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The Filth
Zeromus
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
My God, I just bought The Filth and it is absolutely fucked.
In a good way. I think? It makes me feel a bit uncomfortable and violated, but in a good way, like if a really hot nun decided to get down with you.
This is basically a "late to the party" thread. Who else has read this, and what did you think of it? Is Grant Morrison legally insane?
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I had to read it like 6 times to really understand it though. And after reading it I feel really really filthy dirty and that all of modern humanity, in fact organic life as a whole, is repulsive. But after that subsides I have a greater appreciation of details and power in political places. Also secrets.
I think I should read it again, actually.
Also it's the best thing ever. I liked the Filth well enough, and it's full of Mad Ideas, but it's not the kind of thing I really enjoyed reading, if you catch my meaning. I still don't quite follow the ending. But yeah, the Invisibles.
Ah luv you.
EDIT: I'd say The Filth is more a companion to Flex Mentallo but that's just me.
No way, it's Flex Mentallo and Bulleteer.
The Flith is awesome, though.
I also like to pretend sometimes that Grant Morrison and Alan Moore are using their 'comics as spells' as weapons in some kind of magickal war between them. From Hell is, along with The Invisibles, one of the few comics that's actually had a deep and profound impact on my life. I don't know if they're actually spells, but there is something affecting about them that few other comics have.
They aren't batshit, they are just thinking on a higher plane then you or I.
Sounds like somebody's been reading Promethea!
I don't believe in the supernatural as such, but this is essentially what Morrison and Moore are getting at: if something is capable of affecting consciousness, of getting at someone's mind, and affects that person's actual beliefs or behavior in the world, then it's "real." If you read a book and it changes your life, was it the paper and ink and binding that were responsible? Or was it the intangible content of the book? So in that sense, Superman and Captain Kirk and Holden Caulfield and Hamlet and Jesus and Zeus are just as "real" as you or I - maybe more so, cause shit, it's not like I'll ever touch nearly as many lives as any of 'em. That's the reality of magic - to change people's minds using nothing but the power of your own mind.
So yeah. According to Morrison, the Filth is both a) the third part of a thematic trilogy starting with Flex Mentallo and continuing with The Invisibles, and b) a "hyper-sigil" or spell intended to effect change in the world starting with the minds of its readers. Maybe that sounds crazy, but the Invisibles letters pages were crammed with testimonials from readers who'd taken the book to heart and started emulating the characters and got laid, or promoted, or had a general increase in personal well-being. You don't have to believe in any sort of magic to realize that motivating people like that is hard work and for a comic book to do that is all but unheard of.
On the comic:
As someone said above, the Filth was basically intended to be the flip-side of Invisibles, mimicking its structure (in greatly compressed form, obviously), showing life with the "bad guys" and having a generally much bleaker outlook. GM says that this was all the bad vibes of the past few years - 9/11 and Iraq and everything else, as well as various personal issues - bubbling out of him, but the book was intended to sort of reconcile both Morrison and the reader to all this. As we're told in the book,
For my part, I fucking loved Chris Weston's art - I hope he works with Morrison again, because he has the really clear storytelling chops that Morrison' stories need - and I loved most of the story, especially the smaller moments like all the stuff with Greg and his cat. One of the things I love about Grant's writing is the way he just seems so full of compassion; he doesn't mock the weak or the stupid or the pathetic, or have fun at their expense. More than anything I think he just wants people to be nice to each other. It's so simple. He gets a lot of credit for his unusual storytelling or his kerrrrrazy ideas or whatever, but for me that simplicity is really what sticks.
Everybody else is down here
that's the only way I can describe the man
Wheres Moore?
Is he measurable?
But it's mt theory that Morrison will have his "watchmen" by the end of the decade
The closest he's had so far in Flex Mentallo
It's hard to put my finger in it exactly.
I think Grant Morrison so close to doing something that will not be topped for a very long time, he just isn't there yet. That what I mean.
what
Nothing beats his Animal Man run.
From his (what if he actually got hurt) Willie E. Coyote as Jesus parallel, to Animal Man breaking the fourth wall and discovering he was in a comic and meeting his writer (Morisson himself) Animal Man is one of the finest to ever come out.
My digital art! http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=8168
My pen and paper art! http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=7462
Exactly!
