The Filth, Part Two-- (Spoiler Alert! This is not a Review) - Page 3

Soon, Billy is confessing that he is "secretly a really old cosmic entity whose name you couldn't pronounce..." The little brat claims responsibility for every superhero on earth, including "Quasar", whom Wendell has never heard of. And here's where it gets really interesting--i.e. goes beyond rote metafiction:

Wendell: "You mean you made me up? I'm a figment of your imagination?"


Billy: "No. That's silly. You're a real person."


Wendell:"That's good to know."

Billy:"When I say "create", I don't mean like I created something out of nothing--everyone knows matter can't be created or destroyed. What I did is take people who already existed and turned them into superheroes whose names, costumes, and powers I invented!"


In other words--Billy's mixin' up "parapersonae" in that tree house! That's what writers do. They take real people and turn them into characters that serve the purposes of narrative. And that's what each of us does every day when we leave our sanctums to take part in the grand storyline of civilization. In Marvel-U terms, this means taking your powers back--and that's Quasar works toward, for the rest of the issue.

This has always stuck with me. Every organic being, at its core, is a "not-self detector"--and to be reminded of that fact is to experience unspeakable joy. There's nothing onerous about "unbeing". Unbeing is pure awareness of "otherness"--in this state we skip happily along "The Crack" between the subject and the object. "Being" is the tricky part--that's where "stepping on the crack" can "break your mother's back". The important thing to remember is that, while everything we do may be pointless, it's not in vain.

"Faith Held Me Back A While"


Greg/Ned's big speech near the end of The Filth is definitely worth the wait:

Scale's the next big frontier, they say. You can power a whole city with the energy in a human cell. Only humans could make something kinder and better than themselves--that makes them smarter than God in my opinion... Like anti-bodies in the great big body of nature except antibodies don't get sad like we do. Because they know their place.

There's so much here, if you keep in mind the context in which it's uttered. It's a clear invocation of Marx's mentor, Ludwig Feuerbach, the guy who knocked Hegel's "Absolute Spirit" on its ass. God isn't the subject, he/she/it is the predicate--it was a radical theory in its time, but I think most of us take it for granted by now. Why the fuck would an omnipotent being create anything? But it's easy to see how such a figure might appeal to vulnerable mortal minds. Consciousness/subjectivity equals not knowing your place. We create God so that we don't have to pay attention to the shifting ground beneath our feet. He's a crushing place-marker. If you accept this, it becomes obvious that Calvinist theology is the only theology that matters: "God" is the unknowable antagonist. He's not your friend. As good ol' Jonathan Edwards was wont to say: "He hates you."


That's if "He" existed, I mean. And of course "He" doesn't. We made "Him" up--just as Max and Greg and their crew made up Spartacus Hughes.


Hughes understands his function, and he recognizes others who take a turn in the role--like Simon, the "world's richest pervert", in issue #2:

Article Author: David Fiore

Visit David Fiore's author page — David Fiore's Blog