Captain Scarlet On Acid

The sickness of Grant Morrison’s and Chris Weston’s comic The Filth.

(Originally published on the Ninth Art website as ‘The Filth And The Theory’.

Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

‘A Dream Within a Dream’ by Edgar Allan Poe

The Filth - 1st issue

It’s hard to be rational about the irrational; even harder to make the Surreal, real. Thus trying to bring some sense to The Filth isn’t easy. It’s a slippery eel of a text that writhes under analysis, defying explanation. You can bring some sense to it eventually but… well it’s complicated. In fact it’s hard to even know where to begin… Let’s try the old Six Form essay technique of ‘first define your terms’. Filth is defined by my dictionary as any foul matter that defiles, physically or morally; the obscene. It is also a slang term of abuse for the police. Morrison uses all these definitions but also expands to provide a positive spin on things – a bit of the nasty can actually be good for you.

As you read this your body is seething with myriad minute processes you are totally unaware of. Your immure system works hard to expel unwanted material – going to war against the poisons and illnesses that invade the body. Millions of ‘warriors’ are sacrificed in the battle. In fact, what most of think of as the ’symptoms’ of our ‘illness’ – the snot, the phlegm, the shivers, the aching joints, the headaches – are just the effects of the body fighting back, the dead corpses of all those warriors settling in the joints or being sneezed into a tissue or coughed up into the sink; we should welcome them.