) inmunológicos artificiales, sistemas de des/control social y anti-heroes.
Debo decir que es un trabajo bastante complejo y requiere su paciencia entenderlo y leerlo, que es algo a lo que no estamos acostumbrados en los comics, solo vemos las imágenes, recorremos el dialogo y pasamos la página y aunque The Filth puede ser leído de esa manera, estoy seguro que lo encontrarán aburrido sin ningún sentido, requiere realmente atención y algo de reflexión.
Aún así, el guión escrito por Morrison no está salido de una obra de Shakespeare sino que es bastante visceral (el titulo del libro será tomado literal) pero la gracia de Morrison recae en lo abstracto y subliminal y para eso explota de manera increíble el medio del cómic para lograr cosas nunca antes vistas y el trabajo ilustrativo de Weston/Erskine le hace justicia, es asombroso, parece de instancia el dibujo clásico de un cómic de super heroes pero cuando se le pide apartarse del genero lo hace con bastante habilidad.
En fin, cuatro estrellas serán suficientes porque seguro la próxima semana lo volveré a tomar, lo volveré a leer y me preguntaré "¿por qué no capté eso la primera vez?" Soy yo, el cae en un fractal.
September 30, 2018
Why haven't I written a review yet?
So it's 2005. I was still weaning off Elfquest and generic manga. I had read Miller's Batman and I slowly began to find out that cyberpunk might be my jam and I liked edgy stuff. I gathered I liked edgy stuff because I'd been reading Johnny the Homicidal Maniac (yeah) and thought that would be the worst of it.
So armed with that knowledge I went to my local brick&mortar comic book shop and asked the owner for some recommendations. He patiently listened to me summing up my likes and dislikes and how HARDCORE of a reader I was. When I was done, he walked straight to a big shiny stack of THE FILTH. He gave me a 10% discount and off I went with my new book.
I read it in one straight sitting and considered myself scarred for life. This wasn't PRETTY. This was ACTUALLY gritty and not easy to read and hard to understand and NONE of these people were nice and they all did so much horrible stuff to each other.
The weeks following I couldn't stop reading it again and again. I still don't quite understand WHAT message I got from The Filth, but it most definitely stayed with me forever. It's a comic I buy for people that I know love works with secret societies, worlds almost-but-not-yet-collapsing, fantasy worlds but DIFFERENT.
The chimp is giving us all the finger
So it's 2005. I was still weaning off Elfquest and generic manga. I had read Miller's Batman and I slowly began to find out that cyberpunk might be my jam and I liked edgy stuff. I gathered I liked edgy stuff because I'd been reading Johnny the Homicidal Maniac (yeah) and thought that would be the worst of it.
So armed with that knowledge I went to my local brick&mortar comic book shop and asked the owner for some recommendations. He patiently listened to me summing up my likes and dislikes and how HARDCORE of a reader I was. When I was done, he walked straight to a big shiny stack of THE FILTH. He gave me a 10% discount and off I went with my new book.
I read it in one straight sitting and considered myself scarred for life. This wasn't PRETTY. This was ACTUALLY gritty and not easy to read and hard to understand and NONE of these people were nice and they all did so much horrible stuff to each other.
The weeks following I couldn't stop reading it again and again. I still don't quite understand WHAT message I got from The Filth, but it most definitely stayed with me forever. It's a comic I buy for people that I know love works with secret societies, worlds almost-but-not-yet-collapsing, fantasy worlds but DIFFERENT.
The chimp is giving us all the finger
June 7, 2011
If "The Invisibles" is Morrison as a young man, full of 1990s optimism and possibility, "The Filth" is Morrison as a depressed, despairing middle aged man, in the post-Millennial, post-9/11 haze of war and malaise.
Instead of super-cool, Jerry Cornelius-like King Mob as Morrison's alter ego (or "fiction suit"), here the story centers around "dodgy bachelor" Greg Feely, who's torn between looking after his ailing cat and his super-spy alternate personality.
Instead of "The Invisibles" battle between freedom and tyranny, "The Filth" is more about the possibly futile struggle against entropy. There are people who want to change the world, but they're not hip counter-culture radical freedom fighters. They're nasty, selfish, vicious thugs, and even if they're defeated, they still leave a mess to clean up.
This is a difficult read: not only is Morrison depicting an ugly world of squalor and decay, but the narrative is much less linear and it branches into a variety of subplots and loose ends. You have to be prepared for it.
