V for Vendetta

V for Vendetta
File:V-for-vendetta.jpg V For Vendetta collected edition cover, art by David Lloyd
Publication information
Publisher	Quality Comics (UK) Vertigo/DC Comics (USA)
Publication date	1982-1988
No. of issues	10
Main character(s)	V Evey Hammond Eric Finch
Creative team
Written by	Alan Moore
Artist(s)	David Lloyd
Colorist(s)	Steve Whitaker, Siobhan Dodds, David Lloyd

This article is about the comic book series. For the film, see V for Vendetta (film).

V for Vendetta is a ten-issue comic book series written by Alan Moore and illustrated mostly by David Lloyd, set in a dystopian future United Kingdom imagined from the 1980s about the 1990s. 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, an extreme fascist party called Norsefire has arisen and is now 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". Warrior was cancelled at the end of the second Book. 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 "colorized" 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." Years later, Warrior editor Dez Skinn invited Moore to create a dark mystery strip with artist David Lloyd. Lloyd and Moore considered several proposals, including one titled Vendetta that set the story in 1930s United States. 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. Huxley. Thomas Disch. Judge Dredd. 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. Vincent Price's Dr. Phibes and Theatre of Blood. David Bowie. The Shadow. Night Raven. Batman. Fahrenheit 451. The writings of the New Worlds school of science fiction. Max Ernst's painting "Europe After the Rain". Thomas Pynchon. The atmosphere of British Second World War films. The Prisoner. Robin Hood. 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:

Naivete 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... The simple fact that much of the historical background of the story proceeds from a predicted Conservative defeat in the 1982 General Election should tell you how reliable we were in our roles as Cassandras.

When Warrior was canceled in 1985 (with one completed episode unpublished due to the cancellation), several companies attempted to convince Moore and Lloyd to let them publish and complete the story. 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 graphic novel, 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

The 5th of November, 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 then takes her to his secret lair, which he calls "The Shadow Gallery". There, Evey tells V her life story, describing the nuclear war of the late 1980s that led to anomie, and then of the fascist coup d'état in which her father became a political prisoner. A new government under the name of the old has risen.

Investigation of V's bombing is assigned to Eric Finch, head of "The Nose" (the name by which the regular police are commonly known) and an experienced investigator who serves the government out of a love of order rather than political conviction. Through him we meet other figures in the Party, including the Leader, Adam James Susan, a recluse who is fixated on the police state's computer system "Fate"; Commander Derek Almond, the leader of "The Finger", the secret police; Rose, Almond's emotionally and physically abused wife; Dominic Stone, Finch's partner; Conrad Heyer, head of "The Eye", the visual surveillance branch; Helen, Heyer's extremely ambitious and ruthless wife; Brian Etheridge, head of "The Ear", the audio surveillance branch; and Roger Dascombe, in charge of "The Mouth", the branch in charge of broadcasting propaganda.

V next blows up the Old Bailey after pretending that he and the Madame Justice statue on the Old Bailey are conversing (which begins with V politely saying hello to Justice, and ends with him giving her a present with a bomb in it and calling her a whore, saying he has met a new woman named Madame Anarchy), and confronts three Party figures to accuse them of past crimes: Lewis Prothero, the propaganda broadcaster who serves as the "Voice of Fate"; Bishop Anthony Lilliman, a pedophile who represents the Party in the clergy; and Delia Surridge, a seemingly apolitical doctor who had a personal relationship with Finch. V attacks each of them in an ironic fashion, derived from previous encounters. Prothero is driven to insanity after V destroys his collection of priceless dolls in a reproduced death camp oven while having Prothero dressed up in a Commander uniform (Prothero was Commander of Larkhill); Lilliman is killed by being forced to consume a cyanide-laced communion wafer just as he is about to rape Evey dressed up in a little girl costume (Lilliman was a priest who was hired to give spiritual support to camp prisoners taking the Batch 5 drug); and Dr. Surridge dies from a lethal injection (she was the doctor in charge of criminal medical experiments at the camp and who had studied V) - however, as she was the only worker at Larkhill that expressed remorse for her actions, the injection and her death are painless. Upon leaving Delia's home, V is surprised by Derek Almond, who was warned by Finch that V was after Surridge and tries to capture him. Unfortunately for Almond, he forgets to reload his gun after having cleaned it earlier that same night, and he is quickly killed by V.

