You Have No Spine. You Have No Pride. - V's Talk With Britain

[jlroberson]

I am, for reasons from the past couple of weeks I'm sure most of you know about, pretty angry and disillusioned with pretty much our entire government right now, but also what appears to be our utter powerlessness to control it. (As someone on the left, you can imagine I feel particularly marooned politically right now) So of course my mind goes straight to Alan Moore & David Lloyd.

So here's V's REAL speech from V FOR VENDETTA.(well, most of it; I applied some cuts but the important stuff is here) Which, unlike the one in the film, doesn't let you off the hook it hangs our leaders upon. Something I feel everyone should read.







All (c)DC Comics. I'd rather say it was (c) Moore & Lloyd, but there you are.

BRIEF PROMO BLURB: If you feel inclined, why not visit Bottomless Studio for some fine comics both print and free, and more besides?

Comments

[mrstatham]

This. The film works well enough on it's own merits, but changes too much about V if you're someone familiar with the book, for me. The film sets it up so that V essentially replaces the Norsefire government as a figurehead and has him save the day by killing the stupidly renamed Sutler.

The book presents V as someone who just sets the example, opening Britain up to the Land of Do As You Please that he talks about. I also find it quite telling that he isn't the one who kills Susan, and doesn't even touch any of the prominent party figures - they all kill themselves, effectively. To me, I disliked that the most.

[jlroberson]

Susan's death, at the hands of the widow Almond ("And you don't even, you don't even know my NAME!") is the best and most poignant, in so many ways.

First of all, she is what makes V the complex book it is. She's the representative of the collateral damage his revenge causes. Who is forgotten, who suffers, who you feel for. She's the reason V is not simply to be seen as a hero, but...something else. It's Moore not giving the reader the easy way out, feeling compassion for someone most might simply forget. It's a precursor to the likes of "Last Man Fall."

And it brings together these threads of love and loss. Her of her abusive husband--who was still all she had--and Susan of Fate, which, essentially, V has been fucking right in front of him, another aspect to the book the film is poorer without: the leader and Fate.

He tries to find new love, among his people. And the first time he touches someone ("So nice...just to shake hands with someone...")--

BANG.

Such amazing craft in this book, so early on. A far superior work over time to WATCHMEN, and I think--along with FROM HELL--approaches literature far more than WATCHMEN(as great as it is, in its very genre way) will after superheroes stop being pop-trendy. It'll make sense still anyway.

[mrstatham]

This, absolutely this. I think Watchmen gets more recognition because it deals directly with heroes, but V is much more compelling and feels like a more personal work for Moore, somehow. But then, I've always enjoyed other bits of his work over Watchmen anyway.

And I do find it interesting that Moore actually manages to make Susan somewhat sympathetic, too. He seems quite lost and miserable throughout most of the book, and especially after the revelations with Fate.

[jlroberson]

WATCHMEN is a great work about comics that only truly makes sense in that context. It can stand alongside SUPERFOLKS, which is plenty worthy as it is. I would say it's even a comics equivalent of perhaps GILES GOAT-BOY(which is mindblowingly complex, but treats world history in many ways along the same lines as Moore in a literature way), but not Pynchon as Moore would want.

V on the other hand can stand alongside WE, 1984, BRAVE NEW WORLD, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. I'd say it wins.

PS

[jlroberson]

And if I'd directed it, both Mrs. Almond & Susan would have had their own romantic lietmotif music that would be brought together at the assassination moment. Not suspenseful. Romantic.