Instead of super-cool, Jerry Cornelius-like King Mob as Morrison's alter ego (or "fiction suit"), here the story centers around "dodgy bachelor" Greg Feely, who's torn between looking after his ailing cat and his super-spy alternate personality.
Instead of "The Invisibles" battle between freedom and tyranny, "The Filth" is more about the possibly futile struggle against entropy. There are people who want to change the world, but they're not hip counter-culture radical freedom fighters. They're nasty, selfish, vicious thugs, and even if they're defeated, they still leave a mess to clean up.
This is a difficult read: not only is Morrison depicting an ugly world of squalor and decay, but the narrative is much less linear and it branches into a variety of subplots and loose ends. You have to be prepared for it.
August 1, 2014
Bizarre is an understatement for this. Grant Morrison's imagination has been let loose on these pages, and the result is confusing and fantastical yet oddly interesting and fascinating.
The first few issues are--what I like to call--"headbusters". You are dropped into the world without any hint of an introduction, and it's a damn wild ride right from the beginning. Then the strangeness intensifies, among other things, and you're confused as hell as to what is happening and whether it's happening for real or not.
The intensity of the freakish and grotesque imagery increases as the issue numbers rise, yet somehow I felt heavily invested in the characters, especially that of Tony, the cat. Strangely, the cat is the most important character in the book despite the story being told from another character's POV.
There's a lot to say about The Filth, but all I'll say is that it'll be something you will either love or hate. The first few issues can be severely daunting--I felt intimidated at first. However, give it a chance and it'll grow on you.
The first few issues are--what I like to call--"headbusters". You are dropped into the world without any hint of an introduction, and it's a damn wild ride right from the beginning. Then the strangeness intensifies, among other things, and you're confused as hell as to what is happening and whether it's happening for real or not.
The intensity of the freakish and grotesque imagery increases as the issue numbers rise, yet somehow I felt heavily invested in the characters, especially that of Tony, the cat. Strangely, the cat is the most important character in the book despite the story being told from another character's POV.
There's a lot to say about The Filth, but all I'll say is that it'll be something you will either love or hate. The first few issues can be severely daunting--I felt intimidated at first. However, give it a chance and it'll grow on you.
August 9, 2019
Soy fan de Morrison, aun cuando cree que sus ideas son de un nivel supremo y el mundo del comic le debe rendir culto,pero en ocasiones se pierde en su mente, como en THE INVISIBLES donde hablaba de mil cosas pero su discurso se perdía una y otra vez, haciendo que la obra no fuera tan potente entre arcos argumentales, pero ese trabajo al dia de hoy se sigue nombrando como su trabajo culmen, pero a mi ,, THE FILTH me parece muy superior, un avance de lo que era la otra obra. The Filth te cuenta el trabajo d euna agencia que protege el mundo de ataques asesinos de parapersonas que pueden destruir la realidad aunque sabemos que no hay trigo fino en sus ideas, hay situaciones asesinas, destructivas, sexo asesinoa raudales, ideas de ficción a manera global y canibal...13 números muy buenos que se me quedarón cortos, pero los disfrute , con un arte precioso de ChrisWeston y Gary erskin que se dejan la vida en cada panel , cada detalle, cada diseño.
April 24, 2015
You know what? I get it. Morrison is some sort of Genius that puts in layered information in his story-telling. And you need to bring your brain to the party if you're going to grasp the concepts he puts forth.
That being said, the tittle pretty much describes the entire book for me.
What is put out as some sort of literary masterpiece, just comes out as filth for me.
It took me a while before I finally decided to buy this book, the reviews were actually pretty good, but the cover just didn't pull me in and the art samples I did see were pretty much "m'eh"... I wish I'd gone with my gut feeling and just passed on this one.
Bye-Bye hard-earned $30.
That being said, the tittle pretty much describes the entire book for me.
What is put out as some sort of literary masterpiece, just comes out as filth for me.
It took me a while before I finally decided to buy this book, the reviews were actually pretty good, but the cover just didn't pull me in and the art samples I did see were pretty much "m'eh"... I wish I'd gone with my gut feeling and just passed on this one.
Bye-Bye hard-earned $30.
September 13, 2017
Oh my god, what a cluster fuck.
Like seriously, I've listened to a lot of interviews with Grant Morrison, I liked his Wonder Woman Year One and Flex Mentallo books, I'm currently making my way through the Doom Patrol omnibus, I like the dude a lot and I think he's on some next dimensional shit, but this just was too much.
I could kinda tell at times what he was going for, but I think it just missed the mark for me. My least favorite of his work so far.
