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A review by adamskiboy528491
From Hell by Alan Moore
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.