V For Vendetta
A mysterious anarchist named "V" works to destroy the totalitarian government, profoundly affecting the people he encounters.
The series is set in a near-future Britain after a limited nuclear war, which has left much of the world destroyed. In this future, a fascist party called Norsefire has arisen and is the ruling power.
"V", an anarchist revolutionary dressed in a Guy Fawkes mask, begins an elaborate, violent and theatrical campaign to bring down the government.
Background
The first episodes of V for Vendetta were originally published in black-and-white between 1982 and 1985, in Warrior, a British anthology comic published by Quality Comics. The strip was one of the most popular in the title and featured on several covers during the 26 issues of Warrior.
Internally, V for Vendetta is divided into three "books".
Three years later, DC Comics reunited Alan Moore and David Lloyd to finish the series, which was published in ten monthly issues, then collected in hardback and trade paperback. David Lloyd's artwork for V for Vendetta in Warrior was originally published in black-and-white, giving it a harsh chiaroscuro effect that worked very well with the grim subject matter.
In the DC Comics version, the artwork has been "colourised" in pastels, which some fans feel compromises its effectiveness.
Cover of Warrior #19, highlighting the comic's conflict between anarchist and fascist philosophies.
In writing V for Vendetta, Moore drew upon an idea for a strip titled The Doll he had submitted to DC Thomson when he was twenty-two years old. In "Behind the Painted Smile", Moore revealed that the idea was rejected as DC Thomson balked at the idea of a "transsexual terrorist".
The setting developed through their discussions, moving from 1930s United States to near-future Britain. As the setting progressed, so did the character's development; once conceived as a "realistic" gangster-age American, he became, first, a policeman rebelling against the totalitarian state he served, then became a heroic anarchist.
Moore and Lloyd conceived the series as a dark adventure strip influenced by British comic characters of the 1960s, as well as Night Raven, a Marvel UK strip which Lloyd had previously worked on with writer Steve Parkhouse.
Editors Dez Skinn and Graham Marsh came up with the name V for Vendetta. David Lloyd developed the idea of dressing V as Guy Fawkes after previous designs followed the conventional superhero look.
During the preparation of the story Moore made a list of what he wanted to bring into the plot, which he reproduced in "Behind the Painted Smile":
"Orwell.
Harlan Ellison's "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman, Catman and The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World by the same author. Dick Turpin..."
The political climate of Britain in the early 1980s has also been cited as an influence on the work, with Moore positing that Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government would "obviously lose the 1983 elections", and that the Michael Foot-led Labour government that replaced it, being committed to complete nuclear disarmament, would allow the United Kingdom to escape relatively unscathed after a limited nuclear war.
However, Moore felt a post-holocaust Britain would be quickly subverted by fascists. Moore's predictions were perceived to be unlikely and, addressing this when DC reissued the work, he noted:
Naïveté can also be detected in my supposition that it would take something as melodramatic as a near-miss nuclear conflict to nudge England towards fascism... In 1988 DC Comics published a ten-issue series that reprinted the Warrior stories in colour, then continued the series to completion.
The first new material appeared in issue #7, which included the unpublished episode that would have appeared in Warrior #27. Tony Weare drew one chapter ("Vincent") and contributed additional art to two others ("Valerie", "The Vacation"); Steve Whitaker and Siobhan Dodds worked as colourists on the entire series.
The series, including Moore's "Behind the Painted Smile" essay and two "interludes" outside the central continuity, was then collected as a trade paperback, published in the US by DC's Vertigo imprint (ISBN 0-930289-52-8) and in the UK by Titan Books (ISBN 1-85286-291-2).
Plot
November 5, 1997, London. The vigilante known as V rescues a young woman, Evey Hammond, from a gang of police agents (known as "Fingermen") who are about to rape her after arresting her for prostitution.
After dispatching the Fingermen, V heads to a rooftop with Evey and detonates a bomb inside the abandoned Palace of Westminster, emulating the failed 1605 Gunpowder Plot. Evey tells V her life story, describing the nuclear war of the late 1980s which eventually led to the fascist coup d'état in Great Britain, after which her father was rounded up as a political prisoner and presumably killed.
Investigation of V's bombing is assigned to Eric Finch, the head of "The Nose" -- the regular police force -- and an experienced investigator who serves the government out of a love of order rather than political conviction.
However, because Surridge expressed remorse for her previous actions, her death is painless. Unfortunately for Almond, he had forgotten to reload his gun after having cleaned it earlier that same night, and is killed by V.