Note: There is a hardcover version of this book (the one I own), however this edition isn't on GoodReads for some reason.
Like seriously, I've listened to a lot of interviews with Grant Morrison, I liked his Wonder Woman Year One and Flex Mentallo books, I'm currently making my way through the Doom Patrol omnibus, I like the dude a lot and I think he's on some next dimensional shit, but this just was too much.
I could kinda tell at times what he was going for, but I think it just missed the mark for me. My least favorite of his work so far.
Note: There is a hardcover version of this book (the one I own), however this edition isn't on GoodReads for some reason.
February 9, 2018
No tengo nada en contra de las series confusas a lo Morrison, pero me gusta que me lleven a algún lado... Aquí el autor simplemente se dedica a introducir aleatoriamente elementos raros y a veces muy absurdos para establecer un ambiente profundamente extraño y perturbador... Supongo que habrá gente que encuentre este tipo de serie muy interesante pero a mi me deja un poco frío, hay varios episodios bastante salvables pero en conjunto no creo que sea una gran serie.
El dibujo, eso si, es excepcional, los diseños son geniales y los ambientes impresionantes
El dibujo, eso si, es excepcional, los diseños son geniales y los ambientes impresionantes
October 12, 2021
Normalmente yo soy muy fanboy de Morrison, y sus salidas de tono me suelen hacer bastante gracia. Es un autor que normalmente no recomendaría porque me parece muy personal (es como la colonia, vaya), pero es verdad que casi todo lo que he leído de él me ha gustado mucho, incluso lo que en principio me ha dejado completamente aturdido y preguntándome qué he leído, después de una relectura o simplemente reposarlo, me ha gustado mucho o directamente me ha dejado con la boca abierta. Por eso estoy disfrutando tanto con la Biblioteca Morrison de ECC, me ha permitido disfrutar de algunas de sus obras que no había tenido posibilidad de leer o de releer otras que sí había leído pero no tenía porque en su momento las leí prestadas.
Pero El Asco me ha dejado bastante frío, me ha gustado muy poco y me ha perdido bastante. Creo que Morrison aquí, si normalmente ya apura en las curvas, se ha pasado completamente de frenada y está conduciendo en líneas rectas por un circuito circular. A ver. La historia no es exactamente nueva, y es algo que Morrison ya nos ha contado antes: hay una persona que vive una vida perfectamente normal y de pronto irrumpe alguien que trastoca por completo su existencia y le arroja a un mundo extrañísimo, lleno de extrañas sociedades escondidas tras el frágil manto de la normalidad, criaturas extrañas que más bien son metáforas de la propia narración, etc. Y de hecho, lo hemos visto incluso en Los Invisibles, bastante mejor llevados. Y es que, como digo, me ha parecido muy confusa, no solo en los habituales recursos literarios de Morrison que suelen tener vueltas y revueltas, sino en la propia narración. Al final, no creáis que me ha quedado muy claro ni el origen de La Mano, o si ni siquiera lo que ha ocurrido ha ocurrido de verdad y no en la cabeza enferma del protagonista.
Supongo que es la excepción que confirma la regla...
Pero El Asco me ha dejado bastante frío, me ha gustado muy poco y me ha perdido bastante. Creo que Morrison aquí, si normalmente ya apura en las curvas, se ha pasado completamente de frenada y está conduciendo en líneas rectas por un circuito circular. A ver. La historia no es exactamente nueva, y es algo que Morrison ya nos ha contado antes: hay una persona que vive una vida perfectamente normal y de pronto irrumpe alguien que trastoca por completo su existencia y le arroja a un mundo extrañísimo, lleno de extrañas sociedades escondidas tras el frágil manto de la normalidad, criaturas extrañas que más bien son metáforas de la propia narración, etc. Y de hecho, lo hemos visto incluso en Los Invisibles, bastante mejor llevados. Y es que, como digo, me ha parecido muy confusa, no solo en los habituales recursos literarios de Morrison que suelen tener vueltas y revueltas, sino en la propia narración. Al final, no creáis que me ha quedado muy claro ni el origen de La Mano, o si ni siquiera lo que ha ocurrido ha ocurrido de verdad y no en la cabeza enferma del protagonista.
Supongo que es la excepción que confirma la regla...
December 24, 2022
Morrisonada de las gordas.