Finch begins his research upon his discovery of Dr. Surridge's diary. It reveals that all three victims were officers at the Larkhill Resettlement Camp, and that over the previous years, every other staff member from the camp has died, apparently killed by V — the vendetta of the title. Finch later discovers that this apparent "vendetta" served as a diversion from the true cause of action. 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. It could also be said that they were killed as retribution for the prisoners' pain and death due to the Larkhill officers' adherence to the fascist administration. With no records of his real name or personage existing, V can operate covertly. All that is known to the reader is that he was subjected to medical experiments involving hormonal injections of a substance called "Batch 5," which presumably triggered V's transformation into an obsessive and brilliant (though possibly psychotic) avenger. Though "codename V"'s past and former identity remain a mystery, in Delia Surridge's flashbacks (while Finch is reading her diary to the leader), one picture shows the back of his head and reveals that he is white (Book 1, Chapter 11, the picture in the upper-right corner of page 81). Naturally, Finch only reads the diary and cannot see that, but the reader, having access to imagery, can see that Codename V is white.

Four months later (February 23, 1998), V breaks into Jordan Tower, the broadcast centre for the Party, to broadcast an anarchist speech that calls on the people to take charge of their own lives. He escapes by tying up Dascombe, placing a copy of V's own costume and mask on him, and standing him up in the control room where he is shot by police who storm the room. Eric Finch, in going over the crime scene, punches Peter Creedy, a petty criminal promoted to Head of the Finger after Almond's death, for a personal remark related to Delia Surridge (with whom he was romantically involved) and is sent by The Leader on a forced vacation.

Evey has developed a strong attachment to V, but he has begun to challenge her morality. After a confrontation in the Shadow Gallery, she finds herself abandoned on a street, unable to find V. She is taken in by Gordon Deitrich, a petty criminal with whom she becomes romantically involved, and they cross paths unknowingly with Derek Almond's widow Rose; after the deaths of her husband and Dascombe (with whom she had been forced by circumstances into having a relationship with), Rose is forced to work as a burlesque dancer, and consequently develops a strong hatred for the Party. Creedy begins organizing a private militia, hoping to use V's destabilization of the Party to mount a coup against the Leader. V, maintaining surveillance on all of these various factions, appears to be manipulating them against each other.

When Gordon is murdered by the Scottish gangster Alistair Harper, whom he was dealing with, Evey attempts to kill Harper in revenge but is seized, arrested, detained, and accused of attempting to murder Peter Creedy as he was meeting with Harper. In her cell, Evey finds a letter from a presumably dead former inmate named Valerie, an actress who was imprisoned for being a lesbian. Evey's interrogator tortures her multiple times and finally gives her a choice of collaboration or death; inspired by Valerie's courage and quiet defiance, she refuses to give in and is told that she is free. To her shock, Evey learns that her imprisonment was a hoax constructed by V, designed to put her through an ordeal similar to the one that shaped him. 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 to read. Evey's anger finally gives way to acceptance of her identity and freedom.

November 1998. V destroys the Party's communication and surveillance centres (housed in Jordan Tower and the Post Office Tower), causing the death of Etheridge, effectively shutting down both The Eye and The Ear and spurring a wave of wanton violence and hedonism which is violently suppressed by Creedy's street gangs. Meanwhile, V notes to Evey that this is not The Land of Do-As-You-Please end result he wants, but rather it's mere chaos in The Land of Take What You Want — an interim period that he intends to follow up with the establishment of true anarchy, a voluntarily orderly society. 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, on the Wiltshire Downs, where he takes LSD. His hallucinations lead him to an intuitive understanding of V, and returning to London, he deduces that V is hidden somewhere in Victoria Station, part of the abandoned London Underground, and goes to find him. V, who knows his time has come to an end, meets Finch and lets Finch shoot him. The bleeding V flees and dies in Evey's arms. Evey considers unmasking V, but decides not to learn his identity; instead, she assumes it, donning one of his spare costumes. Meanwhile, Rose Almond's private vendetta has led her to assassinate the Leader and she is last seen being taken by the Finger. In the ensuing chaos, Creedy's own men kill him, while Finch reports the news that V is dead. When Evey appears to the crowd as V, a general insurrection begins.

