Review
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"I shall tell you where we are. We're in the most
extreme and utter region of the human mind. A dim, subconscious
underworld. A radiant abyss where men meet themselves. Hell,
Netley. We're in Hell." Having proved himself peerless in the
arena of reinterpreting superheroes, Alan Moore turned his
ever-incisive eye to the squalid, enigmatic world of Jack the
Ripper and the Whitechapel murders of 1888. Weighing in at 576
pages, From Hell is certainly the most epic of Moore's works and
remarkably and is possibly his finest effort yet in a career
punctuated by such glorious highlights as Watchmen (
/exec/obidos/ASIN/1852860243/%24%7B0%7D ) and V for Vendetta (
/exec/obidos/ASIN/1852862912/%24%7B0%7D ). Going beyond the
myriad existing theories, which range from the sublime to the
ridiculous, Moore presents an ingenious take on the slaughter.
His Ripper's brutal activities are the epicentre of a conspiracy
involving the very heart of the British Establishment, including
the Freemasons and The Royal Family. A popular cl, which is
transformed through Moore's exquisite and thoroughly gripping
vision, of the Ripper crimes being the womb from which the 20th
century, so enmeshed in the celebrity culture of violence,
received its shocking, visceral birth. Bolstered by meticulous
research that encompasses a wide spectrum of Ripper studies and
myths and coupled with his ability to evoke sympathies in such
monstrous characters, Moore has created perhaps the finest
examination of the Ripper legacy, observing far beyond society's
obsessive need to expose Evil's visage. Ultimately, as Moore
observes, Jack's identity and his actions are inconsequential to
the manner in which society embraced the Fear: "It's about us.
It's about our minds and how they dance. Jack mirrors our
hysterias. Faceless, he is the receptacle for each new social
panic." Eddie Campbell's stunning black and white artwork,
replete with a scratchy, dirty sheen, is perfectly matched to the
often-unshakeable intensity of Moore's writing. Between them,
each murder is rendered in horrifying detail, providing the
book's most unnerving scenes, made more so in uncomfortable, yet
lyrical moments as when the villain embraces an eviscerated
corpse, craving understanding; pleading that they "are wed in
legend, inextricable within eternity". Though technically a
comic, the term hardly begins to describe From Hell's inimitable
grandeur and finesse, as it takes the medium to fresh heights of
ingenuity and craftsmanship. Moore and Campbell's autopsy on the
emaciated corpse of the Ripper myth has divulged a deeply
disturbing yet undeniably captivating masterpiece. --Danny
Graydon
Synopsis
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An unflinching recreation of Jack the Ripper's
mutilation of five Whitechapel prostitutes in 1888 is the core of
this graphic novel. Jack acts as "midwife to the 20th century",
delivering the next 100 years of Holocaust, serial killing and
media rapaciousness as he extracts his last victim's heart.