Each Friday, we'll be letting a different DC.com writer share what they'll be reading over the weekend and why you might want to check it out. Here's this week's suggestion for a perfect Weekend Escape!
Over 400 years ago, an English Catholic named Guy Fawkes, seeking freedom from religious persecution for his people, conspired to blow up the House of Lords and assassinate King James I. The plot failed. He was discovered, gunpowder at hand, on the night of November 5th, 1605. Fawkes was publicly executed for his attempt to destroy the English government. The date of his capture, Guy Fawkes’ Night, was made a national holiday—a statement of the government’s strength and a warning to those who would challenge it. As long as England stands, Guy Fawkes would burn in effigy for one night of every year.
Persecution, imprisonment, violence and slaughter of English Catholics would continue.
The Premise:
V for Vendetta, first published from 1982-1985 in the United Kingdom’s Warrior magazine, and compiled and completed with DC in 1988-1989, is a story set in the near future. It is about the present. It was about the present in 1982, and it is still about the present in 2024. It is a dystopian picture of a status quo we have accepted as unchangeable and inevitable, because to protest is to burn forever. If there is a lesson to be taken from V for Vendetta at all, it’s to examine the mistakes Guy Fawkes made in the Gunpowder Treason. The mistake was not in challenging our leaders. It was in allowing one man to stand as the emblem of resistance. The only path to revolution is one where anyone can pick up the mask.
Let’s Talk Talent:
Alan Moore is the greatest comic book writer who has ever lived. V for Vendetta isn’t even his best work. It’s still more powerful than nearly any other comic ever written.
David Lloyd, a master of horror, casts a moody future London with the greatest monsters we’ll ever know—the corrupt men we allow to rule us. His masked slasher is our hero.
A Few Reasons to Read:
- V for Vendetta is an allegory. The violence is an artistic expression of rage and a burning desire for change on a systemic level. In that sense, it is viscerally evocative, even cathartic, for those who feel trapped in an unwinnable world. Violence only causes problems, but art can solve them.
- Even at this early stage of his career, Alan Moore’s poetry sings. It is, by his own admission, less subtle than his later work—a comic which perhaps expresses his naked ideas with too much flourish. But when fear and anxiety are your daily realities, then subtlety can be foregone.
- Maybe you’ll learn something.
- Maybe it will inspire you.
- Maybe this will help.
Why It’s Worth Your Time:
They say that there′s a broken light for every heart on Broadway.
They say that life's a game, then they take the board away.
They give you masks and costumes and an outline of the story
Then leave you all to improvise their Vicious Cabaret.
In no-longer-pretty cities there are fingers in the kitties.
There are warrants, forms, and chitties and a jackboot on the stair.
Sex and death and human grime, in monochrome for one thin dime,
At least the trains all run on time, but they don′t go anywhere.
Facing their responsibilities, either on their backs or on their knees
There are ladies who just simply freeze and dare not turn away
And the widows who refuse to cry will be dressed in garter and bow-tie
And be taught to kick their legs up high in this Vicious Cabaret.
At last! The 1998 Show!
The ballet on the burning stage.
The documentary seen
Upon the fractured screen
The dreadful poem scrawled upon the crumpled page…
There's a policeman with an honest soul that has seen whose head is on the pole
And he grunts and fills his briar bowl with a feeling of unease.
Then he briskly frisks the torn remains for a fingerprint or crimson stains
And endeavors to ignore the chins that he walks in to his knees.
While his master in the dark nearby inspects the hands, with brutal eye,
That have never brushed a lover's thigh but have squeezed a nation′s throat.
And he hungers in his secret dreams for the harsh embrace of cruel machines
But his lover is not what she seems and she will not leave a note.
At last! The 1998 Show!
The Situation Tragedy
Grand Opera slick with soap
Cliffhangers with no hope
The water-colour in the flooded gallery…
There′s a girl who'll push but will not shove and she′s desperate for her father's love
She believes the hand beneath the glove maybe one she needs to hold.
Though she doubts her host′s moralities she decides she is more at ease
In the Land Of Doing-As-You-Please than outside in the cold.
But the backdrops peel and the sets give way and the cast get eaten by the play
There's a murderer at the Matinee, there are dead men in the aisles
And the patrons and the actors too are uncertain if the show is through
And with side-long looks await their cue but the frozen mask just smiles.
At last! The 1998 Show!
The torch-song no one ever sings
The curfew chorus line
The Comedy Divine
The bulging eyes of puppets strangled by their strings
There′s thrills and chills and girls galore, sing-songs and surprises
There's something here for everyone, (reserve your seat today!)
There's mischief and malarkies, but no queers, or yids, or darkies
Within this bastard′s carnival, this Vicious Cabaret!
V for Vendetta by Alan Moore, David Lloyd, Steve Whitaker and Siobhan Dodds is available as a graphic novel collection and can be read in full on DC UNIVERSE INFINTE.
Alex Jaffe is the author of our monthly "Ask the Question" column and writes about TV, movies, comics and superhero history for DC.com. Follow him on Bluesky at @AlexJaffe and find him in the DC Official Discord server as HubCityQuestion.
NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Alex Jaffe and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.
