From Hell

Product Information

Affably Evil: Gull is polite even to people he's about to murder, and though it often comes from a place of condescension, none of it seems to be feigned.

Gaiman, Neil (2016). The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction. New York, NY. p.248. ISBN 978-0-06-226226-4. OCLC 939277355. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher ( link) Critic Gary Groth says the most elaborate theme in From Hell stems from Moore's statement that "the Ripper murders — happening when they did and where they did — were almost like an apocalyptic summary of... that entire Victorian age." [7] Awards [ edit ] Dave Windett, Jenni Scott & Guy Lawley, "Writer From Hell: the Alan Moore Experience" (interview), Comics Forum 4, p. 46, 1993From Hell takes as its central premise Stephen Knight's theory that the Ripper murders were part of a conspiracy to conceal the birth of an illegitimate royal baby fathered by Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence. Moore himself has written that he found Knight's theory to be rather unlikely, but felt it would serve the purpose of his story, which uses the killings to explore and deconstruct Victorian society. As he wrote the story, Moore came to believe that the murders and the media spectacle they created in their time marked the beginning of the 20th Century. The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theorists actually believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy or the grey aliens or the 12-foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control. The truth is more frightening, nobody is in control. The world is rudderless. Did you think to kill me? There's no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. There is only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof. I was talking earlier — about anarchy and fascism being the two poles of politics. On one hand you’ve got fascism, with the bound bundle of twigs, the idea that in unity and uniformity there is strength; on the other you have anarchy, which is completely determined by the individual, and where the individual determines his or her own life. Now if you move that into the spiritual domain, then in religion, I find very much the spiritual equivalent of fascism. The word “religion” comes from the root word ligare, which is the same root word as ligature, and ligament, and basically means “bound together in one belief.” It’s basically the same as the idea behind fascism; there’s not even necessarily a spiritual component it. Everything from the Republican Party to the Girl Guides could be seen as a religion, in that they are bound together in one belief. So to me, like I said, religion becomes very much the spiritual equivalent of fascism. And by the same token, magic becomes the spiritual equivalent of anarchy, in that it is purely about self-determination, with the magician simply a human being writ large, and in more dramatic terms, standing at the center of his or her own universe. Which I think is a kind of a spiritual statement of the basic anarchist position. I find an awful lot in common between anarchist politics and the pursuit of magic, that there’s a great sympathy there. Anti-Villain: Netley feels disgust and horror at the crimes he assists in, and only continues helping Gull due to being weak-willed.

Groth, Gary (February 1991). "Last Big Words — Alan Moore on 'Marvelman', 'From Hell', 'A Small Killing,' and being published." The Comics Journal 140. All There in the Manual: The identity of the mysterious woman in Gull's final vision only becomes clear if one reads the annotations, where Moore drops a large hint to help the reader solve the riddle. She is implied to be Mary Kelly, who survived because Gull accidentally killed the wrong woman. Now, as I understand it, the bards were feared. They were respected, but more than that they were feared. If you were just some magician, if you'd pissed off some witch, then what's she gonna do, she's gonna put a curse on you, and what's gonna happen? Your hens are gonna lay funny, your milk's gonna go sour, maybe one of your kids is gonna get a hare-lip or something like that — no big deal. You piss off a bard, and forget about putting a curse on you, he might put a satire on you. And if he was a skilful bard, he puts a satire on you, it destroys you in the eyes of your community, it shows you up as ridiculous, lame, pathetic, worthless, in the eyes of your community, in the eyes of your family, in the eyes of your children, in the eyes of yourself, and if it's a particularly good bard, and he's written a particularly good satire then, three hundred years after you're dead, people are still gonna be laughing at what a twat you were.Moore’s current focus is on exploring the nature of human experience. The 2016 book ‘Jerusalem’ was his magnum opus, explaining the ideas of eternalism, a view of reality not as something moving through time from past through present and into the future, but as a simultaneous permanent reality.

I thought if I can still be the central voice but without having an ‘I’ there, and by not having it there, it makes it easier for the reader to slip into the consciousness of the narrator. If you remove the letter ‘I’ it becomes a universal I. Everybody is the author walking down those streets while they are in the prose.Badass Bookworm: Sir William performs some pretty impressive pouncing for a scholarly doctor and stroke victim in his seventies. From Hell also explores Moore's ideas on the nature of time. Early on, Gull's friend James Hinton discusses his son Howard's theory of the "fourth dimension", which proposes that time is a spatial dimension. All time co-exists, and it is only the limits of our perception that make it appear to progress. Sequences of related events can be seen as shapes in the fourth dimension: history can "be said to have an architecture", as Gull puts it. [5] Gull's experiences seem to confirm this: he has visions of the 20th century during the murders, and as he is dying he experiences, and appears to influence, past and future events. Moore had earlier explored similar ideas in Watchmen, where Doctor Manhattan perceives past, present and future simultaneously, and describes himself as "a puppet who can see the strings". [6] Years later, Mary is shown to have adopted Alice, and the two are living in a cottage on a cliff by the sea.

Ambiguous Ending: It's not made clear whether Gull truly became a god or whether Mary Kelly survived and moved to Ireland. Chris Claremont once said of Alan Moore, "if he could plot, we'd all have to get together and kill him." Which utterly misses the most compelling part of Alan's writing, the way he develops and expresses ideas and character. Plot does not define story. Plot is the framework within which ideas are explored and personalities and relationships are unfolded. If all you want is plot, go and read a Tom Clancy novel. When I was a kid, I used to go to the seaside and play in the waves. The thing you learn about waves, is that when you see a big one coming, you run towards it. You try and get out of its way and you’ll end up twenty yards up the beach covered in scratches. Dive into it, and then you can get behind it. You get on top it, you won’t be hurt. It is counter-intuitive, the impulse is to run away, but the right thing to do is to plunge into it deliberately, and be in control when you do it. Magic is a response to the madness of the twentieth century. I couldn’t be happier with the new home that I’ve found at Bloomsbury: a near-legendary independent publisher with a spectacular list and a fierce commitment to expanding the empire of the word,” said Moore. “I have a feeling this will be a very productive partnership.” Organised religion has corrupted one of the purest, most powerful and sustaining things in the human condition. It has imposed a middle management, not only in our politics and in our finances, but in our spirituality as well. The difference between religion and magic is the same as what we were talking about earlier – I think you could map that over those two poles of fascism and anarchism. Magic is closer to anarchism.Madness and insanity are two terms that are so vague and relative that you can’t really apportion proper values to them. The only thing I can think of that has any use it functional and dysfunctional. Are you working as well? In which case, it doesn’t matter if you are mad. I suppose any form of art can be said to be propaganda for a state of mind. Inevitably, if you are creating a painting, or writing a story, you are making propaganda, in a sense, for the way that you feel, the way that you think, the way that you see the world. You are trying to express your own view of reality and existence, and that is inevitably going to be a political action—especially if your view of existence is too far removed from the mainstream view of existence. Which is how an awful lot of writers have gotten into terrible trouble in the past. Rich Johnston, “Alan Moore Talks To RT TV About Heroes, KKK, Magic And Wearing Masks”, (October 12, 2021) We don’t have a tradition of masked heroes really anywhere else in the world apart from America,” Moore said in an interview with RT’s Sophie Shevardnadze. “I mean, Guy Fawkes, who the ‘V for Vendetta’ mask is based upon – that wasn’t a mask, that was his face,” he said. Ditto for Robin Hood.