Evey completes V's final act of subversion. As requested by V, she performs the destruction of 10 Downing Street by giving her mentor a "Viking funeral" with an explosive-laden Underground carriage containing his body sent to detonate at the desired location. She rescues Dominic from the mob and takes him back to the Shadow Gallery, implying that she intends to train him as her successor, having vowed to help the people to create the society the original V dreamed of creating. Having removed the totalitarian old regime, there is no longer a need for destruction. Finch observes the chaos raging in the city before heading to the countryside. All forms of authority in Britain are now gone; its future is left uncertain. Thus, V has created chaos, which will allow voluntary order to occur. It is to be assumed that Evey will do her best to prevent another imperialistic government from arising from this order.

Characters

Major characters

• V: A romantic, anarchist revolutionary and classical Byronic hero, well-versed in the arts of explosives, subterfuge, computer cracking, and others; he also has a vast literary, cultural and philosophical intelligence. V is the only survivor of an experiment in which four dozen prisoners were given injections of a pituarin/pinearin compound called "Batch 5". The compound caused vast cellular anomalies that eventually killed all of the subjects except V, on whom many people believe granted him enhanced strength, reflexes, endurance, and pain tolerance. But there is no comment on this in the book. V maintains that he is just a man. Although Dr. Surridge believes V was driven insane by the injection, the possibility that feigning insanity to some degree was the first step in V's plan for freedom is left open. Throughout the novel V almost always wears his trademark Guy Fawkes mask, a shoulder-length wig of straight dark-brown hair, and an outfit consisting of black gloves, tunic, trousers and boots. When not wearing the mask, his face is not shown. When outside the Shadow Gallery, he completes this ensemble with a circa-1600's peaked hat and floor-length cloak. His weapons of choice are foot-long daggers that he wields and throws expertly, along with explosives and tear gas. 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. However, other theories may explain his nom de guerre. For instance there is a clear echo in his name of the rallying cry used by Winston Churchill in the struggle of the Allies in World War II to overcome the Axis fascist alliance: 'V for Victory!'. Here it is simply transformed into 'V for Vendetta'. It should also be noticed that the V within a circle is merely an upside-down anarchy sign without the slash marking an A symbol. At the end of the book, V lets Chief Inspector Eric Finch shoot him and V dies in Evey's arms. Evey then assumes V's identity and gives V himself a Viking funeral by placing V inside a bomb-laden train whose eventual destination is The Houses of Parliament. V is the only character's whose speech bubbles look "distorted and twisted", instead of being perfectly oval, possibly to show that the mask distorts his voice. Whenever V quotes another author, the quote brackets (") are perfectly visible.

• Evey Hammond: The main character of the story, a teenage girl who is saved by V from the "Fingermen". She is taken under V's wing, learns of his past, his current battle against the government, and eventually becomes his successor, as well as finding a future successor in Chief Inspector Eric Finch's partner, Dominic Stone.

• Eric Finch: Chief of New Scotland Yard and Minister of Investigations, which has become the "Nose", Finch is a pragmatist who sides with the government because he would rather serve in a world of order than one of chaos. He is nevertheless honorable and decent, and trusted by the Leader because he is reliable and without ambition. He eventually achieves his own catharsis and self-knowledge, expressing sorrow over his complicity with Norsefire's atrocities; nevertheless, he is the one who kills V. He is at one point referred to as Edward Finch (an error on the part of Helen Heyer).

