The Filth

So, I told my friend I was reading the Filth, and he said, "Oh, I was working on that book! I'm convinced that Grant Morrison was tripping the entire time he was writing it, and even the artist couldn't figure out what it was about!"

Me, with my wacky history of dream interpretation and oh, yeah, acid tripping, decided to take that as a challenge.

On the surface of this comic, if you can find one, is a plot line about Ned Slade, a retired member of "The Hand" --a supersecret paramilitary group that wanks the world off when it needs it, and wipes the world's ass when it needs that too--who must come back to work to deal with supreme "anti-persons" who call themselves Tex Porneau and Spartacus Hughes. But Ned seems confused about who he is--one subplot is that there is a second Ned--and almost completely ineffectual. His ass is constantly saved by a hot chic with a green afro, and an angry Soviet chimpanzee.

A lot of characters and details come and go, and do not seem important to the story as a whole, but the important fragments of this dream are:

The Ultra-Humanitarian sequence: one of the superhero characters flies off the 2 dimensional page, and finds his sexuality
The Dimension of Vile Shit and Porn that ages you to the point of death sequence.
LaPen that rules all
Slade's love of the cat
Slade's job to wipe the world's ass, and simply maintain a very low "Status Q" status quo for the world, and not make it a better place.

Okay, from this evidence--and my own experience in comics-- I maintain that "The Filth" is about the comic book business, and Morrison's urge to grow artistically out of it. The reason I believe this is that the comics biz has an enforced low status quo, writers are frequently forced to clean up story lines generated by editorial staff meetings, and that shooting this low and becoming a hack (at one point plots come automatically from both LaPen and a character that channels plots) puts our main character at risk of growing old before his time (in the vile shit dimension). The only things that make him feel human and above this shit are in the framework outside the Ned Slade/Hand reality: the love of the cat, and the capability to create something to improve mankind (which Slade never actually does).

I felt Filthy after reading it. And during reading it. Did its job. I need a shower.