Daddytank joins the team of CounterComic fans, this time reviewing the amazing ‘From Hell’. 

From Hell - Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell 

In my heyday of comic reading, graphic novels were a pricey proposition. I used to gaze at these amazing tomes in Forbidden Planet or Games Workshop and wish that I had the patience to save up for them but I needed my weekly fix of Judge Dredd, Nemesis, Rogue Trooper, Slaine etc. I needed 2000 AD. And it was through 2000 AD that I came to be familiar with the name Alan Moore.

 

 

 

“Watchmen” is considered by many a comic nerd to be the ultimate graphic novel, but that honour is given by other comic nerds to another of Moore’s works, “From Hell”. And up until six months ago I had read neither. Now I realize that at this point anyone reading this will be thinking “…what’s this twat doing a review on graphic novels for when he’s only just read Watchmen, released in 1986/7.” Well, that’s why I wrote the first part. It was sort of an excuse. Anyway, on with the review.

 

“From Hell” is a gothic nightmare. Eddie Campbell must have gone through litres of black ink creating his scrawled and scratchy recreation of London at its worst and it provides the perfect backdrop for Moore’s semi-imagined narrative of the Jack the Ripper story. I say semi-imagined because once you have read this book, it is very difficult to believe any of the other hypotheses that have been raised on the identity of the Ripper over the years. Moore and Campbell did a huge amount of research into creating this work, detailing everything from the architecture and dress of the time, to reading the hundreds of biographies of the characters involved. This attentiveness is rewarded in the deeply compelling and impressively realistic world they create.

 

There are no heroes in this story, only a variation in the degrees of villainy. The working classes of the east End are a morally bankrupt and diseased bunch but at least they are not the architects of the true evil in “From Hell”. This role lies in the hands of the establishment as populated by the Monarchy, Police and Freemasons. The course of the plot follows many of the lines of research conducted over the years, but the book most often referred to by Moore is Stephen Knight’s “Jack The Ripper : The Final Solution” which was the first to allege a conspiracy of the establishment and to point the finger at Sir William Withey Gull, Queen Victoria’s physician.

 

There are so many good reasons to read this book. It’s empathic portrayal of the plight of the Victorian working classes and it’s luckless “Daughters of Joy” (the slang name for street prostitutes). It’s loving treatment of the crumbling British Empire, with its creaking justice system and its syphilitic prince Albert. It’s brooding Queen Victoria looming over a snakepit of Freemasons, aristocrats and senior dignitaries in a darkly internecine conspiracy. There are so many vivid flashes that make “From Hell” an amazing read. The single frame in which you see the world through Sir William Withey Gull’s eyes, not as a lightless, industrial ghetto but as a vivid Renaissance scene. The joyless graphic sex, and miserable living conditions of the prostitutes at the heart of the story. The truly disturbing chapter which deals with the treatment of the unfortunate Marie Kelly, after being visited by the Ripper. But there is no exploitative element to the portrayal of any of these events (as can so often happen in graphic novels) and Moore is keen to point out in the illuminating appendices (and the touching dedication) of “From Hell” that the women who died at the hands of Jack the Ripper were poorly served by all in life and death.

 

On reflection, I probably never made any effort to find and read this book because I went to see “From Hell” in the cinema. I was less than impressed and so I wasn’t too sure that I was going to enjoy reading it. Do not let that piece of shit film deter you from reading it. Personally, I think it’s better than “Watchmen”. Not because “Watchmen” isn’t genius, but because it’s even darker and even more reflective of humanity at its lowest. And because I’m sick and sad that appeals to me. And if you’ve read this far it probably appeals to you too.