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Remember, Remember … the 6th book this December is another must read for comic book readers!
V For Vendetta
Written by Alan Moore
Art by David Lloyd
Published by Vertigo
Who knew that the central image of a black & white comic strip published in England in 1982 would become an international symbol of civil protest 30 years later? The Guy Fawkes mask and the mantra ‘Remember, remember the 5th of November’ is on its way to becoming a cliché (the tweets and Facebook status updates don’t help) but in the early 80s they referred to an English holiday largely unknown to North American audiences.
Alan Moore and David Lloyd used their Guy Fawkes Day reference as the linchpin of their dystopian masterpiece: they celebrated the attempted overthrow of their government and imagined a post-apocalyptic future where the United Kingdom had become a police state, under rule by a fascist party called Norsefire.
Enter ‘V’, the title character and an anarchist dedicated to the violent overthrow of his rulers. Wearing a Guy Fawkes mask (a design conceived by David Lloyd), a canonical hat and and a long black coat, he rescues a young woman named Evey Hammond from attempted rape by the secret police. From then on, Evey joins V in his revolution against the government.
While Moore’s Watchmen is more famous, V For Vendetta is moodier and its story is less reliant on the conventions of its genre (VFV was conceived as a superhero story but quickly evolved into something else). As with much of his best work, he started with a very simple observation:
“Capitalism and communism (are) not the two poles around which the whole of political thinking revolved…two much more representative extremes (are) to be found in fascism and anarchy.”
A great starting point to a powerful story.
Purchase a copy of V For Vendetta on Amazon: http://amzn.to/ZjrsLH
Check out David Lloyd’s fabulous artwork from the book:
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