Yeah, I mean, the Invisibles was like sixty issues and intensely personal; I can't imagine that Morrison has more to say in a longer form, nor do I think that today's industry could support it, when DC acts like three issues of Seaguy is going to send them to the poorhouse.
EDIT: also much as I
Also also (Quitely aside) he admits that he doesn't cultivate relationships with artists the way other writers do, which is why so many otherwise great projects of his (JLA, big chunks of Invisibles) have been undermined somewhat by unclear storytelling or just plain assy drawing. So (again, Quitely aside) I don't hold out hope of that perfect harmonious collaboration like Moore/Gibbons or Moore/Campbell.
Final Crisis way be the big even to topple CoIE as the greatest big event ever.
All-Star Superman #12, the last Quietly issue, has the build up behind to be the greatest Superman story ever.
Those are big "imaybes" though. Like the other poster said though. Morrison has a very wild approach but I think with Final Crisis he is going to keep that in check due to the entire DCU line being constructed around it.
FINAL CRISIS
THE DC MULTIVERSE REIMAGINED
AS A BUBBLE FLOATING WITHIN
THE NIXONSPHERE
But it's good.
It's just. You know.
For my money, not all that much. There are some scenes that were obviously influenced, but the whole style and attitude and milieu of the two works - they couldn't be more at odds. At any rate knowing the Matrix backwards and forwards will not spoil any plot points in the Invisibles for you at all.
Here is what you should know:
The first trade sucks balls. I read the first eight or ten issues as they were coming out and was massively disappointed - it felt like a mashup of Foucault's Pendulum (which I'd just read and loved), the Sex Pistols, and Gaiman's Sandman, but not as interesting as any of them. It didn't help that the first few issues featured rather sucky art by Steve Yeowell, followed by really boring, phoned-in art from the usually good Jill Thompson. Not to mention that the ass-brown standard-issue Vertigo coloring made it look exactly like every other Vertigo book: Hellblazer, Preacher, Sandman, Shade, Doom Patrol, et cetera et cetera.
Then, in the second trade - somewhere around the end of the Marquis de Sade story - things get about 500% better, and continue to improve for the remainder of the series' run, as Morrison figured out what the series was going to be. Originally it felt like he'd been possessed by the spirit of generic Vertigo writing: the first trade features, interspersed with the main story, a side plot about fucking Lord Byron and Percy Shelly riding around in a carriage and arguing about art and poetry! What happens is, Morrison ditches that Gaiman "look-I-went-to-a-fancy-school" stuff and starts writing about his own obsessions - sixties spy movies and Michael Moorcock novels and dance clubs and Eastern philosophy - and suddenly the book becomes massively more interesting and entertaining.
I feel like the Invisibles was both the culmination of the Vertigo brand, and sort of its ending. It had all the stuff we'd already seen in Hellblazer and Shade and Sandman: English writers, magic, chain smoking, cynicism, literary references - but it freed itself from those influences and became something new. In a way that was great, because opening up Vertigo's branding meant getting stuff like Preacher and Transmet and 100 Bullets, books that never would have been published in the early 90s, but it's sort of sad too because I feel like the imprint is kind of unfocused and flailing around nowadays; the logo stopped meaning a certain sort of story and just became DC's non-superhero line.
The first TPB and first movie line up damn close
Also: Preacher was shit. Art was shit. Concept was good. Excecution was shit. Overall plot was interesting. The characters weren't. One character was for a brief second, then he became boring. I like one story in maybe the first six volumes of Preacher. It happens to be the shortest, least relevant story too.
Also: anyone who likes Preacher is full of shit.
I like the Matrix and I'm aware it is an amalgam of a lot of good science fiction. That's what makes the Matrix so good. That's what makes Cowboy Bebob so good. I find it hard to believe it's a direct rip off of the invisibles since the invisibles cast consists of super heroes. Ofcourse, I will have to read to believe.
Well, no.
It's only 'generic' at all in the sense that it's rather similar to many other Vertigo publications of the period. But seeing as Vertigo was a publisher that dealt primarily with things that weren't generic comic book shit, I'd see that label wasn't entirely fair.
...
You are a horrible person and I hope many pains upon your house.
I'm a christian and even I think Preacher is a great book
Also read it to believe it, Matrix sucked the cock of The Invisibles and didn't swallow.
well, preacher is pretty good, actually.
also, the main characters of the invisibles are not superheroes. not even a little bit are they superheroes.