Anarchy and Blood in the Gutter

The message I get

from the graphic novel V for Vendetta isn’t whispered. It screams out of every illustrated page. What it’s yelling about is freedom and its relationship with anarchy. This is about a society with no government control. The masked vigilante V running through these pages considers himself an anarchist. He calls that authority corrupt in its oppression of personal freedom. Moore’s novel is full of graphic art showing the government doing terrible things. Like killing people for a little thing like breaking curfew.

Vendetta also presents the theme of freedom from ignorance and weakness. According to V, true independence means escaping the prisons of our minds. Illustrations of V blowing up London’s landmarks to get back at his government are everywhere, so the anarchy motif is pretty clear. He has seen the worst and, nope, he won’t stand for it anymore. What he looks like or his real name is anybody’s guess. Covering his face in a symbolic mask might make him seem less of a man. But he is the one pretty much yelling revolution here. He is the literal embodiment of Moore’s message.

A lot of you have seen the movie V for Vendetta. Well, Moore’s graphic novel is another medium used to carry the same message of chaos. To understand that, we have to look at the characteristics of his comic and not just the content it’s bringing. The meaning is created for us by how words are related to pictures in every panel. We follow this story of anarchy easily through its bleak colors and shadows. Cityscape scenes clue us in to England’s landmarks being V’s next targets. Violent scenes explode with light and color whenever he bombs institutions to punctuate the theme of destruction.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Let’s talk about how Vendetta’s theme uses the principles in McCloud’s Understanding Comics. His third chapter lays these out. He reminds us that constructing successful comics needs participation between the reader and the art. Looking at Moore’s pages, you see empty space between the panels of illustrations and text. This is the gutter. It’s where closure happens from pasting together your version of what’s going on (McCloud 64). The gutters in Vendetta pass information through this space so we understand these panels represent revolution. The action here can’t take place in real time, right? So we get to come up with our own meanings (66-67).

But we’ll still be influenced by what McCloud calls panel-to-panel transitions. These are the bridges for panels that create a story of time and action. This affects how the comic flows. Transitions ask us for different degrees of closure (McCloud, 70-71). And this changes the way we translate the anarchy narrative.

Take a closer look at the way Moore has illustrated chaos through his transitions and gutters in this page. The gutters between his subject-to-subject panel transitions translate time and motion for us. These pictures stay within a single idea to get the idea across, but the perspective changes. This requires a lot more closure from us as the scene progresses and leaves out actions (McCloud 71). These panels of the statue of Lady Justice show how V no longer feels she honestly represents the law, but is controlled by government. She now symbolizes anarchy for him. Then boom! We see the explosion in the next scene and then V's comment about the flames (Moore 41). You’re thinking these transitions are pretty obvious, but everyone draws their own conclusions.

                       http://www.indymedia.ie/attachments/may2006/v_for_vendetta_02_page_07.jpg

                               Moore, Alan, and David Lloyd. V For Vendetta. DC Comics, 1989, p. 41.

There’s also some action-to-action transition happening. The middle three panels show us the cause and effect of a subject carrying out specific movements. This covers a short span of time. But there are still gaps in illustrating the three actions, right? So this requires more closure from us (McCloud 70). These show how V’s action progresses from leaving the explosive for Lady Justice to running away (Moore 41).

We see Vendetta’s use of color sets the mood of these frightening panels. The inky blacks, washed-out hues, and monochromatic color on this page foretell destruction. These also illustrate McCloud’s principles of the masking effect and viewer identification (McCloud 42-43). V’s mask depersonalizes his character so we don’t really know who’s behind it. He becomes an idea that we can try on. Any of us could symbolically wear the mask and go around yelling about freedom. His not having a human face makes us really concentrate on what he says and does. It’s easier to project ourselves onto his character and enter his imaginary world of revolution. 

If you’d told me I would like reading a graphic novel about a masked vigilante blowing things up, I would have called you crazy. But I do. So maybe I have some anarchy in me after all. Don’t we all?

Works Cited

McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. William Morrow, HarperCollins Publishers, 1994, pp. 66-67, 70-71.

Moore, Alan, and David Lloyd. V For Vendetta. DC Comics, 1989, p. 41.