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Loading... From Hell (edition 2016)by Alan Moore (Author), Eddie Campbell (Artist) DarthDeverell | Feb 6, 2020 |   But story, it is very good. If you are expecting whodunit story you will be disappointed. Perpetrator is know very early. This is story of deep anxiety caused by the turn of the century (in all aspects not unlike anxiety haunting people for the last 20 years) and slow travel to madness triggered by what some people speculate might be reason for actual Jack the Ripper's rampage. As such this is true horror story, interspersed with occult and secret societies, showing influence occult societies had even on mighty empire as UK (although should we say had in the first place? I have a feeling situation did not change at all in my opinion, people (especially powerful ones) seem to have fetishes about belonging to secret societies). Police officers frustration when encountering political obstacles while they truly work on finding the murderer is presented very clearly. And actions of what you might call "secret government" are shown as they usually are - utterly merciless when national interests are in jeopardy. I don't understand people with critiques in terms of racial/religious context - these were late 1800's, early 1900's and unfortunately that was the thinking of people at the time (especially in terms of medicine and treatments of psychological issues). Hopefully we raised above it but to disregard past because of the way people were thinking at the time is very silly thing to do (should we eliminate integral calculus because at the time wars (almost all initially highly religious) ravaged the Europe?). All the past is base for future - without it there would be no future. We need to accept the past and rise above the bad things and improve. Tirade aside this is very introspective and disturbing novel, journey into the very center of madness. Beside the main story please read all the appendixes and especially short graphic story "Gull Catchers". Excellent story, recommended to all thriller fans. (  ) Zare | Jan 23, 2024 | I love the whole saga of Jack the Ripper and I find it fascinating. I just couldn’t get into this. I don’t know if it was the writing style, the hard to read writing itself or the illustrations, but this just wasn’t for me. I felt like it kept skipping around and once I was finally following a thought, it would switch again. Danielle.Desrochers | Oct 10, 2023 | ) markm2315 | Jul 1, 2023 |  ) KurtWombat | Jan 8, 2023 | Part of my problem was a lack of character development. On one hand, it's the plot/story/society that comes across as the main character, but when there's no mystery involved in who's doing what or what's happening, that makes engagement only through plot/story a tough sell. There were also plenty of spots where the novel digressed into pages of what felt like tangents, and other parts that came off as far more misogynist than anything--even where it felt like the authors might be trying to critique society, the story was told through such a male-centered gaze that any such critique was pretty much lost via the story choices that were made. Some little bit of character development happened late, but at least for this reader, it was too little too late. And while I could appreciate some of the story choices and art, that appreciation wasn't nearly enough to make me feel that the length was warranted. (  ) whitewavedarling | Oct 17, 2022 | From Hell is about the Jack the Ripper. Saying it's about Jack the Ripper isn't the full story, it's much more. It not only covers the murders, but the victims and the one who people thought were Jack the Ripper. It covers the people trying to solve the murders too. In this book we know who Jack the Ripper is half way threw, unless you read the appendix. The book also covers history of Victorian England and occult history as well. As I just said we know who Jack the Ripper is in this comic. He is a mad man part of the Freemasons with an obsession of the occult. Everything he does with the murders is in a pattern according to occult laws. Towards the end of the comic Moore pulls a Paradise Lost type of feel with Jack the Ripper. You almost can understand why he did what he did. It's really cleaver how Moore writes this book. I will say this book as a lot of graphic sex and gory violence. Yet if you're picking up an Alan Moore book and don't know that then you clearly don't know what Alan Moore does. Yet like Lost Girls and Watchmen, the violence and sex is necessary. This is about Jack the Ripper! Even if you don't know anything about Jack the Ripper and want to read this for whatever reason, go right head. I knew most about it because I get obsessed with this kind of stuff (I'm a Scorpio), but some of the stuff I didn't know much about at all. Thankfully Moore or Top Shelf were nice and wrote a appendix. This comes in handy for history buffs and people who want to know what the heck is going on. And if that's not enough, there a part two to the appendix which gives you even more information. This comic book is historical fiction, but like I said it reads like a novel novel. Still baffles me how this was made into a movie. Never seen the move and now I really don't ever plan on watching the movie. I'll stick with the comic book. I could see this made into a TV show n Netflix or something because each chapter is set up like an episode, but then again it's