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adamskiboy528491's review against another edition
5.0
"It is beginning, Netley. Only just beginning. For better or worse, the twentieth century. I have delivered it." - Sir William Whether Gull.
From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell is a comic book series speculating about the identity of Jack the Ripper. The series was published in 10 volumes between 1991 and 1996, and an appendix, "From Hell: The Dance of the Gull-Catchers," was published in 1998. The entire series was collected in trade paperback, published by Eddie Campbell Comics in 1999. It's a bit less fantastic than some of Moore's other works. It's a creepy kind of reverse whodunit. From Hell, which takes as its central premise Stephen Knight's theory that the Ripper murders were part of a conspiracy to conceal the birth of an illegitimate royal baby fathered by Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence. Moore himself has stated that he found Knight's theory to be rather far-fetched but felt it served the purpose of his story. It's about how the 19th century turned into the 20th century. There's a lot of history and philosophy, and the art resembles an illustrated crime broadside from the time: gloomy and a bit unhinged.
Eddie Campbell's scratchy monochrome artwork manages to sell the decrepit, unsettling atmosphere while being magnificently ornate and detailed when it needs to be. The portrayal of London's cathedrals and Gull's mystical visions are awe-inspiring. This miniseries delves into the Jack the Ripper murders in graphic detail, and you'll be glad it's in black and white. (Then you read the appendix, which contains actual crime scene photos, obviously also in black-and-white. There, the lack of colour is no help.) The violence eventually takes a back seat as the story delves into the mind of a misogynist madman, which is no less unsettling. Even an entire chapter is devoted to a graphically detailed dissection of a corpse.
In keeping with Alan Moore's (and Dr Gull's) view of history as a complex, multi-faceted structure that can be viewed and understood from multiple angles and perspectives, the story sometimes shifts genres depending on whose viewpoint we're seeing. To wit:
* From Abberline's perspective, it's a procedural starring the heroic police detective pursuing a killer.
* From the victims' perspective, it's about their daily struggle to survive in London's underworld.
* From Walter Sickert's perspective, it's a personal drama about middle-class Victorian life.
* From Gull's perspective, it's experimental, speculative fiction incorporating concepts like mysticism, predestination and time travel.
From Hell is quite a divisive book. It inevitably appears in recommendation lists, so people love it. Still, you also get responses from people who hated it: they didn't like the walls of text, had issues with character recognition, and the art resembles old tintype photography. Something about the inky black pen scratches and geometry of the line work; fuzzy genetic memories from a less-developed stage in the public consciousness. It isn't there to provide a clear picture of what's going on. The comic may be the Alan Moore comic most liable to cause the reader an existential crisis. "What is the fourth dimension?" isn't a rhetorical question in this story. Through the various clairvoyant states that Gull and a few other characters are witnesses to, it gradually becomes clear that you can't fight fate in any meaningful way here. Everything in the universe, down to the slightest thought passing through your head, is preordained by the simple immovable nature of time itself. Past, present, and future all coexist and are all the same. Everything that will happen has already happened.
From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell is a comic book series speculating about the identity of Jack the Ripper. The series was published in 10 volumes between 1991 and 1996, and an appendix, "From Hell: The Dance of the Gull-Catchers," was published in 1998. The entire series was collected in trade paperback, published by Eddie Campbell Comics in 1999. It's a bit less fantastic than some of Moore's other works. It's a creepy kind of reverse whodunit. From Hell, which takes as its central premise Stephen Knight's theory that the Ripper murders were part of a conspiracy to conceal the birth of an illegitimate royal baby fathered by Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence. Moore himself has stated that he found Knight's theory to be rather far-fetched but felt it served the purpose of his story. It's about how the 19th century turned into the 20th century. There's a lot of history and philosophy, and the art resembles an illustrated crime broadside from the time: gloomy and a bit unhinged.
Eddie Campbell's scratchy monochrome artwork manages to sell the decrepit, unsettling atmosphere while being magnificently ornate and detailed when it needs to be. The portrayal of London's cathedrals and Gull's mystical visions are awe-inspiring. This miniseries delves into the Jack the Ripper murders in graphic detail, and you'll be glad it's in black and white. (Then you read the appendix, which contains actual crime scene photos, obviously also in black-and-white. There, the lack of colour is no help.) The violence eventually takes a back seat as the story delves into the mind of a misogynist madman, which is no less unsettling. Even an entire chapter is devoted to a graphically detailed dissection of a corpse.
In keeping with Alan Moore's (and Dr Gull's) view of history as a complex, multi-faceted structure that can be viewed and understood from multiple angles and perspectives, the story sometimes shifts genres depending on whose viewpoint we're seeing. To wit:
* From Abberline's perspective, it's a procedural starring the heroic police detective pursuing a killer.
* From the victims' perspective, it's about their daily struggle to survive in London's underworld.
* From Walter Sickert's perspective, it's a personal drama about middle-class Victorian life.
* From Gull's perspective, it's experimental, speculative fiction incorporating concepts like mysticism, predestination and time travel.
