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 | V For Vendetta Alan Moore and David Lloyd Vertigo 2005, 288pp  Dear reader, if there's one thing about which I hope to convince you with these reviews of comic collections and (ahem) "graphic novels" it's this: UK writer Alan Moore is a bona fide genius. To that end, please promise me that you'll read the comic before you see the upcoming film of 'V For Vendetta'. I've seen the trailer and it looks surprisingly OK, but the precedents don't auger well: 'From Hell' took Moore's fascinating forensic reverie on the Jack The Ripper murders and turned it into a confused mess of opium visions and piss-poor cockney accents, while 'League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen' took Moore's playfully postmodern turn-of-the century adventure yarn and turned it into the single worst film ever made in the history of the medium. So I'm fully expecting that the film of 'V For Vendetta' will take some of the stunning visuals of the comic, rip them bleeding from their context and throw them at a screen to pepper up a bunch of arse about... oh, I don't know, Nazis or al' Quaida or something. Thank god that the long-threatened movie of Moore's masterpiece 'Watchmen' seems to be lost in development hell: I'm not sure I could bear watching yet another of his works be comprehensively fucked up.'V For Vendetta' was written in the early 80s and set in the mid-90s after a nuclear apocalypse has wiped out most of the world but left Britain intact. However, it's now under the control of an ultra right-wing fascist government that has built concentration camps and disposed of all of the undesirable elements (non-whites, homosexuals, radicals, intellectuals etc - sound familiar at all?). However, there is one terrorist figure who is determined to bring the government and The Leader -Adam Susan - to its knees: a strange figure in a Guy Fawkes mask known only as V. We meet him through the eyes of the teenage Evie when V rescues her from being raped and beaten to death by members of The Finger (the secret police) and he takes her to his lair: a massive underground museum of banned literature, films and music (and you just know this is a bit that the production design team will go nuts with) and begins to open her eyes to the realities around her, but Evie starts to suspect that it's more than just a coincidence that she should be saved by this brilliant, dangerous man: could V be her father - missing and presumed executed? When she re-enters the world - and learns some brutally harsh lessons in the process - we learn more of V's backstory as he carries out a subtle, detailed vendetta against the powers that be, and they in turn slowly realise exactly who it is that they're dealing with... Like all Moore scripts 'V For Vendetta' is layered like an onion, with a million visual jokes and clues packed into every frame. His voluminous knowledge of British history and lore colours everything, making the book a potted history lesson about everything from the Gunpowder Plot to Red Scare politics. It's also a thumping great action story and a passionate poem to the dangers of giving your government too much control; and that's another reason why I'm predicting that the pro-terrorist, anti-government message of the comic will be somewhat toned down in the American-funded movie. Perhaps V will learn that his government is only trying to protect everyone by rounding the odd ethnic group up without trial (especially if they're, say, refugees) and that the odd phone tap or vote-tamper is a small price to pay for Freedom and Liberty (or, failing that, oil and votes). In any case, read 'V For Vendetta' before its message is diluted by what's almost certainly going to be a dreadful, dreadful film.  | |
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