Finch begins to read a diary kept by Dr.
It reveals all of the victims' previous histories with V, an inmate at the Larkhill camp who was subjected to a medical experiment run by Dr. Surridge, in which he was given hormonal injections with a drug called "Batch 5".
V, the only prisoner to have survived the death camp, chose to eliminate its surviving officers to prevent the government from discovering his true identity. With no records of his real identity existing, V can operate covertly.
Four months later, V breaks into Jordan Tower, the home of The Mouth, to broadcast a speech that calls on the people to take charge of their own lives.
He escapes by forcing Roger Dascombe into one of V's own costumes, causing him to be fatally shot by police who storm the room. Eric Finch, in going over the crime scene, is introduced to Peter Creedy, a petty criminal replacing Almond as head of The Finger.
Finch is provoked into assaulting Creedy in frustration of Creedy's lack of appreciation of V's capability and over a personal remark Creedy made about Dr. After a confrontation in the Shadow Gallery, she finds herself abandoned on a street, unable to find V.
Creedy begins organizing a private militia, hoping to use V's destabilization of the Party to mount a coup against the Leader.
When Gordon is murdered by Scottish gangster Alistair Harper, Evey attempts to kill him in revenge but is arrested and accused of attempting to murder Peter Creedy as he was meeting with Harper. He reveals that Valerie was another Larkhill prisoner who died in the cell next to his; the letter that Evey read is the same one that Valerie had passed on to V.
The subsequent lack of government surveillance causes a wave of violence and hedonism which is violently suppressed by Creedy and Harper's street gangs. Finch's assistant Dominic realizes that V has had access to the Fate computer since the very beginning, explaining his foresight; this news accelerates the mental collapse of the Leader.
Finch travels to the abandoned site of Larkhill, where he takes LSD.
The wounded V returns to the Shadow Gallery and dies in Evey's arms. When Evey appears to the crowd as V, a general insurrection begins.
Evey completes V's final act of subversion.
All forms of authority in Britain are now gone; its future is left uncertain.
Characters
Major characters
V: A masked revolutionary who seeks to systematically kill the leaders of Norsefire, a fascist dictatorship ruling post-apocalyptic England. The compound caused vast cellular anomalies that eventually killed all of the subjects except V, on whom many people believe it granted enhanced strength, reflexes, endurance and pain tolerance, though there is no confirmation of this in the book; V maintains that he is just a man.
He is supposed to have taken his name from the Roman numeral "V", the number of the room he was held in during the experiment. This is the main explanation of the origin of his name, as it is stated in the book.
At the end of the book, V lets Chief Inspector Eric Finch shoot him, and dies in Evey's arms. In Watchmen, another work by Alan Moore, the character Rorschach also wears a mask and makes use of the same distorted speech bubbles whenever wearing it, and normal bubbles when not.
Whenever V quotes another author, the quotation marks are perfectly visible.
Evey Hammond: The main character of the story, a teenage girl who is saved by V from the "Fingermen". Susan: Also known as "The Leader", he is the head of the Norsefire Party and the official Leader of the country, although his power is largely ceremonial.
In the end of the novel, he is assassinated by Rose Almond, the widow of one of his former lieutenants. Like Prothero, he worked at Larkhill before being given a higher employment by the state.
Because of the government's destruction of all files about Larkhill and V's vendetta, Surridge is also the only one of V's former tormentors who feels remorse for her actions, and apologizes to him in her final moments of life.
Derek Almond: High-ranking official of the Norsefire government. She uses sex and her superior intellect to keep her husband (for whom she feels nothing but contempt and only sees as a means to an end) in line, and to further her own goal of ultimately controlling the country after he becomes Leader.
Ultimately, her master plan collapses and she is last seen offering her body in exchange for protection and food to a semi-drunken gang after being rejected by Finch (whom she hoped would join her in taking over what was left of the Party after her husband, Peter Creedy and Alistair Harper are all killed) and after anarchy has spilled into London.
Peter Creedy: A coarse, petty man who replaces Derek Almond as Security Minister of "the Finger" after the latter's death. When Helen learns what he has done, she is enraged at the destruction of her plans and leaves him to bleed to death, setting up a video camera connected to their TV so that he can watch himself die.
Dominic Stone: Younger policeman who is Inspector Finch's assistant.
Initially he and some of his men are hired by Creedy to temporarily bolster the police force after V destroys the government's surveillance equipment, but Helen Heyer recruits him to her side to ensure Creedy's downfall by offering to place him in charge of the Finger after Conrad comes to power. He is beaten to death by Conrad as he fatally slices his neck.
