The Filth
Writer Grant Morrison’s work has never lacked for ambition. Indeed, his signature early efforts, along with those of fellow Brits Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, helped infuse the American comic book genre with genuine literary aspirations (some would say pretensions), and his early work in Animal Man and Doom Patrol seems, if anything, even more remarkable today than when it first appeared in the late 1980s. Since then, he has balanced entertaining runs on the most mainstream superhero titles (X-Men, JLA) with experimental narratives like The New Adventures of Hitler, Kill Your Boyfriend, and the sprawling, occasionally comprehensible millennial epic The Invisibles. This last series was basically a post-punk retelling of the great hippie conspiracy classic The Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. From there, then, it’s a small leap to his latest magnum opus, The Filth, which is nothing less than a serious effort to smuggle the most radical vision in American literature, that of William S. Burroughs, into the medium of sequential art.
It’s really too early to say where Morrison is going in The Filth (the latest issue is part 5 of 13), but so far, it’s a cosmic cops-and-robbers saga very much along the lines of Burroughs’ The Ticket That Exploded or The Nova Mob. Morrison thankfully replaces some of Burroughs’ more tedious personal obsessions (death by hanging, buggering young boys) with a few of his own (giant insects, buggering beautiful women), but the essential tone and flavor of Burroughs remains. This is not to undersell Morrison’s own exceedingly original imagination. The Filth is Burroughs processed through a completely independent and contemporary sensibility, with bits from our own troubled times clipped and pasted seamlessly into the splatter-art collage of the narrative.
The only downside of The Filth is the art. Chris Weston and Gary Erskine are competent but unspectacular. Morrison seems to prefer conventional comic book art styles, unlike, for example, Neil Gaiman, who works more synergistically with artists to achieve a wider visual range. The Filth is really begging for a visual collaborator who could bring more to the party – either a flamboyant stylist like Jill Thompson or a quirky, consummate draftsman like Guy Davis.
It remains to be seen whether Morrison can sustain the momentum of this series for 13 books, but I’m increasingly eager to see him try. Bringing Burroughs’ vision to the pages of DC Comics (under their Vertigo imprint) is a risky proposition, and it’s exciting to see someone take up the challenge with as much seriousness of purpose as Grant Morrison.
8:52:27 AM 
|
|
