The Filth: Tony

[jlroberson]

This week, I had a terrible scare with my faithful and sweet 5-year-old cat, always healthy and strong till now, suddenly weak and leaving blood spots everywhere she sat. Culminating, after the generosity of my friends(me being broke), in a vet visit today on my birthday. And through it all, Tony in one of my favorite comics ever, THE FILTH, kept coming to mind. This week, I felt like Greg Feely.

Little Artemis is okay, just UTI and she's on antibiotics. But I felt it cathartic to post these emotionally devastating pages, from across the whole series, from one of comics' most notable cat people(who, according to him, has buried many, many cats, with heartbreak, over the years, and it often ends up in his work all the way back to ANIMAL MAN), Grant Morrison. Perhaps you can relate.










(c)2002 Grant Morrison & Chris Weston.

Comments

[box_in_the_box]

This is easily one of the most genuinely heartfelt things he's ever written.

Even as someone who's never had a pet, it hurt to read this.

[jlroberson]

Yeah. Morrison is always heartfelt when he writes about animals. Especially cats.

This plotline within the book has been, ever since first reading it, my mental picture of what I fear most with my two cats.

I think the part that got me first, way back when, is that bit at the start when Greg's double takes over and yet, Tony leaps out and tries to follow him, knowing who his real friend is. That kills me every time I look at his sad, puzzled little face. Weston captures that well.

And the bit at the vet, and seeing that little innocent body in the box...yeah. It hurts.

"I think he was always surprised he stayed a cat."

[icon_uk]

Interesting, IIRC in Animal Man he states (in his cameo appearance) that one of the reasons he felt he had to stop writing Animal Man was that when his cat got sick he found himself thinking "Well, at least I can use this in a story" and he didn't want to be thinking like that about his work, or his cats.

[jlroberson]

Perhaps, after a while you need to purge it. He said the point of THE FILTH was getting all his most negative feelings and thoughts to the surface, to be rid of them.

[stig]

...I think some of these pages are out of order. As far as I remember, Greg buries another cat off the streets that he'd been taking care of (the 'Ah No' panel), and is unable to take Tony to the vets when the police sow up accusing him of being a pedo.

Later, the cat actually does keel over while Greg's saving the world from a gigantic pirate ship pleasure cruise, because his evil double is a selfish bastard. But then the i-Life creatures in the body of Sharon bring Tony back to life. After that I can't remember.

[jlroberson]

I put them together that way on purpose. Like I said, the reason was mostly cathartic. I was more interested in presenting Greg's relationship to the cat(s) than trying to summarize the book's overall narrative. These are also very disparate scenes in the book, and only one level of the story.

So, yeah. But if you want to read it in order, there's the book, which I recommend to everyone. It's like one of the two or three Morrison works that has a special place in my heart. (DOOM PATROL would hold a similar place)

I also feel it shows that, though Morrison can write great superhero comics, he might be a little wasted on the genre as it now stands, and should do more stuff like this.

[stig]

He did say that after Final Crisis and Batman he'd go back to being "That Weird Vertigo Guy".

[jlroberson]

He should hurry up.

Of course, he's also working on the WE3(another work of his I love) film now, isn't he?

Addendum to previous: and I think you can guess why I could not stand right now to post any of the bits with Greg's evil, cat-abusing double.

I might post a bit more from the book. Like some stuff from the most solid part(that and the Anders Klimakks stuff), "Zero Democracy." Particularly the beginning of it. That part still makes me shiver a bit.

[stig]

I always liked the anthropological madness that goes on in "Zero Democracy", with humankind developing into a mass consciousness.

Also, the giant Hand/Pen/Ink twist is absolutely awesome when you figure it out for the first time.

[jlroberson]

That segment managed to spook me just with Spartacus Hughes' little "One Rat" monologue. What happened after is almost just frosting on that cake.

Addendum

[jlroberson]

Here 'tis:
http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/1497797.html

Re: Addendum

[stig]

Frighteningly enough? Last month it was in the papers that they actually built a similarly gigantic pleasure cruise boat, the "Oasis of the Seas".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2009/nov/25/usa

Odd how similar that first pic is to the establishing shot of the Libertania, eh?

Re: Addendum

[jlroberson]

I think too Morrison got the inspiration for the Libertania from a real proposal he found on the web.

