I’d only seen the movie before, so it was interesting to see the divergences from source here. It’s taken me this long because of the artwork, which is… Of Its Time. There are, in fairness, a few great panels here and there. But overall, it just looks quite dated and I’ve never been into this particular old-school look and paneling.

It’s also not particularly Moore at his best. Though, it has plenty of merit in its presentation of propaganda and the nature of freedom and fascism. There is no Good and Bad, except for the absolutes that should be condemned, such as the concentration camps that murdered in the same style as the Nazis, just in pre millennium Britain, spurred by another war. “Queers”, people of colour, were primarily targeted. It’s a very simple way to get a mass audience to think about broad themes that aren’t just super hero = good and a villain presents themselves to be defeated. Who doesn’t like to see fascists killed? No less in a way that also attacks their weak ideology. I especially loved that a queer voice was the galvanizing force for that ideology to be attacked. From that point on, this was always going to be above a 3 star read.

There is an argument that this does feel like it could have been truncated and it wouldn’t lose much of anything. The pacing feels like a serialized issue trying to get people to keep reading, but collected it just feels overlong at three or four junctures. The actual conceit of V being created feels particularly weak; more so than the movie even, perhaps, since everything else is rooted in realism. The change we see with Evey too, at the end, lacked impact. The cycle continues without really ever going into V’s ideology and any nuance there. There’s never a meaningful juxtaposition, and it’s a book of ideas, making it land somewhat with a thud.