Minor characters

• Adam J. Susan: Also known as "The Leader", he is the dictator of the fascist party that now rules Britain, he is also a racist and homophobic. Susan is in love with the Fate computer system, and prefers its companionship to that of women. Susan, as his own mind slips, also expresses a solipsist belief that the only existing beings are him and 'God' (referring to the Fate computer). Susan does apparently care about his people deep down inside - he is about to shake Rose Almond's hand when she blows half of his head off, killing him, before she is taken away and presumably executed by the Finger.

• Gordon Deitrich: He is a petty criminal specializing in bootlegging who harbors Evey Hammond. He is murdered by Alistair Harper, a ruthless gangster who is trying to expand Scotland's organized crime syndicate into London.

• Lewis Prothero: He was the Commander of "Larkhill", the concentration camp that once held V. Later he becomes "the Voice of Fate", the government radio broadcaster who daily transmits "information" to the public. He is driven insane by a combination of an overdose of Batch 5 drugs and the shock of seeing his prized doll collection burned in a mock recreation of Camp Larkhill. He remains incapacitated for the rest of the story.

• Bishop Anthony Lilliman: As the voice of the Party in the Church, Lilliman is a corrupt churchman given to paedophilia and embezzlement. Like Prothero, he worked at Larkhill before being given a higher employment by the state. Lilliman was a priest who was hired to give spiritual support to the prisoners being given Batch 5 drugs. He is killed when V forces him to take communion with a cyanide-laced wafer after he almost rapes Evey Hammond dressed up as a young girl.

• Delia Surridge: Repentant Larkhill camp doctor whom V nevertheless kills by lethal, albeit painless, injection. Because of the government's destroying of all files about Larkhill and V's vendetta, Surridge is also insinuated to be the only person from Larkhill who remembers V's true identity (upon realizing who V is, former camp commander Prothero is only able to recall him as "the man from room five")

• Derek Almond: High-ranking official of the Norsefire government, a fascist dictatorship ruling post-apocalyptic England. He ran the government's secret police, known as the Finger, before he was killed by the novel's protagonist, V. Almond was replaced by Peter Creedy. While Almond himself did not figure heavily in the story, his death sets in motion one of the novel's major story arcs; that of his widow, Rose, who is left penniless and traumatized by the loss of her husband, who was cold and abusive toward her but whom she nevertheless loved. In her grief and desperation, she blames her plight on Norsefire's leader, Adam Susan, and assassinates him at the novel's climax.

• Rose Almond: The abused wife of Derek Almond, the head of the Finger who hunted for V following the destruction of the Old Bailey and the murder of Dr. Delia Surridge. When he too is murdered, Rose becomes depressed and turns to Roger Dascombe (the broadcaster) for company. She is forced to become a showgirl dancer as a means of supporting herself after Dascombe's death at the hands of V.

• Helen Heyer: The ruthless, scheming wife of Conrad Heyer. She uses sex (or rather the lack thereof where her husband is concerned) and her superior intellect to keep Heyer (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 Conrad becomes Leader. Ultimately, her master plan collapses and she is last seen offering herself (or rather 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 self-centered, ambitious and weak man who replaces Derek Almond as Security Minister of "the Finger" after the latter's death. His ambition is to replace the weakening Susan as Leader, but as part of Mrs. Heyer's plot, he is killed by Alistair Harper's thugs shortly after seizing power.

• Conrad Heyer: In charge of the "Eye", the agency that controls the country's CCTV system. He is subservient to his wife Helen, and she intends for him to become leader, leaving her as the power behind the throne. In the end, V sends Conrad a videotape of Helen being unfaithful and he snaps, killing her lover Alistair Harper but sustaining a fatal wound from Harper's straight-edge razor in the process. When Mrs. Heyer 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. Dominic is the one who figures out the connection between V and the former Larkhill camp staff and V's hacking into the "Fate" computer system. At the end, Dominic is rescued from a mob by Evey and recruited to be her apprentice now that she is V - much as V did with her.

• Valerie Page: A critically acclaimed actress who was imprisoned at Larkhill when the government found out she was a lesbian. Her tragic fate at the hands of the regime motivated V to become a freedom fighter and revolutionary, or so he says.