March 15, 2012
Reading Grant Morrison makes me feel profoundly smarter and dumber at the same time. For all intents and purposes, Morrison is an idea man. Inside his head must be a rushing tidal wave of Bowie-level freaky ideas whizzing around not unlike the doors in the Monsters, Inc. factory. But that doesn’t mean he is incapable of telling a good story, actually it’s far from it. When I read his stuff for the first time, I feel like an archaeologist who stumbled onto some ancient, unprecedented artifact. I know it’s awesome, that the ramifications of such a find are monumental, and that I’m dealing with something much larger in scope than can be gleaned upon initial inspection. There is so much to process, so many layers, that it takes some extra work to get the full effect of the work. Put simply, Grant Morrison makes me think things I’ve never thought before. And that is why he is my favorite comic book author, and perhaps, favorite author period.
The Filth is chock-full of crazy ideas that leap off of the page and burrow deep into my brain. As with most of Grant Morrison’s works, The Filth kind of defies synopsis. I could tell you how it’s about a tired old social outcast whose life has two purposes, his cat and porn, until it is revealed to him that he is a member of an ultra-secret organization with the mission of cleaning up the nastiest of the nasty that civilization has to offer; and how this man struggles with the notion that he’s insane and making the whole thing up because that would be the saner of the two scenarios. I could try to summarize it in some terribly convoluted sentence, but the above doesn’t really get to the heart of the story, or more importantly, set the framework for the monsoon of ideas conveyed by the narrative.
Since I’m still making my way through the rather extensive Grant Morrison canon, I don’t want to make any fancy claims, but I think this might be his best graphic novel (creator-owned category, All-Star Superman is unsurpassable). As soon as I finished this one I wanted to start right over. Why didn’t I? I don’t know, but I am not putting this back on the shelf until I give it another go. As far as recommendations go, if you haven’t read anything by Grant Morrison yet, it’s probably best not to start here. I’d go with some of his more recent Batman offerings, his New X-Men stuff or the aforementioned All-Star Superman.
The Filth is chock-full of crazy ideas that leap off of the page and burrow deep into my brain. As with most of Grant Morrison’s works, The Filth kind of defies synopsis. I could tell you how it’s about a tired old social outcast whose life has two purposes, his cat and porn, until it is revealed to him that he is a member of an ultra-secret organization with the mission of cleaning up the nastiest of the nasty that civilization has to offer; and how this man struggles with the notion that he’s insane and making the whole thing up because that would be the saner of the two scenarios. I could try to summarize it in some terribly convoluted sentence, but the above doesn’t really get to the heart of the story, or more importantly, set the framework for the monsoon of ideas conveyed by the narrative.
Since I’m still making my way through the rather extensive Grant Morrison canon, I don’t want to make any fancy claims, but I think this might be his best graphic novel (creator-owned category, All-Star Superman is unsurpassable). As soon as I finished this one I wanted to start right over. Why didn’t I? I don’t know, but I am not putting this back on the shelf until I give it another go. As far as recommendations go, if you haven’t read anything by Grant Morrison yet, it’s probably best not to start here. I’d go with some of his more recent Batman offerings, his New X-Men stuff or the aforementioned All-Star Superman.
February 11, 2013
A truly excellent and somewhat transgressive book, this dimensional-hopping sci-fi spy story, dressed in S&M leather and a fluorescent afro wig, aims to challenge the reader's values and expectations. And it might, if you're young and fairly conservative.
Some of the book's scenes are truly distasteful while others will only make you cringe, but THE FILTH is only somewhat transgressive because most of those lines of decency are crossed by the story's villains. The protagonist, though not a conventionally decent or heroic man, mainly cares about his sick cat. To use the phrase from screenwriting, the protagonist spends the entire book trying to "save the cat," making him incredibly sympathetic and making his values ultimately conventional (i.e., peace, love, and harmony, etc.)
That's not wrong or bad writing; however, though THE FILTH may aim to challenge the status quo, like "Progressive" politics the work does little to challenge core values. The book's ending leaves the reader with a breathtaking sense of hope, but ultimately nothing new.
That said, THE FILTH is a great read and a graphic novel (originally mini-series) that should be held up as an example of comics as literature. Though it may fail to offer a true challenge to the standard values of the Western world, THE FILTH is more complex, lyrical, literary, moving, political, and entertaining than nearly every other graphic novel or mini-series to come out in recent years.
Some of the book's scenes are truly distasteful while others will only make you cringe, but THE FILTH is only somewhat transgressive because most of those lines of decency are crossed by the story's villains. The protagonist, though not a conventionally decent or heroic man, mainly cares about his sick cat. To use the phrase from screenwriting, the protagonist spends the entire book trying to "save the cat," making him incredibly sympathetic and making his values ultimately conventional (i.e., peace, love, and harmony, etc.)
