The Filth

The Filth by Grant Morrison
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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.

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