• Roger Dascombe: The technical supervisor for The Party's media division and the Propaganda Minister of "the Mouth". During V's elaborate attack on Jordan Tower, he is set up as a dummy "V" whilst the real V makes his escape, and killed by the police.

• Alistair Harper: Scottish organized crime leader who kills Evey's lover Gordon. Initially he and some of his men are hired by Creedy to temporarily bolster the police force after V destroyed 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. After Creedy's takeover, Harper fulfils his end of the bargain and kills Creedy with a straight razor. He is himself beaten to death by Conrad Heyer, but inflicts fatal wounds on him in the process.

Themes

The series was Moore's first use of the densely detailed narrative and multiple plot lines that would feature heavily in Watchmen. Panel backgrounds are often crammed with clues and red herrings; literary allusions and wordplay are prominent in the chapter titles and in V's speech (which almost always takes the form of iambic pentameter, a poetic meter reliant on five pairs of syllables, the second syllable of each pair being more stressed than the first; its most famous usage has been in the majority of the works of Shakespeare).

The structure of the book has several direct parallels with Gaston Leroux's Phantom of the Opera: the Shadow Gallery doubles for the Phantom's Lair, and Evey's abduction and re-education mirrors Christine Daae's. V reads Evey to sleep with The Magic Faraway Tree. This series is the source of "The Land of Do-As-You-Please" and "The Land of Take-What-You-Want" alluded to throughout the novel.

Anarchism versus fascism

The two conflicting political viewpoints of anarchism and fascism permeate the story. The Norsefire regime shares every facet of fascist ideology: it rules by fear and authority and worships strong leadership (i.e. the führerprinzip). However, the regime was put in place by democratic means, just like the regime in Nazi Germany. As in most fascist regimes, there are several different types of police and military police who engage in power struggles with each other yet obey the same leader.

The fascist regime embraces total corporatism. An important aspect of corporatism is the total identification of society with state, and to think of society as a body where the different institutions are organs. This is reflected by institutions named after parts of the body: the police (The New Scotland Yard) is The Nose, the surveillance organizations are The Ears and The Eye, the secret police is The Finger (and those who work for them are called Fingermen), and the state-controlled media is known as The Mouth. In creating this system of control, Moore provocatively evokes mainstream English political thought, namely Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, which imagined the state as one vast corporate gestalt, with its legitimacy founded on the need to maintain order and prevent indiscriminate violence (as was hinted at in the Norsefire backstory). The sovereign formed the natural 'head' of the society, which perhaps explains the anatomical nomenclature of the various arms of state government.

To keep this body healthy, fascist ideology prescribes cleansing it of unhealthy elements (i.e. the motto Strength Through Purity), thus, the totalitarianism and concentration camps. In issue #5 (see below), Delia Surridge recapitulates the Milgram experiment as explanation of why ordinary people, such as she, engage in such obedience. The connection to Anglican Christianity and Purity Through Faith is a typical feature of clerical fascism in Roman Catholic countries (i.e. southern France of the Vichy regime 1940-44, Spain under Francisco Franco 1939-75, the Independent State of Croatia under Ante Pavelić 1941-45, and Austria under Dollfuss and Schuschnigg 1933-38); such a form has taken hold specifically in England where, in reality, the Church of England (The Anglican Church) is 'established' with the Queen at its head and the state. This explains why, in story continuity, violent anti-Norsefire rebellion engulfs the non-Anglican parts of the United Kingdom (e.g. Scotland).

The anarchism proposed by V is classic and built specifically around the ideas of Mikhail Bakunin, who is often associated with the idea that the old society has to be torn down before a new one can be built upon its ruins. In issue #2, V has a fictional dialogue with Madame Justice and concludes that anarchy has taught him that "justice is meaningless without freedom", a phrase which closely parallels similar statements by Bakunin.

