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Underground > Comic Books >

The Filth TP

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10:51 / 10.05.04

Too true. I've 'pre'-ordered mine. The bastards.

18:32 / 10.05.04

I specifically asked the comic book store owner to reserve one for me when it came out. That's the trick.

19:18 / 11.05.04

So now that it over, just what exactly was it really about?

So was it Ned/Greg's giant hand that they were harvesting the ink from?(as implied in the last page of issue 12)Were the hand actually I-Life?

Was LaPen writing the whole story with her own fictionsuit? Just like that super-hero Paperverse?

But it definately wasn't just all in Ned/Greg's head. Right?

goodkingwenceslaus

20:22 / 11.05.04

"But it definately wasn't just all in Ned/Greg's head. Right?"

I'll be attempting to work that out for myself all this week on my blog R.A.

http://www.ynot.motime.com/

All I've come up with so far is that I think Morrison is calling for us all to recognize that every person is both a creator AND a created being... and that the ink "rolls through all things"

Please help me!

Dave

--

02:25 / 12.05.04

Amazing, I've gone through nearly every comic store in my area but none of them have it (including one that ALWAYS gets new releases in on time). While at work at Barnes & Noble today I checked for it in the database and it tells me it's not out till June 1st. Yet many people here seem to have found it in stores. WTF?!?! This is very frustrating.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

08:43 / 12.05.04

Haven't seen it in London yet... hopefully it'll be in tomorrow's deliveries. Not that I'll be able to afford it tomorrow, mind...

Our Lady Has Left the Building

10:14 / 12.05.04

It was all in Greg's head.
It wasn't all in Greg's head.

The giant hand is Greg's hand.
The giant hand isn't Greg's hand.

Is the best I've managed to work out so far. However, I think the paperverse thing is largely irrelevent and best ignored.

Mother Dirt is a seperate sentient creature that created the Filth to police anomalies.
Mother Dirt is a representation of all the crap in Greg's head, when he gets rid of it, it fertilises the world and makes flowers grow everywhere.

The Filth= Change from without.
I-Filth= Change from within.

12:19 / 12.05.04

I'm pretty sure I saw this out in Camden last week... unless... unless it was all a dream...

22:07 / 12.05.04

And LaPen was the most pitiful/beautiful creature in the whole book.

goodkingwenceslaus

23:15 / 12.05.04

Does anyone else here see LaPen as a Wizard of Oz/Prof. Marvel figure? Perhaps Dorothy & Toto also went too far in their overcompensatory effort to "keep it real" in the Emerald City. But I guess these things can't be helped. They had to get home right?

Dave

10:57 / 13.05.04

It's out alright...Picked it up yesterday...Yum

and it has a great introduction...

'The Filth contains the active ingredient Metaphor...
Metaphor is one of a group of problem-solving medicines known as figures of speech which are normally used to treat lateral thinking and other diseases'

17:11 / 13.05.04

Yeah, the intro was all kinds of brilliant.

I've read the whole story about 3 times now, and it just keeps getting better and better. It's so dense and rich and filling I always feel like I've gained 5 pounds after reading it. One nagging question for which I still require a satisfying answer...

Who IS Spartacus Hughes?

How does he... work? We know he's a contaminated para-persona designed by Greg , Max Thunderstone , + their internet buddies, with the intent to infiltrate and destabilize Status Q and provoke The Hand. But HOW was he created? How does he jump from one body into another? Did Grant ever say he was like a virus? I know he said that about Anders klimaaks. Is Spartacus more like a social cancer?

I guess none of this matters if it's all in Greg's head - or does it then become even more important? Is Spartacus Hughes Ned Slade's opposite? Kind of an Agent Smith/ Neo relationship, gods forgive me (but you know what I mean), and Spartacus +Ned = Greg. He is the sum of the hero and villain of this tale. As Greg the internet activist he takes on the role of Spartacus, destabalizing the status quo and provoking action from the authorities. Thoughts?

