Little can be said that hasn’t already been said about the genius that is Alan Moore. The reason why the man occupies such an amazing place in the minds of people who have read graphic novels can be attributed to the fact that his body of work spans across several genres and each one of his stories is a gem, with a great deal of emotion and thought brought to the table ,where before it was bare. He does this best with his own creations but also for any work for hire he’s done in the past.
V for Vendetta is about revolution, anarchy, hope and corruption. It’s about fighting for your beliefs. It’s a powerful story set in the backdrop of the 80s England, which as far as I can tell, was not a very nice place to be. The story is set in the late 90s after a nuclear war; however since Moore didn’t have all the actual facts about what such a war would do to the world. He describes very slightly what the after effects of the war were but this is downplayed a great deal in the book. Moore admits in his introduction that in fact when the story was written it was unsure whether or not anything could survive a nuclear war. That explains why the cities are still standing and haven’t been rendered to rubble like something out of Mad Max. A fascist party controls the country under an iron grip of controlled media and constant camera surveillance, not dissimilar to what’s going on now in England, only in a much more toned down way.
The structure of the book is such that it is served in different sizes chunks of story, ranging from 5 pages to 12 or whatever. Sometimes continues, sometimes picking up a different area of the story. Each story title begins with the letter V, and the more you read the more you understand the reason behind this. The main character is simply called V and he wears a spooky smiling mask. He’s got a dark coat on and a long hat. V has got a master plan to bring down the people that have taken over and nothing he does is for chance.
Moore has an incredible nack for making it all so obvious, after he’s actually told you what’s going on. The dialogue exchanged by V and many of the characters is absolutely superb, I’ll leave you with my favourite:
There’s only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof.
The cover isn’t the most spectacular when you look at it as a piece of art, however once you’ve read the story, it’s the most perfectly rendered painting this side of Alex Ross. There is something seriously haunting about V and his mask. David does an amazing job of making all these characters very real. I’ve not seen anything else from the man on the shelves which is a damn shame because he is a very good storyteller. The inside cover says that the man is working on something called Kickback, so I’ll definitely be looking out for that when it comes out.
I do wonder about the colouring choice on this book, however I do need to consider that this book was started in 1980s before computer colouring came to the scene (and of course I’m not thinking about giving it flashy colours, but something a bit less washed out might have been appropriate).
I will admit that V for Vendetta was actually one of the last works by Alan Moore that I had not read until recently (finished it yesterday). The main reason was that I didn’t know what it was about. That’s no excuse really because the man’s proven himself to be the best in the business that I shouldn’t have had any apprehensions because he does not disappoint. Anything the man writes is golden.
Remember, Remember the 5th of November.
Story: Alan Moore
Artist: David Lloyd
Colourist: David Lloyd, Steve Whitaker and Siobhan Dodds
Publisher: Vertigo Comics
I’d forgotten just how washed out the illustration was in this book until the other day when I thumbed through a copy (finally Waterstones have some decent graphic novels in stock! Watchmen, V, 1602, LoEG, Batman – if it wasn’t Xmas I’d have loaded up); really drab compared to the colour of something like Watchmen, and lacking the over-stylised feel of From Hell.
I’ll still probably go back to buy it in the sales, though.
Any plans for some non-book-specific articles? Perhaps panel design (Watchmen 5?), artist profiles, writer interviews, that sort of thing?
Hey Matthew, yeah the colours should have been retouched for this version. It wouldn’t have been sacrilige I don’t think, would have elevated them slightly/maybe.
I’ve definitely got a lot of coming up, however I do want to have a certain number of posts under my belt so that I can have some sort of credibility and to be honest I don’t think I’ll get the interviews I want until I’ve gotten the design of the site sorted out, that’s comic book specific.
One idea is to have an interview with the creators a week after the book has been released so that people can contribute to the discussion with the authors more constructively. So for the next month or so I expect to concentrate on my reviews and my weekly what’s coming up and the upcoming Previews review as well.