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Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s V for Vendetta is not a Gothic novel – at least, if one were to rely on the ubiquitous ‘narrative props’ or ‘stock features’ that characterise the genre’s early wave (1764–1820). 1 On the contrary, this graphic novel can best be described as a rich intertextual web that combines features of several different
This book explores a number of Alan Moore's works in various forms, including comics, performance, short prose and the novel, and presents a scholarly study of these texts. It offers additional readings to argue for a politically charged sense of Moore's position within the Gothic tradition, investigates surreal Englishness in The Bojeffries Saga, and discusses the doppelganger in Swamp Thing and From Hell. Radical environmental activism can be conceived as a Gothic politics invoking the malevolent spectre of a cataclysmic eco-apocalypse. The book presents Christian W. Schneider's treatment of the apocalyptic in Watchmen and a reassessment of the significance of liminality from the Gothic tradition in V for Vendetta. It explores the relationship between Moore's work and broader textual traditions, placing particular emphasis on the political and cultural significance of intertextual relationships and adaptations. A historically sensitive reading of From Hell connects Moore's concern with the urban environment to his engagement with a range of historical discourses. The book elucidates Moore's treatment of the superhero in relation to key Gothic novels such as The Castle of Otranto and presents an analysis of the nexus of group politics and survival in Watchmen. The book also engages in Moore's theories of art, magic, resurrections, and spirits in its discourse A Small Killing, A Disease of Language, and the Voice of the Fire. It also explores the insight that his adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft, which are laced with heterocosms and bricolage, can yield for broader understandings of his forays into the occult.
Moore and David Lloyd’s V for Vendetta , the revived and revisionist Grant Morrison-authored Dan Dare in Revolver and the general polemical thrust of the radical 2000AD offshoot Crisis . Morrison also wrote St. Swithin’s Day , which narrated the fantasy of assassinating the Iron Lady from the point of view of an alienated, angry teenage boy. Predictably, the
! The fifth of November, The Gunpowder treason and plot; I know of no reason, Why the Gunpowder treason, Should ever be forgot! Guy Fawkes and his companions, Did the scheme contrive, To blow the King and Parliament All up alive. Threescore barrels, laid below, To prove old England’s overthrow. This short vignette is provided to position Fawkes and his co-conspirators as one of the oldest, yet contemporarily relevant, actors striking unilaterally against the state. The Gunpowder Plot served as the basis for the 1980s graphic novel, V For Vendetta, which features an
2013 ). In the children’s book and the graphic novels, Pita Witkaire has a moko , but he is not tattooed in Utu , possibly because it would have interfered with the ‘ moko equals gang’ plot device. In Férey’s latest work, facial moko tattooing assumes an overtly political role. In the second volume of the graphic novel a moko is layered onto a contemporary Western symbol of anti-government and anti-establishment protest: the Guy Fawkes mask from the V for vendetta graphic novel (Moore and Lloyd 2005 ) and film adaptation (McTeigue
sexuality within exploitative power structures, evidenced by child prostitution and molestation (III.25.3.iii–iv, I.9.3–5). V for Vendetta represents the specifically political use of sexual violence in its opening scene, where the narrowly averted gang rape and murder of Evey operates as a metonym for the state’s violation of its subject’s bodies and
. Similarly, the popular graphic novel V for Vendetta (published between 1982 and 1989) paints a bleak future in which England is ruled by a fascist regime, aided and abetted by a wicked national church. This church is no longer the Church of England as we know it, but clearly bears the Roman Catholic signature. Several of the drawings show how in future England rings of bishops must be kissed and transubstantiation must be taken as fact on pain of death. Apparently, only the Catholic Church will do to symbolise the rise of evil and corruption in Britain. At work is the
The didactic doppelgänger The double is everywhere in Alan Moore’s work. In V for Vendetta , the elusive V is intent on turning working-class girl Evey into his doppelgänger by subjecting her to a simulation of the traumatic experiences of a woman known simply as ‘Valerie’, an early victim of the Larkhill
’s sustained critique of Thatcherism in V for Vendetta (1982–85), which is set in the UK. 6 Moore, Bissette and Totleben, ‘Sleep of Reason’, 3–4. 7 See also Maggie Gray’s discussion of
’ in Godwin’s Caleb Williams in its construction ‘around competing discourses whose demarcations remain visible’, 10 a description that can be transferred to the serial, literally ‘visible’ medium of Watchmen . Moore’s narrative ethic, and his commitment to anarchism, also suggests connections to the Godwinian tradition. Here he is discussing V for Vendetta