Weston's Libertania is fucking beautiful, too. Like a skyscraper on its side. And i think that was the point, as I see in this, at least in implication, a lot of the way America might have seemed after 9/11 and the way our anger was manipulated into war. Which is why that sequence has always interested me. Like riding the toppled tower to revenge, and with the Cheneyish idea of license that now we can do what we like because we're hurt and enraged, even to those who had nothing to do with it. In fact, especially. It's like the spiritual picture of America's soul in the Zeroes Decade.

Re: Addendum

[stig]

Sort of like the modern equivalent of the Statue of Liberty, symbolising the mindset of the people who it's based around.

Also, it makes neat comparison with the Subway Pirates depicted in Seven Soldiers: The Manhattan Guardian, in that similarly they were a series of disenfranchised, mentally damaged people who turned to piracy - but in that case, they were free to do as they liked because, as the end of the story explained, they were just a bunch of inconsequential homeless people who'd be dead soon anyway.

Re: Addendum

[jlroberson]

That's an interesting interconnection that I like. One thing I've liked since starting to read Morrison in 1988 is seeing the snaky way his themes develop through his works, and where he takes strands of ideas he begins elsewhere.

I seem to recall he also once said THE FILTH was where he put all the ideas they wouldn't let him do in X-MEN, but I've never been able to see how the fuck that could be, leading me to think in this case Morrison was having us on.

[crinos]

I had to bury a kitten a few months ago (brain tumor, went real peaceful like), so I have total vibes for this guy.

[stig]

I myself have lost a feline companion of 16 years to Alzheimers, and I read this before that happened, so it resonates with me emotionally.

[jlroberson]

Sorry to hear that. I didn't know cats got that too. It's strange how many human diseases have cat equivalents.

[stig]

I didn't even actually know that was what he died of until three weeks later, when I took a Biology exam. A question started with "These are the symptoms of Alzheimers Syndrome in the common housecat..."

That's probably why I failed the course and realised that I didn't particularly want to do Biology after all. So, who knows, perhaps his death served some sort of higher purpose.

[lamashtar]

Hunh. I thought that 'Feline HIV' poster was a joke. (When did they have sex with monkeys???)

[jlroberson]

It's very real. In fact, it was a Scottish doctor who figured out what a retrovirus was via its presence(though I don't know in that case if it was HIV specifically)in cats. It's possible that AIDS research might have been delayed a bit more without the existence of kitties.

[stig]

Addendum: remember that this all started out as a pitch for a miniseries about Nick Fury. I mean, I'm glad that it came into its own as a Vertigo series, but blimey...

[chipsnopotatoes]

so sorry about your cat, and thanks for posting this.

[midare]

I'm so glad I'm hugging my cat right now. ;_;
I really hope yours will be all right!

[alexanderlucard]

I just had a scare yesterday with my rabbit potentially having cancer. I got the test results back today and thankfully he's totally clean, but man was that a panicky 24 hours. I'm glad to hear your cat turned out okay too.

[jlroberson]

Thank you. She's wrestling with fighting off the infection right now but her strength is back, her appetite is fine, the spotting has gone and she's grumbling and yapping away(she's very talky) like usual, so I think she'll get through this.

[kintotech]

Whoa, this was heartbreaking D:

[lyraeinne]

...I think this may be the first story posted on S_D to actually make me burst into tears.

I'm so glad to hear your kitty's doing okay. Mine died in June, and I still miss him terribly.

[jlroberson]

I know. I was actually crying while reformatting the images and posting them. They hurt to even look at.

Sorry to hear that. I've gone through it before, and I don't want to again any time soon. Hard-hearted cynical sniping angry bastard as I like to think I am, I love my kitty.

[dimwit90.livejournal.com]

This made run out of my room and hug my cat followed by logging into amazon and buying this damned book

[jlroberson]

Good on you on both counts. And when you read the book, be prepared for some puzzling through it on the first two reads. (If you ever saw MULHOLLAND DRIVE, something like the process when you have to watch that a few times before it hits you like a truck what's really going on)

[dimwit90.livejournal.com]

I'm actually looking forward to that, I love reading a book that makes me feel like an idiot for not getting it the first time around

Something To Cheer the Poor Readers Up...

[jlroberson]

Anything that stands up to re-watching or re-reading is something I love. After all, you buy it for a reason!

By the way, apropos of nothing, except that anyone reading this post will need cheering up, something I just discovered: a hilarious BBC radio series called "Bleak Expectations."
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=8A96D574743C3D20

There are 3 series. I found 2 of them on BitTorrent but I'll probably get in trouble should I post the link.