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181 Chapter 5 FREE AGENTS Closed-circuit television cameras record a balding, middle-aged man in unsparing detail as he buys transsexual porn and picks his nose.More cameras track a military scientist as he strolls through a research facility on his way to euthanize his animal test subjects, unaware that they have broken free and are killing his subordinates.Visitors at a theme park are surrounded by omnipresent cartoon eyeballs who ferry kidnapped children down subterranean canals. God reveals the predestined fates of two young lovers while fire-belching demons destroy London, murdering the queen, the prime minister,and the cabinet.These nightmares of surveillance,domination , and violent rebellion appear in a quartet of projects Morrison wrote for Vertigo during and immediately after his time at Marvel: The Filth was published concurrently with his run on New X-Men while Seaguy, We3, and Vimanarama followed his departure. Each one tells a finite story—The Filth is a thirteen-issue limited series, the others three-issue miniseries— and each features original characters owned by Morrison and his artists, freeing them from the constraints imposed by never-ending, corporateowned franchises. Like The Invisibles before them,these series experiment with other genres without completely abandoning superheroes.From a JLA parody in The Filth to the Jack Kirby-inspired character designs in Vimanarama, the superhero genre informs all of these comics, if only as an object of commentary or satire . Following Morrison’s work on some of the highest-profile franchises in superhero comics, the Vertigo projects express his frustration at the corporate creative control,the conservative ideology,and the ossified conventions that make the genre so resistant to change. Morrison responds by breaking down generic boundaries and merging superheroes with other genres, which are themselves subject to examination and critique. The Filth parodies the spy genre; Seaguy combines the narrative stasis of superhero comics with the aimless, episodic plotting of picaresque narratives and the encoded symbolism of medieval allegory; We3 fuses the military techno-thriller and Free Agents 182 the animal adventure story; and Vimanarama unites Kirby-style superheroes with science fiction, Hindu and Muslim legend, the film musical, and the romantic comedy in a dizzying pastiche.These projects also look to other media and other comics traditions, drawing inspiration from film, animation , video games, and manga in an attempt to infuse American comics with new idioms and to attract an audience that, like Morrison, is no longer interested in“the storytelling clichés and endlessly recycled images of traditional , mainstream superhero books” (Brady,“Inside Morrison’s Head”). Reflecting Morrison’s search for creative autonomy within the American comic book industry, these series depict characters who seek independence from the array of social and cosmic forces that seek to control them. They feature secret policemen pressed into duty against their will, animal weapons fighting for survival after the military uses and discards them, a reincarnated princess who resists the relationships dictated by her past life, and an aspiring superhero who seemingly has no responsibilities at all until he discovers the hidden acts of brutality and exploitation that sustain his idyllic society. These protagonists struggle against parents, police, the culture industry,the military,God,destiny,and even language—sometimes successfully , sometimes not, as they attempt to live freely and act ethically in societies that will not allow them any agency. By paralleling and in some cases directly linking these efforts with his own resistance to genre and industry constraints, Morrison extrapolates his creative struggles onto the larger problems facing the world in the first decade of the new millennium. THE FILTH: STATUS: Q The Filth (2002–03), a limited series with art by Morrison’s Invisibles collaborator Chris Weston, wallows in the most oppressive and repugnant aspects of postmodern culture at the beginning of the twenty-first century: the omnipresent surveillance, the murderous ideological extremism, the debased sexuality, the unlimited expansion of the state’s power over its citizens , and the conversion of all these indignities into narcissistic entertainment by a compliant culture industry. Morrison would later describe The Filth as “a filter or cleansing plant—a colourful pseudo-kidney, if you like” (J. Ellis Part 5), designed to process and purify the negative feelings instilled by this culture. He has also characterized the experience of writing The Filth as a magical initiation, an “Oath of the Abyss” that forced him to confront and pass through “all the negative states of consciousness available to us [3.14.142.115...

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