That's not wrong or bad writing; however, though THE FILTH may aim to challenge the status quo, like "Progressive" politics the work does little to challenge core values. The book's ending leaves the reader with a breathtaking sense of hope, but ultimately nothing new.
That said, THE FILTH is a great read and a graphic novel (originally mini-series) that should be held up as an example of comics as literature. Though it may fail to offer a true challenge to the standard values of the Western world, THE FILTH is more complex, lyrical, literary, moving, political, and entertaining than nearly every other graphic novel or mini-series to come out in recent years.
January 26, 2009
Sleeper agent Greg Feely is activated in order to fight the rising tide of anti-persons in a hilarious wig. But who's going to look after his cat while he's away?
You get the impression here that Grant Morrison is writing the kind of comic he really wants to read, or maybe the kind of comic his characters would like to read. He seems to be having a very good time, as if the need to keep The Invisibles at least semi-intelligible (in order to keep enough readers to keep it going) was a hobble he could cast off for this thirteen-issue series. It's bizarre, difficult and challenging, but also very good fun. At times I got the same feeling I had when reading 2000AD as a kid: they shouldn't really be letting me read this!
The artwork by Chris Weston is the best I've ever seen by him. This must have been quite a hard book to work on, and he does brilliantly. Whenever the words get overwhelming or just a bit too baffling, you can rely on the art to keep you ticking over.
You get the impression here that Grant Morrison is writing the kind of comic he really wants to read, or maybe the kind of comic his characters would like to read. He seems to be having a very good time, as if the need to keep The Invisibles at least semi-intelligible (in order to keep enough readers to keep it going) was a hobble he could cast off for this thirteen-issue series. It's bizarre, difficult and challenging, but also very good fun. At times I got the same feeling I had when reading 2000AD as a kid: they shouldn't really be letting me read this!
The artwork by Chris Weston is the best I've ever seen by him. This must have been quite a hard book to work on, and he does brilliantly. Whenever the words get overwhelming or just a bit too baffling, you can rely on the art to keep you ticking over.
July 19, 2019
I am not even gonna attempt to write a proper review or I'd be here all day. So I'll leave you with a quote from the intro of the book that perfectly explains what The Filth is:
"Metaphor is one of a group of problem-solving medicines known as figures of speech which are normally used to treat literal thinking and other diseases. Metaphor combines two or more seemingly unrelated concepts in a way that stimulates lateral thought process and creativity. Patients using The Filth are required to participate in the generation of significant content by interpreting text and images which have been deliberately loaded with multiple overlapping meanings and scales."
"Metaphor is one of a group of problem-solving medicines known as figures of speech which are normally used to treat literal thinking and other diseases. Metaphor combines two or more seemingly unrelated concepts in a way that stimulates lateral thought process and creativity. Patients using The Filth are required to participate in the generation of significant content by interpreting text and images which have been deliberately loaded with multiple overlapping meanings and scales."
August 8, 2014
Seriously bizarre shit! Twists, turns, back and forth between sanity and insanity!!! A massive roller coaster ride through the shittiest psyches out there!
Beautifully drawn, expertly colored and totally convuluted! Wow! Now I have to reread it for clarity! Loved it!
Beautifully drawn, expertly colored and totally convuluted! Wow! Now I have to reread it for clarity! Loved it!
July 10, 2019
I Saw Sin City when I was about 16, and it blew me away. But when I finally saw its long-delayed sequel nine years later, I was disappointed: it just seemed dreary and jumbled. This could be because it's a much worse movie (critical opinion seemed to reflect that), but I also think I was less impressed by the same tricks, the stylish midnight-blue cinematography, and corresponding moral atmosphere, the cesspool of perpetual turpitude.
Like Sin City, this book is not just noir, it's Vantablack, as jaded and nihilistic as possible. And yet that still seems to me like teenage posturing, despite the metafictional/pomo geegaws. As much as it contain heavily adult themes - adult movies, extreme violence, people being attacked by giant sperm - I can't escape the feeling that, in the extremity of its push against moral norms - épater la bourgeoisie! - it is still, essentially, for kids.
Like Sin City, this book is not just noir, it's Vantablack, as jaded and nihilistic as possible. And yet that still seems to me like teenage posturing, despite the metafictional/pomo geegaws. As much as it contain heavily adult themes - adult movies, extreme violence, people being attacked by giant sperm - I can't escape the feeling that, in the extremity of its push against moral norms - épater la bourgeoisie! - it is still, essentially, for kids.
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