Themes
The series was Moore's first use of the densely detailed narrative and multiple plot lines that would feature heavily in Watchmen.
I didn't want to tell people what to think, I just wanted to tell people to think and consider some of these admittedly extreme little elements, which nevertheless do recur fairly regularly throughout human history.
Moore has never clarified who V supposedly was, beyond stating that V is not Evey's father; he does point out that V's identity is never revealed in the book. This "Everyman" character is further illustrated through the use of Evey, a young, insecure, uneducated person, slowly evolving into "V".
Number 5 and letter V
There are numerous references throughout V for Vendetta (both potentially intentional or unintentional) to the number 5 and letter V, which is itself "5" in Roman numerals:
The title "V for Vendetta" contains 5 syllables.
The title of each chapter begins with the letter V.
The character V is seen reading and quoting from Thomas Pynchon's novel, V.
Beethoven's fifth symphony is used by V and noted for the prominent use of three short notes and one long, which is the Morse Code identifier for the letter V (this code was used as a call sign by the BBC during World War II, most famously in the sense of V for Victory).
Evey's name is composed of "E" (the fifth letter of the alphabet), "V" (5 in Roman numerals, and the fifth letter from the end of the alphabet), and "Y" (25th letter of the alphabet, or 5 squared).
The woman who dies in the cell next to that of V at Larkhill is named Valerie Page.
Valerie's letter has 5 pages.
V leaves a violet carson after he kills someone.
V is eventually identified as the prisoner from Room 5 at Larkhill Internment Camp.
The five doors are labeled with Roman numerals, so Room 5 is emblazoned with a "V".
Valerie's room number at Larkhill Internment Camp was 4, in Roman numerals "IV", which is also the phonetic form of Evey.
V's hideout is accessed from the closed Victoria tube station, the damaged sign of which resembles a sideways V when Finch locates it.
V's personal motto consists of the Latin phrase Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe), which in turn consists of five words that begin with the letter V - V mentions the origin of the phrase is Faust.
Guy Fawkes Day happens on November 5. November is also the only month in the Gregorian calendar with the letter V in it.
As Evey appears to give her speech to the public after she has assumed the identity of V, the visual angle of the frame causes a V to be formed between the edges of the building she is standing on and the building behind her.
The government consists of the five branches which are identified with the five senses.
At Larkhill, V is injected with Batch "5".
V's last word, at the end of the series, starts with a V.
Much of V's dialogue is in Iambic Pentameter.
Adaptations
Music
David J of the band Bauhaus and Love and Rockets, who has collaborated with Moore on other projects, recorded a version of V's song "This Vicious Cabaret" and other music inspired by the book, which appeared on an EP titled V for Vendetta.
Referenced throughout the song is V's television speech to the British population, and the book he reads to Evey.
The Spanish metal and hip hop band Def Con Dos has a song titled "V de Vendetta" included in their 1991 album Tercer Asalto.
7th Son, a Las Vegas based metal band, wrote a song called "V" or "V for Vendetta" and used to have an alternate logo that was an adaptation of a V for Vendetta movie poster.
Now-defunct Raleigh, NC based punk band The Trepanators had a song called "V", whose lyrics were mostly comprised of the famous nursery rhyme repeated throughout the story and film ("Remember, remember, the fifth of November...").
British rock band Vicious Cabaret took its name from V's song "This Vicious Cabaret".
Theatre
The Swedish production company Stockholms Blodbad staged a live theatrical adaptation of the comic in 2000 under the title Landet där man gör som man vill, which translates into The Land where you do as you please.
Film
The first adaptation of V for Vendetta ever filmed for the screen is one of the scenes in the documentary feature film The Mindscape of Alan Moore and was shot in early 2002. Originally slated for a 5 November 2005 release, to coincide with Guy Fawkes Night and the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, it was postponed until March, possibly due to the 7 July 2005 London bombings, although producers denied this was the reason.
Alan Moore, however, distanced himself from the film, as he has with every screen adaptation of his works to date.
The film changes the original message by arguably having changed "V" into a freedom fighter instead of an anarchist. An interview with producer Joel Silver suggests that the change may not have been conscious; he identifies the V of the comics as a clear-cut "superhero… a masked avenger who pretty much saves the world," a simplification that goes against Moore's own statements about V's role in the story.
Co-author and illustrator David Lloyd, by contrast, embraced the adaptation. In an interview with Newsarama, he states: "It's a terrific film.
The "transformation" scene between Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving is just great.