not the same. If you're a fan of the Jack the Ripper murders then this book is a must. Even if your a fan of Alan Moore or Eddie Campbell this is a must. Hell, just read this to experience what a good comic book is even about. ( ) Ghost_Boy | Aug 25, 2022 | So who was Jack? Given that he touches upon the most notorious of humanity's crimes, Alan Moore provides an alternative theory as to who Jack was-royal physician Dr. Gull acting on the orders of Her Majesty. Queen and Counsel perpetrating a heinous rein of terror to silence the fall of royalty. But while Moore succeeds in leaving the reader in disbelief-as if we have been granted a private glance inside an otherworldly hellish realm-he also leaves us stunned in his trademark style. Excessive gore, excessive depravity and excessive sex. Brick of a book but it hits hard. ( ) Amarj33t_5ingh | Jul 8, 2022 |  ) Alvaritogn | Jul 1, 2022 | ( ) Gumbywan | Jun 24, 2022 | ) Orellana_Souto | Jul 27, 2021 | ) allan.nail | Jul 11, 2021 | ritaer | Jul 1, 2021 | ) skolastic | Feb 2, 2021 | At first, I was a bit confused, as this story of Jack the Ripper isn't told from the perspective of the killer, nor from the perspective of the law, nor from the perspective of the victims, but rather from all of theirs at once. Therefore, the thriller and detective aspects of the book are kept at a minimum, but the horror aspect is fully focused upon, both story wise in the actual killings and the schemes of conspiracy surrounding it, as in the magnificent graphics. Yes, the use of graphics in this `comic' is raised to a new level for me (I'm not all that familiar with the genre however). I often felt I was reading a movie, I have no other way of putting it. Great read. Thoroughly satisfying experience. ( ) bbbart | Dec 27, 2020 | Anyway, having had a long fascination with Jack the Ripper and true crime in general, I knew that this was the sort of thing that I'd be interested in reading. And I was right. Alan Moore definitely did his research in the case of Jack the Ripper, as he himself mentions in his detailed appendix. He did take creative liberty with a few details in order to tell the story he wanted to tell, but there were a number of things that were historically accurate at the time. I am usually a stickler for well rendered art, and while the art by Eddie Campbell did take a bit getting used to, I do know why it was done in the particular style in which it was. It's reminiscent of the illustrations used in Victorian era newspapers, even down to the layout of the panels. After awhile, I never even noticed the 'primitive' sort of style and just enjoyed the tale that was being told. Mr. Campbell did his research as well, not leaving out a single gruesome detail, especially for the death of the Ripper's last victim. Although there was a film made, starring Johnny Depp, I do suggest reading the graphic novel if you have any sort of interest in Jack the Ripper, the Victorian era or true crime in general. Although it's a fictionalized account and no one know the true identity of the Ripper to this day, it's a very intriguing story in it's own right. ( ) DanielleBates | Sep 16, 2020 | Anyway, having had a long fascination with Jack the Ripper and true crime in general, I knew that this was the sort of thing that I'd be interested in reading. And I was right. Alan Moore definitely did his research in the case of Jack the Ripper, as he himself mentions in his detailed appendix. He did take creative liberty with a few details in order to tell the story he wanted to tell, but there were a number of things that were historically accurate at the time. I am usually a stickler for well rendered art, and while the art by Eddie Campbell did take a bit getting used to, I do know why it was done in the particular style in which it was. It's reminiscent of the illustrations used in Victorian era newspapers, even down to the layout of the panels. After awhile, I never even noticed the 'primitive' sort of style and just enjoyed the tale that was being told. Mr. Campbell did his research as well, not leaving out a single gruesome detail, especially for the death of the Ripper's last victim. Although there was a film made, starring Johnny Depp, I do suggest reading the graphic novel if you have any sort of interest in Jack the Ripper, the Victorian era or true crime in general. Although it's a fictionalized account and no one know the true identity of the Ripper to this day, it's a very intriguing story in it's own right. ( ) DanielleBates | Sep 16, 2020 | Anyway, having had a long fascination with Jack the Ripper and true crime in general, I knew that this was the sort of thing that I'd be interested in reading. And I was right. Alan Moore definitely did his research in the case of Jack the Ripper, as he himself mentions in his detailed appendix. He did take creative liberty with a few details in order to tell the story he wanted to tell, but there were a number of things that were historically accurate at the time. I am usually a stickler for well rendered art, and while the art by Eddie Campbell did take a bit getting used to, I do know why it was done in the particular style in which it was. It's reminiscent of the illustrations used in Victorian era newspapers, even down to the layout of the panels. After awhile, I never even noticed the 'primitive' sort of style and just enjoyed the tale that was being told. Mr. Campbell did his research as well, not leaving out a