With a political and social relevance that’s as meaningful now as it was back in the early 80s, V For Vendetta once again shows Moore’s ability to tell a terrific sci-fi story while subverting expectations of his medium. A panel from the concentration camp hallucination sequenceĪdded to this Lloyd does a great job of using colour to make the nightclub scenes feel suitably seedy while a sequence in the ruins of a concentration camp is genuinely terrifying thanks to how he creates a hallucinatory feel as a troubled party man uncovers a horrific history. The artwork backs this all up by having a very different feel to anything seen elsewhere, certainly in mainstream comics, as it has a dark and gritty sense of reality that brings the feel of decay and dirt of this version of Britain to life vividly. V contrasts these characters by appearing to be a fairly one dimensional view of a costumed character but, as it goes on, layers are peeled back to reveal what’s behind the mask (figuratively), though in a touch of genius we never quite know where his reality begins and ends and crucially we never physically see behind the mask. While the story has themes and elements familiar from other dystopian science fiction and fantasy Moore and Lloyd put their own spin on it in a way that brings it right down to Earth.Ī big part of this is it’s use of famous landmarks and locations across the story and a terrific sense of reality and a feel of England stuck in a permanent, bleak winter, along with a selection of characters who come with a depth not often seen in comic books.
The story, set in a partially post apocalyptic Britain, follows V and his protege Evey Hammond as V unleashes a series of ‘terrorist attacks’ on a 1984-like London as a form of revenge, all while seemingly training Evey and bringing her to his way of thinking before encouraging an anarchistic revolution against the ruling facist party, Norsefire. picked them up and printed the complete series a few years later, V For Vendetta is as revolutionary as Moore’s superhero deconstruction but in a different way. Written partially before Watchmen and partially after as it’s first two thirds were originally published in British magazine Warrior before D.C. While the image of lead ‘hero’ V’s mask has become world famous thanks to the Anonymous hacking group it remains a striking image here in its own right from the cover onwards and the work within the book is just as powerful. After recently rereading Watchmen I had the urge to go back to another seminal work of Alan Moore’s from the same era, his collaboration with artist David Lloyd, V For Vendetta.
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