V for Vendetta by Alan Moore, David Lloyd

V for Vendetta is a 296 page science-fiction graphic novel by author Alan Moore and illustrator David Lloyd. Although the film was based off the novel, there is a much more related script you can read to get that story. This story is quite a bit different from the screen production.

V for Vendetta revolves around the main character V, who is an escapee from the government concentration camp, “Larkhill Resettlement Camp” (for homosexuals, foreign immigrants, political prisoners, etc.). The setting is a “future” totalitarian England, 1997-8–it was published in 1988. The story is about V’s vendetta against the government for placing him and many others in the concentration camp and experimenting on them, against the people who worked at the camp, and also a bit about freeing the people of England from authoritarian rule. Due to the drugs that he was given in the camp, V is for all intents and purposes insane, and at the very least, unpredictable and dangerous in the eyes of the government.

During V’s stay in the camp, he was actually given a small role of responsibility to take care of the gardens and was therefore allowed to order all kinds of chemicals and fertilizers and the like. Using these things, he actually ends up storing them in his room in order to cause a large fire and escape. Once he escapes, he moves into the Shadow Gallery, collecting fine works of art and music (via jukebox) and plans his attack on November 5th. This is where Evey Hammond comes into the mix — a 16-year-old orphan who is about to attempt prostitution as a means to make a living. Unfortunately, she gets accosted by Fingermen, but fortunately is saved by V! This starts their journey through the story and her education on the vendetta. Of course, there are many other notable characters, but I can’t mention everyone.

The story is complex and incredibly well-thought out. The characters each have their own motives for wanting to take down the Leader (Mr. Susan) and his lackeys. The intricate play of human motivation is impressive. One thing I have come to respect about Alan Moore’s writing is the intense amount of back story each character is given; when even minor characters seem to come alive, it makes the larger story that much more believable. Along with the writing, I loved the artwork. The depiction of V in a Guy Fawkes mask — the persona encompasses a bit of what V is all about. He truly is an idea, rather than just a man, which is shown in the slightly different ending the novel had compared to the film.

Although it may seem clichè, my two favorite characters were the Leader and V. The novel really highlighted their insane intelligence and how it affected them personally. Insights into the Leader’s rule and time spent with Fate (government watch computer and program) were fascinating, and V’s time at Larkhill was probably the most interesting single plot line in the novel. I really enjoyed V for Vendetta, and although it’s not my favorite graphic novel, it is definitely in the upper register. For fans of the film (as I am; I love the movie, and will still repeatedly watch it even after reading the novel), I would highly recommend reading it. For those of you who haven’t seen the movie and are interested, I would also recommend the novel — it is a great political statement and fascinating character-driven story.

Watchmen by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons

I started reading Watchmen during second term of last school year, and finished reading it for my graphic novel class during May term. I forgot that I had started a review until I got into listening to Bob Dylan and the song “The Times, They Are A-Changin” came on. For those of you who don’t know, that is the title song for the film adaptation of the graphic novel. Back when graphic novels were, shall I say, less accepted and more ‘edgy’, Watchmen was a must-read for many followers of the medium. Now, it seems cliche to list it as a favorite graphic novel, but I will preface the review by admitting it has become one of mine. I was unsure of how long it really is until I searched it — my book is broken into the original 12-issue series, and so each issue starts over at page 1. According to goodreads, Watchmen is 408 pages.

Watchmen is incredibly complex and has many, many threads of narrative. One of the main threads is that of the people who used to make up the Watchmen and their lives. There is Jon, as most everyone would recognize as Dr Manhattan, his girlfriend Laurie (Silk Spectre II), Dan (Nite Owl II), Adrian Veidt (Ozymandias), and Rorschach.  Rorschach, the only one from the Watchmen that still wears his mask, is convinced there is someone killing off masked heroes. He travels his old haunts and alerts his old comrades of his hypothesis. While this is occurring, the world these ex-heroes live in is illuminated. In a political struggle with the Soviet Union, scientists count down a giant clock to midnight — how close they think we are to nuclear war.

A second thread occurs as a series of stories and flashbacks. We are told the story of the original Minutemen, and their exploits and fall into disrepair as many members met horrible ends (death, insanity, etc.). This is a sort of parallel to the present, post-Keene Act. The Keene Act outlawed vigilantes, forcing heroes to hang up their costumes.

A third thread is a separate story entirely. Included throughout the novel is metacomic sort of story. From Tales of the Black Freighter, we get “Marooned,” a story about a man who is marooned on an island with his crew. I won’t get into this thread much — though it is interesting and a great commentary on the rest of the novel, it is grisly.

