V is for Vendetta by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd

I'm still behind on my book posting and I'm trying to catch back up ...

This is Book 25 started, book 21 finished

V is for Vendetta by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd
Published by Vertigo, 1988

Let me start by asking why haven’t I ever read this before?  I've had half an eye on V as a graphic novel for a good decade or more.  It’s been in my kindle for about a year too, I just never seemed to pick it up.  All I can say is, my loss.   This graphic novel is fantastic in the way the comics of late 80’s, early 90’s really get me going as they explored a darker side of mankind.

Now, I've never seen the movie and I knew little about this storyline before I read it other than its set in an alternate timeline in a dystopian Britain.   This is a post nuclear war world in the late 1990s some 13 years after the war.  Britain was spared but in the chaos after the war was taken over by a fascist group.  All the non-whites, liberals, homosexuals, communists and other usual suspects were rounded up, sent to concentration camps and killed.   Now this is a repressive, homogeneous world controlled by a strong central government.

The book opens on Guy Fawkes Night with our main character and anti-hero saving a girl from being raped by government goons and also blowing up Westminster Abbey.  The book revolves around the fascist government trying to capture ‘V’, our protagonist and anarchist, and the struggle between the two extreme philosophies as they’re applied to society at large.

The story line is dark and pulls no punches.

V is a madman and genius and has a vision of the people living free; living as they will vs. living in a world completely controlled by a corrupt and rigid government.  Within the context of the story, there is little room for any other way between these two extremes.

The book ends with a very strong ending but with no clear resolution; there is no happily ever after.  There is just the next stage.   I like that it ended in a place without tying everything up in a neat bow and I like that there weren't further comics written in this series to extend it.  I’m not sure that if I read this piece by piece, as separate comics, if I would have enjoyed it as much while I waited to find out the next and the next and the next parts until is just ended.  But, that’s one of the things I like about the graphic novel format where an entire series of a significant chunk is anthologized to create a fuller novel.

As put together, I think this is brilliant.

5 Stars