From Hell is quite a divisive book. It inevitably appears in recommendation lists, so people love it. Still, you also get responses from people who hated it: they didn't like the walls of text, had issues with character recognition, and the art resembles old tintype photography. Something about the inky black pen scratches and geometry of the line work; fuzzy genetic memories from a less-developed stage in the public consciousness. It isn't there to provide a clear picture of what's going on. The comic may be the Alan Moore comic most liable to cause the reader an existential crisis. "What is the fourth dimension?" isn't a rhetorical question in this story. Through the various clairvoyant states that Gull and a few other characters are witnesses to, it gradually becomes clear that you can't fight fate in any meaningful way here. Everything in the universe, down to the slightest thought passing through your head, is preordained by the simple immovable nature of time itself. Past, present, and future all coexist and are all the same. Everything that will happen has already happened.
saidtheraina's review against another edition
3.0
Must have read this right before joining goodreads, probably while I was working at the Shelton Library, with adults. Vivid, influential, intense.
jrlagace's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
mattycakesbooks's review against another edition
5.0
I don't really know how to review this book, but I feel I need to. First off, it's the first thing I've read since Salem's Lot at age 13 that gave me nightmares. They weren't specifically related to Jack the Ripper, but I can't honestly say the mindset I was in afterward didn't put me in a nightmare-mood.
The truth about this book is that the Ripper murders are almost tangential to the point of the work itself. The story, which is largely fictional though based on fact, is about the cover-up conspiracy to keep the true reason behind the Ripper murders from becoming public. It's not that it's true that matters, it's that it's possible. I realized, towards the end, that all of this probably didn't but easily COULD have happened, and that there were likely similar atrocities in our collective history that have not been as well-publicized as Jack the Ripper's reign of terror that were more effectively covered up.
The point isn't that conspiracy theories are TRUE, it's just that they are POSSIBLE, and are therefore probably inevitable. Do I fall for Freemason conspiracies? Eh, not so much. Alan Moore himself says that while it's possible to believe in individual conspiracies, it's really just a comfort blanket protecting us from the much more terrifying truth: that no one is in charge, that all is chaos.
And the fact that these structures, these authorities are so patently corruptible, so prone to delusion, so HUMAN, is something we rarely think of. They are not mechanical, and they do not have things "in control," either benevolently or nefariously, and that in itself is the most terrifying part of reality, that things may be run by people like us.
As far as the quality of the writing and art, it's impeccable. All black-and-white, all extremely stark and realistic, this does not present a single character as a flawless comic-book superhero, but rather, presents everyone as flawed or even normal, and thus presents the grittiness of late 19th Century London in an extremely realistic fashion. This deserves all the acclaim it gets. Get over your dislike or hesitance towards graphic novels (or, if you must, comic books) and read this.
--------------------
I re-read this in June of 2013, after I'd lived in Lilian Knowles House - formerly the Providence Row Night Refuge - for a year. This time I read the appendices along with each chapter, which gave me significantly more appreciation for this piece of work than I'd had before - which should say something, seeing as I gave it five stars at the time.
This is an incredible story, flawlessly executed. The research required to do it - into the history of London, the history of the Freemasonry, the psychology of murder, as well the personal histories of William Gull, Fred Abberline, the five victims, and virtually all of Victorian London - is staggering. And while it's clear he mainly draws on a few sources, some of which he admits as severely flawed, he's always honest enough to do so, and he painstakingly explains, page-by-page, what is factual, and what is invented. If you are not into graphic novels, read this. It's incredible.
The truth about this book is that the Ripper murders are almost tangential to the point of the work itself. The story, which is largely fictional though based on fact, is about the cover-up conspiracy to keep the true reason behind the Ripper murders from becoming public. It's not that it's true that matters, it's that it's possible. I realized, towards the end, that all of this probably didn't but easily COULD have happened, and that there were likely similar atrocities in our collective history that have not been as well-publicized as Jack the Ripper's reign of terror that were more effectively covered up.
The point isn't that conspiracy theories are TRUE, it's just that they are POSSIBLE, and are therefore probably inevitable. Do I fall for Freemason conspiracies? Eh, not so much. Alan Moore himself says that while it's possible to believe in individual conspiracies, it's really just a comfort blanket protecting us from the much more terrifying truth: that no one is in charge, that all is chaos.
And the fact that these structures, these authorities are so patently corruptible, so prone to delusion, so HUMAN, is something we rarely think of. They are not mechanical, and they do not have things "in control," either benevolently or nefariously, and that in itself is the most terrifying part of reality, that things may be run by people like us.
As far as the quality of the writing and art, it's impeccable. All black-and-white, all extremely stark and realistic, this does not present a single character as a flawless comic-book superhero, but rather, presents everyone as flawed or even normal, and thus presents the grittiness of late 19th Century London in an extremely realistic fashion. This deserves all the acclaim it gets. Get over your dislike or hesitance towards graphic novels (or, if you must, comic books) and read this.
--------------------
I re-read this in June of 2013, after I'd lived in Lilian Knowles House - formerly the Providence Row Night Refuge - for a year. This time I read the appendices along with each chapter, which gave me significantly more appreciation for this piece of work than I'd had before - which should say something, seeing as I gave it five stars at the time.
This is an incredible story, flawlessly executed. The research required to do it - into the history of London, the history of the Freemasonry, the psychology of murder, as well the personal histories of William Gull, Fred Abberline, the five victims, and virtually all of Victorian London - is staggering. And while it's clear he mainly draws on a few sources, some of which he admits as severely flawed, he's always honest enough to do so, and he painstakingly explains, page-by-page, what is factual, and what is invented. If you are not into graphic novels, read this. It's incredible.
ceelabee's review against another edition
4.0
I'm not in love with the art (sorry Eddie Campbell), but the story is great - creepy and psychedelic with real conspiracy theorist appeal. It made my skin crawl.
bexrecca's review against another edition
5.0
An amazing, interesting look at the confusing history of Jack the Ripper.
mgarciap's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
brettregister's review against another edition
4.0
It's no "[b:V for Vendetta|5805|V for Vendetta|Alan Moore|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165548128s/5805.jpg|392838]" but it's still better than most everything else.