THE FILTH #1

By: Tony Whitt
Review Date: Sunday, June 16, 2002

The name "Grant Morrison" has the same sort of transformative power that names like Todd McFarlane, Kevin Smith, and Peter David have: drop them into a conversation about comics, and the mood can either turn ecstatic or sour in an instant. Their fans are vocal and adamant, their detractors equally so. Thus it's no wonder that the buzz for Morrison's new Vertigo series THE FILTH has been such a loud one, so much so that Chris Weston's status as co-creator is often overlooked. Even the book's name and imprint seems to promise all manner of horrific, non-Comics Code-approved delights. But this is the first of thirteen issues, so perhaps Morrison and Weston are saving the delights for later.

So far, what we've got is a bit confusing: we observe a day in the life of Greg Feely, a lonely middle-aged man whose only passions in life are she-male pornography and his cat Tony. Greg manages to ignore the mysterious woman who tells him that the Hand never lets go and warns him not to mess with the Filth. (She doesn't say "mess with," naturally - this is a Vertigo book, after all.) But he finds the naked woman in his shower much harder to ignore, especially when she seduces him and the parapersonality which is Greg Feely starts running out his nose. Turns out he's Slade, back on active duty for the Hand. Oh, and something happens at the end, too, though how it relates to all this, I've no idea - yet.

Despite dropping us into the deep end of the pool and expecting us to swim back, Morrison and Weston achieve what they've set out to do: they've got our attention. There's something curiously appealing about this book, even before Greg realizes he's not who he thought he was - so rarely do we see a character as pathetically normal as Greg Feely, even in a Vertigo title, that when the technicolor parapersonality starts bleeding out of his nose and the book heads for parts unknown, we almost feel sorry that we can't spend a bit more time with him. Even Slade seems to think so - through a neat plot point called "identity bends," Morrison shows Slade having trouble letting go of his old persona, especially the cat. The second plotline is downright creepy - we're introduced to Sharon Jones, a woman taken by her current employer Simon (presumably against her will) and fitted with a speaker in her throat and a camera in her right eyesocket. The startling image at the end of the book - whatever it's supposed to be of - somewhat pales in comparison to the sickly feeling we get from thinking about her situation for too long. And again, what that situation is, I've no idea - yet.


Weston's art, inked by Gary Erskine, is a brilliant compliment to Morrison's script in that, like Greg Feely, it's so normal-looking. Obviously this series will have nothing to do with what we consider "normal," and that contrast between such crisp lines and such a straightforward style and Morrison's unsettling storyline may be what makes this book the success the buzz tells us it'll be. But whether it'll continue to work, I've no idea - yet.

You've probably already guessed that, no matter what reservations I have about this first issue, I'm willing to table them and keep reading to see where Morrison and company are headed. While there are certain things I'd change already - the outfits Slade and his companion change into, for instance, look too much like rejects from THE FIFTH ELEMENT, while the vehicle comes straight out of 2000 AD - this issue already has hints of the edgy and racy science fiction epic we'd all been hoping for. Even if the title doesn't say it all, it's worth sticking with to see if it does.


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