Coupled with V’s constantly grinning visage, this imbues many scenes with a genuinely creepy quality. Lloyd also suggested working without captions, thought bubbles or sound effects. This all takes place within the first six pages, and sets the tone for much of the book, as V trains Evey to be his replacement, and systematically and ruthlessly attacks the corrupt regime in charge, destroying some of their beloved monuments and disabling their omnipresent surveillance apparatus.ĭavid Lloyd, who requested that Moore work with him on the strip, was tired of research after his work on Night Raven, and had balked at the 1930s setting they originally considered, instead opting for the then near-future of the 1990s. Then he blows up the Houses of Parliament. Evey Hammond is a sixteen-year-old girl who, impoverished and desperate, is about to embark on a career in prostitution, and V is an anarchist freedom fighter/terrorist with a taste for the theatrical, who dresses as Guy Fawkes (if Guy Fawkes had carried daggers and smoke bombs) and is just as happy quoting Enid Blyton as he is Shakespeare.Įvey makes the mistake of soliciting a member of the Finger, the secret police, and is only saved by the timely interruption of V, who goes through the handful of thugs like a hot knife through butter, killing three and leaving the others stunned. Into this arena step our two protagonists as they prepare, separately, to go out for the evening. In the nuclear winter that follows the fascist Norsefire party rise to power and establish a brutal police state.
It’s 1997, and Great Britain, having opted out of the nuclear arms race, has survived a war that has laid waste to many other countries, including the USA. It’s noteworthy that Alan Moore wrote two of the books often trotted out as exemplars of the craft, and many more since, some of them more polished and mature, but few more enjoyable. Sadly, that new age never really materialised. They appeared within a few years of each other, in the late 1980s, and seemed to herald a glorious new age for comics, and their chance of being taken seriously by mainstream audiences and critics.
Whenever anyone is making a case for comics not being just for children, the examples usually given are The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, Maus and V for Vendetta.
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