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Comic Review: From Hell (Miller and Campbell)

This was so much better than the movie, it is amazing. I particularly enjoyed the footnotes, which detailed the research that each scene was based on, and began discussing the themes that Moore wanted to address with the work. This added a depth to the work, reinforcing the fact that it is based on a true story, and including a lot more background material to give the story a better sense of context. The story of the murders is used to explore ideas of how the media shapes truth, darker human emotions, and the belief in magic. It doesn't seem to play as much to the class issues the movie brought up, and includes none of the emphasis on drug use that was so prevalent in the movie. Which makes me wonder - how did that become a focus of the movie? The relationship between Inspector Abberline and Marie is played with a much lighter touch, which seems much more plausible. The grisly murders are also much more affecting than they were in the movie, which says something about the success of Eddie Campbell's art. The largest problem I had were some of the speeches that the characters gave, especially Gull talking about magic and time and things like that. I know that this became the basis for a lot of Moore's later explorations into creativity and reality, but it seems a little heavy handed and out of place here - showing more of the author's voice than the character's. But reading a few chapters of this before bed every night this past week definitely gave me a lot of interesting, uncomfortable dreams. It is definitely worth checking out, and make sure to read the footnotes. I found reading them all at the end of the chapter to be a good balance that kept the scenes being referred to fresh in my mind but not interrupting the story flow too much.