A fourth (sort of) thread we receive are chapters from “Under the Hood”, a novel written by Hollis Mason (original Nite Owl). It is interesting as well, and adds a lot of back story to the novel, but I won’t go into much detail here. In a similar fashion, we get to read some of Adrian Veidt’s letters and ideas.

If you thought I was kidding about an insanely complex story, I think you might see now that I was being completely serious. Everything in the novel is clearly written or illustrated with intent. There are so many subplots that while I want to rant about how I enjoyed each one, I will resist. Moore himself even said, “we spend a good deal of time with the people on the street. We wanted to spend as much time detailing these characters and making them believable as we did the main characters.” So I hope you can understand that every character was deep and well thought out.

Due to the fact that I read this for a class, I have lots of things I would like to talk about, but for brevity’s sake I will pick just one. In small groups, we discussed the polarity of characters Rorschach, who sees life in black and white, and Veidt, who has a much more subtle view. I personally preferred Veidt’s views, and though many who saw the movie see him as an ass, I believe the novel puts his views into perspective and show how he really is a genius (his ‘power’ is being the most intelligent man in the world).

One of my favorite things about this novel is the excruciating amount of detail. I really mean that; if you look through the book after reading it multiple times, I am positive you would still find new symbols or background images that comment on the story. My favorite chapter of the book is titled, Fearful Symmetry, and rightly so. I was incredibly pleased (tickled pink, you might say) to find that the first and last page, second and second to last, third and third to last, etc. pages were symmetrical — in color, size, and many times even in content. This is just one example of the time put into the amazing illustrations. Every panel seems painstakingly put together with tiny details that are only revealed through multiple readings, once you have a grasp on plot.

Sound like I’m gushing? The only thing I really didn’t enjoy about Watchmen was the “Marooned” comic — and that was just because it was a lot darker (in color, not just content) than the rest of the novel. Even this, I could appreciate, if not love. Just about everything else in this novel is worthwhile. I think the questions that arise from this story about humanity, life, and what we are personally willing to do when it comes to saving human life are worth pondering. I have much respect for both Moore and Gibbons for the masterpiece they have created. I urge you to read it. If you enjoyed the movie, read the novel; if you haven’t seen or read either and don’t know what to expect, feel free to watch the film. It is also excellent — many scenes were taken directly from panels in the book. Both are excellent pieces of literature.

Black Hole by Charles Burns

I read Black Hole for my graphic novel class. I had never heard of, and had no idea what to expect. Although it doesn’t have page numbers, Goodreads says it is 352 pages long. It felt a lot shorter than that, as it moved extremely quickly. I finished it in two sittings. However, the content makes it seem longer — this was a strange book.

I honestly got confused with this plot, which isn’t something I can say about a lot of novels. This may have been, in part, because of the fact that two male characters (and even the main female character) all looked alike — they all had black shoulder length hair with short bangs. I plan to go back through, and reread the novel again knowing that the two guys, Keith and Rob, are not the same person. Now this may have been a hard mistake to make for some, but it made things a little confusing at first for me.

I believe the basic plot takes place in the 70s and is structured around Rob and Chris, who have a rocky start to a relationship, and their various friends. The other possible main character is Keith, who I figured out was a separate person from Rob about halfway in… All these people are somehow dealing with a type of ‘bug’ or disease that is being spread through sexual contact/saliva that physically disfigures people in strange ways (facial restructuring, growing new body parts — Rob’s second mouth, for example). This was really odd, and not well explained, but interesting all the same. This disease is incurable, and makes people social outcasts. Many who have it resort to living in the woods, stealing food to get by, and avoiding normal society.

One thing that really struck me about this book was, unsurprisingly, the artwork. Partially because the characters do drugs quite a bit, and also partially due to the weirdness of their world, the artwork was beautiful and mind-opening, and just absolutely wonderful in every way. I know it sounds like I’m fawning over the art — probably because I am. One character does artwork throughout the book, and you get to see some of it, and even that is wonderful in a weird, disturbing way. I spent much longer taking in the details of the strange layout (when Rob is tripping on LSD) than looking at the words that just described what he was seeing. The panels start to get wavy, start to weave into one another, and start to change shape when things get trippy — I feel this was a fantastic way to help the reader know what the characters were experiencing.

If you don’t have an open mind about drugs, sex, and horrible teenage actions, I would warn you away from this book. However, if you are open to that sort of thing, I would highly recommend it. Even the ‘sexual’ drawings, shoot, even the art from the pornographic magazines, didn’t feel out of place or negative. It all fit in so well with the content of the story, that I think it really worked. The only downside (if I can even call it that) is the confusing plot. I think on a second read, everything will clear up a bit. Though I know some of it won’t — that’s part of the mystery of the book; the full spreads of black pages with a few white, spiraling objects makes you question the story, the characters, and their motives. Overall, I really enjoyed this book, and definitely plan to reread it soon.