And the ending, with the i-Life... still confused by that. When Greg meets up with those guys at the flower shop, he mentions he's off to meet somebody. I always thought he was refering to his cat. When we see the i-Life inside him, it definitely seems like he's greeting his cat from their perspective - but the last shot we see on the last page of the book is Greg ALONE about to enter the subway/underworld, not Greg greeting Tony. Is this the end of his bardo experience and we're seeing him about to leave the world and all Earthly attatchments behind in order to transcend? If It is indeed all in his head, could the i-Life represent his Imagination? The power of love and creation? If so, in his mind, they create a final loving meeting with his best pal Tony so he can move on to the next level of existence. Or?...

Love this series.

19:45 / 13.05.04

'The Filth contains the active ingredient Metaphor...
Metaphor is one of a group of problem-solving medicines known as figures of speech which are normally used to treat lateral thinking and other diseases'

Wasn't it "literal thinking" - or am I misremembering?

20:46 / 13.05.04

yup...'literal' it was...

13:02 / 14.05.04

So I picked it up today, opened it up & found it is printed on uncoated paper. I only flicked through a few issues so maybe Im misremembering but wernt the issues on coated stock? I guess this is cost cutting to get 38.30 worth of comics for 19.95 but then the Losers was on coated paper & it also cost a lot less than the issues it collected. The colours look a lot duller than all the stunning online samples that temped me to steal scans instead of waiting-for-the-trade. Now I think I might do that anyway to compare the colours. This has drained a lot of the enthusiasm I initially had to get straight into reading it right through.

I get the impression there are a lot more writer types here than design obsessives so probably this is something most of you hadnt noticed or dont really care about if it saves you a few bucks?

13:15 / 14.05.04

no sympathy for the wait and seers. buy monthly, bitches.

Dr. Kenneth Noisewater

18:01 / 20.05.04

Since I read The Filth, I haven't been able to look at garbage trucks the same way as before. I start to wonder about the voice that tells me, "It's just the rubbish men". And as they clatter by heavily down the road in the middle of the of night, I always look into the back, terrified, stupidly trying to catch a glimpse of the teeth.

10:00 / 21.05.04

Mr Squiggle:

Yep, the singles were on shiny paper. I had a look in the comic shop at the trade the other day as well and was disappointed over the crappier paper. The trade cover looked so good, I was gonna pick it up, but bugger it now.

The Spartacus Hughes identity would just be transmitted like the Hand's own para-personalities wasn't he? I suppose the personalities are made up of I-Life, who are put/injected into new carrier bodies.

13:43 / 21.05.04

no sympathy for the wait and seers. buy monthly, bitches.

Fuckin' right'n. I am resentful and livid that these same folk are rewarded a nice little intro bit, which I had to read - like a (Byrne-)thief - in the shop.

14:19 / 21.05.04

yes. i had to do that too. the trick, i find, is catching the shop-attendant's eye as you pick up the book and thumb deliberately to the new bits: fix attendant in the eye with a look that says approximately 'Yeah? Lookin at something? Huh? Fucking problem?' and make one vein in your forehead throb threateningly until you're done and comicbookguy has left you all in peace.

though truthfully the guys in my local are lush and don't mind if you're reading there all day so long as you leave with an x-statix bought and paid for under your arm.

15:46 / 21.05.04

Thanks Brett.

buy monthly bitches:
4 I hate waiting for the next chapter. I want it all at once or not at all.
3 Better fit on the bookshelf & to lend out.
2 Ads are ugly
#1 big reson: looking at my dozen boxes of a few thousand comics I realised that about a quarter of that space is taken up by ads. Converting to trades is not an option for stuff like Shade, Doom Patrol, Flex Mentallo which I got when they came out back when collections were uncommon. But nowdays for corparate ad-space comics its collections or stealing scans only. My place isnt that big & Im attached to the stuff I already have.

In this case Im really into Matt Hollingsworths work so I might make an exception & see if I can find someone to swap for the issues. Ill try locally first to avoid postage, otherwise that swap thread. If that dosent work, Ill settle for scans. Since Ive paid for it once I guess that would be sort of a legal back up.

Oh yeah and I found the Filth stands next to Flex as GMs most entertaining, interesting work.

09:49 / 25.05.04

About the intro:

There was an ad for the Filth in either a Vertigo or Wildstorm book, and its pretty similar to the new intro in the trade. If I knew shit about scanning I'd scan it. Anyone else seen it?

12:04 / 25.05.04

the line about 'continuity breakers' ain't gonna make any sense less you've got the ads there i'm afraid.

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