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| The Filth | |
|---|---|
 Cover toThe Filth #13 | |
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Vertigo |
| Schedule | Monthly |
| Publication date | August2002 - October2003 |
| No. of issues | 13 |
| Creative team | |
| Written by | Grant Morrison |
| Penciller | Chris Weston |
| Inker | Gary Erskine |
The Filth is acomic booklimited series, written byGrant Morrison and drawn byChris Weston andGary Erskine. It was published by theVertigoimprint of American companyDC Comics in2002.[1]
The Filth was Grant Morrison's second major creator-owned series for Vertigo afterThe Invisibles. Initially starting as aNick Fury proposal forMarvel Comics,[Note 1] Morrison adapted it as a 13-part series for Vertigo. The title refers both to the police (in British slang) and to pornography (in which Morrison "immersed" themselves while "researching" the series).[5] Morrison has said that the series is their favorite among their works.[6]
The series tells the story of Greg Feely, abachelor whose main interests are his cat and masturbating to pornography. Feely is actually a member of a shadowy organization called The Hand and their attempts to keep society on the path to the "Status Q".
The Filth can be seen partly as a companion piece toThe Invisibles in that it touches upon similar themes and concepts such asfractal realities, art affecting life,postmodern blurring of thefourth wall and the world as a single, living organism with humans as the cells that compose it. Morrison has stated that they had originally intended to makeThe Filth a thematic sequel toThe Invisibles, followed by a third comic book series,The Indestructible Man.[7] Morrison later concluded that their originalFlex Mentallo series formed the first in the trilogy.[8] Therefore, the sequence runs: 1.Flex Mentallo. 2.The Invisibles, 3.The Filth. The theme ofThe Filth consists of immersion into, and eventualredemption from, the forces of negativity.
Greg Feely lives alone in London though he cares deeply for animals such as his pet cat Tony. One day, a strange woman in his bathroom tells him he is the chemically-induced "para-personality" of Ned Slade, a secret agent for an agency called the Hand (or, informally, "the Filth"). The Filth protects Status: Q (thestatus quo) by suppressing threats to "social hygiene". In the course of completing assignments for The Hand, Greg Feely discovers that he is the original person, and Slade – like all Hand agents – is merely a synthetic character who can be installed in any body the Hand chooses. He spends the rest of the story trying to come to grips with this and deciding what to do about it.
Atrade paperback of all 13 issues was released in 2004 (ISBN 1401200133).
A newerdeluxe edition featuring all 13 issues alongside extra sketches and commentary by Morrison was released in 2017 (ISBN 9781401270445).
