Valuable and victorious. (V For Vendetta - Alan Moore, David Lloyd)

Name: bookguy

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Product:	V For Vendetta - Alan Moore, David Lloyd
Date:	10/09/08 (42 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A valorous visitation

Disadvantages: Sometimes vexing

Mysterious, unconventional superhero V takes on a fascist regime in a future Britain. He has befriended naif waif, Evey, but is he to be trusted?

I'm going to take a slightly different tack in this review by talking about an encounter I had with the author, the great (and mysterious) Alan Moore.

I first read this series in black and white (or, perhaps more appropriately, chiarascuro) in the sadly missed monthly magazine, "Warrior".

I enjoyed comics, of course, as I was only about 14 or 15, but I had never encountered a visual narrative that had so captivated and enthralled me before. These three or four roughly drawn pages a month became an addiction, I would read them over and over again, and each time there was a new installment, I would read the whole thing again. I bought the 12" V for Vendetta single by David J, and wore a Guy Fawkes badge on my school blazer.

...And just when the narrative was beginning to reach a head of steam, the magazine ran into financial trouble and collapsed - there would be no further episodes!

Fast forward four years. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons were in my local comic shop to promote their new graphic novel, Watchmen. They spoke for a while, the notoriously reclusive Moore saying very little and speaking in epigrams, when he spoke at all. Everything was about the Watchmen, until I piped up with a question about "V". I can't remember what I said exactly, but I basically queried what had happened to the rest of the story.

Silence.

Everyone looked at me. The Comic Shop Guy (a dead ringer for that one from the Simpsons) started to say something along the lines of "Well, I would thank you to PLEASE talk about the SUPERB graphic novel we're ..." when suddenly Alan Moore jumped up out of his seat and pointed at me.

"GOOD QUESTION!" he bellowed, and proceeded to talk about all of the campaigns and conspiracies centred around this particular narrative, how the Thatcherite government was strangling free speech, how he had seen, actually seen, that morning, a CCTV camera with "For your protection" written on it...and so on for nearly half an hour. He loved Watchmen, sure, but "V for Vendetta" was a labour of love - and conduit for his politics. The audience were rapt. I was rapt.

Moore promised that if he had to force David Lloyd at gunpoint, the story would be finished, and if he had to go into a publisher with a dynamite midriff, it would be published, and so another year or so after that, it was.

I bought it the day it came out as a comic. I bought the trade paperback. I gave it to my friends.

All I can say to conclude, is that its message has become more timely, and although one or two little things have dated badly, this extraordinary book will change the way you look at your relationship with the powers that be.

Remember: People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.

Summary: Very, very good