Review | V for Vendetta

V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd
Review by Michael
November 2005 by Vertigo
296 pages
Amazon + Good Reads

""Good evening, London." It's nine o'clock and this is The Voice of Fate... It is the Fifth of the Eleventh, Nineteen-Ninety-Seven...

"The people of London are advised that the Brixton and Streatham areas are quarantine zones as of today. It is suggested that these areas be avoided for reasons of health and safety...

Police raided seventeen homes in the Birmingham area early this morning, uncovering what is believed to be a major terrorist ring. Twenty people, either of them women, are currently in detention awaiting trial...

The weather will be fine until 12:07 A.M. when a shower will commence, lasting until 1:30 A.M... 

Have a pleasant evening."

A frightening and powerful tale of the loss of freedom and identity in a chillingly believable totalitarian world, V for Vendetta stands as one of the highest achievements of the comics medium and a defining work for creators Alan Moore and David Lloyd.

Set in an imagined future England that has given itself over to fascism, this groundbreaking story captures both the suffocating nature of life in an authoritarian police state and the redemptive power of the human spirit which rebels against it. Crafted with sterling clarity and intelligence, V for Vendetta brings an unequaled depth of characterization and verisimilitude to its unflinching account of oppression and resistance.

"Remember, remember the fifth of November...""

-Good Reads

Quick Intro:

Let me start off by saying this is probably not the best thing for children to read. There is quite a bit of sexual content including rape and prostitution. Violence is a very prevalent in this graphic novel as well. Now onto the review.

“V for Vendetta” is split into three parts. Book One: Europe After The Reign, Book Two: The Vicious Cabaret. and Book Three: The Land of Do-As-You-Please. Think of these like acts in a play. Each book/part/act has its own chapters. I know, this may sound confusing and intimidating but all is well. In short, it’s set in London in the future society of the 1990’s, (first published in 1982) and is of the dystopian genre. It’s very 1984-esque, giving us a great sense of Big Brother. 

Characters:

V: V is the main character. V is the one of the cover, the one with the mask, the one with the malice. V tends to kill, blow things up, and seems a little out of his mind. BUT... gotta love him. And when I say that, I don’t mean like The Joker in Batman where he’s funny, I mean, you start to actually care about V and really cherish him and respect him, heck, maybe even relate to him. He wants revenge. 

Evey: Young, desperate, lonely. Evey is one of those characters that you hate to love and gets on your nerves. She’s incredibly naive and at some times, incredibly stupid. She seems very sheltered and is quite modest. She’s a very pretty girl but seems lost, not only in the world, but within herself.

My Thoughts:

I’ve seen the movie a while back, don’t remember a thing except a bald woman and murder. I went into this graphic novel completely unaware of what to expect other than what I remembered from the movie. This was my first graphic novel, bought it out of impulse (along with Watchmen) and was completely impressed. Going into a graphic novel was hard because I’m not used to reading them (or even comics) because I’m not used to pictures. I found myself just reading the text (which is VERY SMALL) and moving on, then wondered why I was so confused, but once I got the hang of it, I was addicted. I could NOT put it down. I read and read until I was so tired my eyes were watering and I looked like I had been crying. I rate it 4/5 stars simply because it was hard to follow with the text being so small and it had a lot of side scenes that would happen that didn’t really seem important.