Several anarchist (or similar) traits encountered are related to 1960s counterculture. V's tactic of humiliating and ridiculing the fascist regime to destabilize it is like the ideas of the Situationists. In issue #8, the phase between fascism and anarchy is called Verwirrung, a German word meaning "confusion", but used here as reference to The Illuminatus! Trilogy (Book One of the trilogy is so titled). It also may be a direct reference to Discordian philosophy in general, as many other aspects of the series (chaos, the creative arts, anarchism, and the obsession with the number "5") draw similar parallels. An aspect of 1960s counterculture was the idea that domestic partnership and its legal forms can constitute a power imbalance between two people where one controls and dominates the other. This is exemplified by the relationships of Mr. and Mrs. Almond as well as Mr. and Mrs. Heyer, but this aspect is not developed theoretically. When Mr. Finch eventually uses LSD to clear his mind and uncover V's hideout, this is probably a reference to Timothy Leary who repeatedly claimed that this particular drug could be used for loosening stiff thinking in general.

Identity

V himself is something of an enigma whose history is only hinted at. The bulk of the story is told from the viewpoints of other characters: V's admirer and apprentice Evey, a sixteen-year-old factory worker; Eric Finch, a world-weary and pragmatic policeman who is hunting V; and several contenders for power within the fascist party. V's destructive acts are morally ambiguous, and a central theme of the series is the rationalisation of atrocities in the name of a higher goal, whether it is stability or freedom. The character is a mixture of an actual advocate of anarchism and the traditional stereotype of the anarchist as a terrorist.

Moore stated in an interview:

...the central question is, is this guy right? Or is he mad? What do you, the reader, think about this? Which struck me as a properly anarchist solution. 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. The ambiguity of the V character is a running theme through the work; it is left for the reader to determine for himself whether V is sane or psychotic, hero or villain. Before donning the Guy Fawkes mask herself, Evey comes to the conclusion that V's identity is unimportant compared to the role he plays.

The letter V in V's mask

V's mask has several Vs on it. The centre of his moustache forms an upside down V and his lower jaw forms a V due to his sharp chin. This is also the reason he wears a smiling mask as opposed to a mask with a serious expression.

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:

• When V is shot, he leaves a trail of blood on the wall as he falls; in the shape of a letter V.

• Valerie's letter has 5 pages.

• 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.

• In the film adaptation V is shot 5 times before killing Creedy

• Beethoven's fifth symphony is used in the book 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.

• In the original comic, V leaves a violet carson after he kills someone.

• The publisher is Vertigo-which begins with a V

• 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". The number 5, when converted to binary numerals, is 101 (a possible allusion to the infamous torture room 101 in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, which has 5 syllables).

• 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 Universum 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 ("U" is written as "V" in Latin). Aleister Crowley also used the phrase as one of his personal mottos, a fact that appears in Alan Moore's later book Promethea. But V mentions only the origin of the phrase in Faust.

• November is 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", or in Roman numerals, Batch "V"

• In the graphic novel, V prepares his revenge for 5 years, but this was changed to twenty years in the film version

• Evey's birthday is in September, so her zodiac sign is probably Virgo which starts with V.

• Guy Fawkes Day happens on November 5

• "Shadow Gallery", V's hideout, is five syllables

• When Evey asks what V is waiting on late in the book, he answers "I'm waiting for the man." The title of a Velvet Underground & Nico song

• Codename V's Last word, at the end of the novel, starts with a V.

• November the 5th or 5th of November has 5 syllables.

• V Kills 5 main characters in the film. (Bishop Lilinman, Delia Surdridge, Prothero, Creedy, and Adam J. Susan)

• Much of V's dialogue is in Iambic Pentameter.

This all draws on The Law of Fives, in particular how it was expressed in The Illuminatus! Trilogy specifically:

"And everything really follows the Fives' law?" Joe asked.

"More than you guess," Dillinger remarked blandly.
"Even when you're dealing with social fields, " Simon added. "We've run studies of cultures where the Illuminati were not in control, and they still follow Weishaupt's five-stage pattern: Verwirrung, Zwietracht, Unordnung, Beamtenherrschaft and Grummet."
...