Finals Week

Hello there loyal followers! I haven’t had a chance to do a post recently, for many reasons. Excuses include: reading three books at once, being busy with Mass Effect 3 and Assassin’s Creed, and lastly FINALS. I’ve had projects, papers, and ‘studying’ galore the past two weeks, and therefore haven’t had much time to read (it’s a lazy excuse, since I made time to play video games). Luckily, starting today, I’m on break until April 30th, when we start our May term class (a three week, three-hour-a-day class).

This week, I was expected to turn in a paper about feng shui for my Asian cultures class, turn in a screen adaptation of a story or book of my choice — I chose the prologue and first chapter of The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss — for my film and literature class, and a creative project and researched rationale for said project for my British literature class. For that, we had to pick an author or story or something we focused on in class and do a project that had something to do with it. I chose to focus on “Love and Freindship” by Jane Austen. I wrote a series of letters to a male friend about interactions with two different female friends. It was a fun little study on how my attitude towards a friendship affects content of  interactions and conversations.

Along with all this, I was playing two games. I beat Mass Effect 3, and although the end was a little… brief… as you may have heard from the outcry from the online community, it was a good game. It was very fast paced and exciting. I still prefer Mass Effect 1, mostly because of the role-playing elements, but the gameplay in 3 was quite fun. I have also just started playing through the Assassin’s Creed games. I’m only a few hours into the first one, but it’s fun and I will probably end up spending a good amount of my break playing it. I will most likely also do another play through of Mass Effect 3, just for good measure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, as a sort of replacement for a review this week, I decided to do a preview of upcoming reviews. I am taking a graphic novel course for May term, and will probably review each of them here. We are planning to read both Maus I and II by Art Spiegelman, which I actually read last year, but never thought about reviewing. We are also reading Watchmen, which I didn’t realize… When I read Ghost World and 28 Days Later: The Aftermath, I also checked out Watchmen, and am about halfway through it. The other graphic novel that we plan to read is Black Hole by Charles Burns. Along with standalone graphic novels, we are looking at an anthology called Best American Comics 2011 which is attributed to editors Alison Bechdel, Jessica Abel, and Matt Madden and a book titled Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am, of course, still reading The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson. I am about halfway through, and it’s quite enjoyable so far. I’m hoping to finish it and The Hero of Ages over break, and have the reviews up soon. On a bit of a side note, after my final final today, I plan to stop in at the North American Review at UNI to let them know I am interested in a job (writer, editor, whatever they have). The NAR is the first literary journal to be published in the US and has a great reputation. When I attend UNI next year, I’m really hoping to be able to work there. Wish me luck!

28 Days Later: The Aftermath by Steve Niles

This short, 112-page-long graphic novel is a movie companion of sorts to 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later. It takes place behind the scenes of the creation and outbreak of the rage virus that permeates the story of the movies. Again, this was found in my perusal of the graphic novel section of the library.

The novel is set up in four distinct sections which focus on the Stages of the Rage virus: Development, Outbreak, Decimation, and Quarantine. Each section of the novel focuses on little vignettes of people who encounter the virus. If you have seen at least the first film (28 Days Later), you will be able to pick up on what is happening. If you haven’t seen the movies, it may honestly be a little confusing.

This was a really short graphic novel — though it says it is 112 pages, one whole section of that is the sort of action description of each panel and page of Stage 3: Decimation. This was a neat addition, but I only really skimmed it. The novel is really about 90 pages of continuous story.

"You're right... We should start testing on chimps."

There were two things I really enjoyed about reading The Aftermath. The first was the detailed description of how the  Rage virus was created (human error, of course) and the surrounding characters of the section. The second was the art style. It was dark and bloody, as seen in the picture of one of the creators of the virus. This fit the story, and was just really well done.

If there was one thing I didn’t really like about the novel, it would be that it seemed short, almost to the point of being brief. Although it does make a nice companion to the films, I wouldn’t say it was required reading for a fan by any means. There isn’t really a lot of character development, and the one character who carries through most of the Stages doesn’t matter in the end.ed to show the art, as there wasn’t much dialogue — some pages were almost completely made up of pictures.

This book was a short read — it only took me about an hour and a half to get through. It was enjoyable to learn a little bit more of the Rage virus and the events surrounding each stage of its progression. However, because it was so short and added only a little to the established story of the movies, I would only tentatively recommend reading it if you’re not a big fan.