"Hell," Simon said, "look what Beethoven did when Weishaupt illuminated him. Went right home and wrote the Fifth Symphony. You know how it begins: da-da-da-DUM. Morse code for V - the Roman numeral for five"

[Here one might consider that the telegraph and morse code were invented well after the composition of Beethoven's Symphony #5. Thus the idea of Beethoven intentionally encoding a Morse code letter V into his music under the influence of Weishaupt can only be a figment of Simon's imagination. The actual derivation of the theme is highly disputed (see Symphony No. 5 (Beethoven)) but is unlikely to have come from inventions unknown and unimagined in Beethoven's time. The code is arranged mainly for efficiency with shorter codes for more frequently used letters. Although the code does not line up exactly with modern computations of letter frequency, the two most frequently used letters "e" and "t" are dot and dash respectively. Even if the designers of the code had some affinity for the music, there is no compelling case for the choice of "V" when in popular legend the fifth symphony is associated with the idea of fate ("F") "knocking at the door" or perhaps destiny ("D"). ]

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. According to David, Moore proposed the idea for him to compose music for a set of lyrics that made up an entire chapter of the novel. Within an hour of receiving the lyrics, David had composed the music for the entire chapter.

Pop Will Eat Itself also included several references to V for Vendetta on their 1989 album This is the Day...This is the Hour...This is This! - the song Can U Dig It? includes the lyric "we dig V for Vendetta" and the chorus finishes with the line "Alan Moore knows the score". Another track, The Fuses Have Been Lit, includes references to "the voice of Fate" and "The Land of Do-As-You-Please".

The progressive metal band, Shadow Gallery took its name from V's hideout, as admitted in their website's FAQ. They also have an album named Room V, another obvious reference.

Progressive nineties Brit-pop band Jocasta wrote the song "The Land of Do-As-You-Please" on their 1997 album release, "No Coincidence," released by Epic/VP music. 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 the 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 graphic novel 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 graphic novel in 2000 under the title Landet där man gör som man vill, which translates into The Land where you do as you please.

Film

Main article: V for Vendetta (film)

File:Vprofile.jpg

Hugo Weaving as V in the 2006 film adaptation

A film adaptation was released on 17 March 2006, directed by James McTeigue (first assistant director on The Matrix films) from a screenplay by the Wachowski brothers. Natalie Portman stars as Evey Hammond and Hugo Weaving as V together with Stephen Rea, John Hurt, and Stephen Fry. John Hurt, who played the renamed High Chancellor Adam Sutler in the film V for Vendetta, also played Winston Smith in the 1984 film adaptation of George Orwell's novel, Nineteen-Eighty Four. 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. He ended cooperation with his publisher, DC Comics, after its corporate parent, Warner Bros., failed to retract statements about Moore's supposed endorsement of the movie. After reading the script, Moore remarked:

"[The movie] has been "turned into a Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire in their own country… It's a thwarted and frustrated and largely impotent American liberal fantasy of someone with American liberal values standing up against a state run by neoconservatives—which is not what the comic V for Vendetta was about. It was about fascism, it was about anarchy, it was about England."

He later adds that if the Wachowskis had wanted to protest what was going on in the United States, then they should have used a political narrative that spoke directly at the USA's issues, similar to what Moore had done before with Britain. 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 graphic novel 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 Newsrama.com, he states: "It's a terrific film. The most extraordinary thing about it for me was seeing scenes that I'd worked on and crafted for maximum effect in the book translated to film with the same degree of care and effect. The "transformation" scene between Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving is just great. If you happen to be one of those people who admires the original so much that changes to it will automatically turn you off, then you may dislike the film—but if you enjoyed the original and can accept an adaptation that is different to its source material but equally as powerful, then you'll be as impressed as I was with it."

A novelization of the film's screenplay was created by comic writer Steve Moore.

Collections

The entire V saga is collected in paperback form, ISBN 0-930289-52-8

External links

• V for Vendetta official site at DC Comics
• V for Vendetta: Comic vs. Film at IGN
• An Annotation of Literary, Historic, and Artistic References in Alan Moore's Graphic Novel, V For Vendetta by Madelyn Boudreaux