single gruesome detail, especially for the death of the Ripper's last victim. Although there was a film made, starring Johnny Depp, I do suggest reading the graphic novel if you have any sort of interest in Jack the Ripper, the Victorian era or true crime in general. Although it's a fictionalized account and no one know the true identity of the Ripper to this day, it's a very intriguing story in it's own right. ( ) DanielleBates | Sep 16, 2020 |  ) bloodravenlib | Aug 17, 2020 | What do I mean? Well, throw out the movie version, for starters. Keep the bits about William Gull, REALLY emphasise the importance of Masonic conspiracy theories and the connection to the crown, and then, after you're thoroughly grounded in all the blood and gore and the feeling like nothing really matters, top it all off with a dose of Alan Moore's more odd explorations in the human psyche and/or WOW mysticism. Fortunately, I've read Jerusalem. From Hell goes there, serving as a freaky introduction to life without time, magical incantations, demons, and the power of location upon magic. This part is worth all the apparent slog of most of the rest of the comic. (At least for me, but I love literature of ideas and oddities and complex plots.) Will people hate me if I was rather bored with long segments of this story? That I only really started perking up to it with Gull's becoming Virgil? Still, in the end, I really liked it and I thought it was rather cool how all the well-researched conspiracies tied it back in. I did, however, have a hell of a time with reading the text. It hurt my eyes. ( ) bradleyhorner | Jun 1, 2020 | ) Cail_Judy | Apr 21, 2020 | thenumeraltwo | Feb 11, 2020 | Moore and Campbell use Gull and Freemasonry to engage with metaphysical ideas, adding a touch of fantasy that blends with the realistic horror and changing times to imbue the story with an atmosphere more intense than mere murder mystery. In 1887, Gull suffered the first of a series of strokes. Drawing on the mysticism associated with Freemasonry in popular culture, Moore and Campbell portray this as Gull seeing the true face of god and seeking to achieve greater wisdom through blood rituals. When tasked to eliminate women with knowledge of Prince Albert Victor’s secret marriage and child, he draws upon concepts of London’s sacred geometry to use his murders for this knowledge. In the midst of killing Mary Jane Kelly, Gull has a vision of a twentieth-century office. Looking about him at the changing fashions and how people interact, he pontificates, “It would seem we are to suffer an apocalypse of cockatoos… morose, barbaric children playing joylessly with their unfathomable toys. Where comes this dullness in your eyes? How has your century numbed you so? Shall man be given marvels only when he is beyond all wonder? Your days were born in blood and fires whereof in you I may not see the meanest spark! Your past is pain and iron! Know yourselves! With all your shimmering numbers and your lights, think not to be inured to history. Its black root succours you. It is INSIDE you. Are you asleep to it, that cannot feel its breath upon your neck, nor see what soaks its cuffs?” (chapter 10, pg. 21, punctuation in the original). His judgment reflects his previous discussion of the importance of blood and ritual. Having glimpsed the future, he stats, “It is beginning, Netley. Only just beginning. For better or worse, the twentieth century. I have delivered it” (chapter 10, pg. 33). Tying into ideas about metaphysics and fourth dimensionality, the Ripper’s crimes and spirit influence Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (chapter 14, pg. 15), William Blake’s painting, The Ghost of a Flea (chapter 14, pg. 16), and inspires Peter Sutcliffe and Ian Brady (chapter 14, pg. 14). Further, Gull witnesses the London Monster, who attacked women between 1788 – 1790 and who several characters referenced earlier in the book. In this, Moore further develops themes about the nature of time that he first explored in Watchmen. Unlike Watchmen, however, where Doctor Manhattan actually can exist across time, Moore maintains an air of ambiguity and artistic license, where Gull’s visions may simply be the result of the strokes he continued to have following his first in 1887. In his second appendix, Alan Moore describes his approach to writing a story about Jack the Ripper and how he embraced ambiguity and did not set out to tell an authoritative story, but rather to elucidate its deeper meaning. He writes, “By autumn 1988 I’m thinking seriously about writing something lengthy on a murder. The Whitechapel Killings aren’t even considered. Too played-out. Too obvious. Publicity around the crimes’ centennial, however, leads me to Knight’s book. Ideas coalesce. Deciding on a serial in Steve Bissette’s Taboo, I contact Eddie Campbell. The rest is dodgy, pseudo-history. Slowly it dawns on me that despite the Gull theory’s obvious attractions, the idea of a solution, any solution, is inane. Murder isn’t like books. Murder, a human event located in both space and time, has an imaginary field completely unrestrained by either. It holds meaning, and shape, but no solution” (Appendix II, pg. 16). The collected volume’s first appendix includes significant notes, demonstrating Moore and Campbell’s efforts to faithfully recreate the world of London in the late nineteenth century while also disclosing which elements Moore invented for the sake of a good story. The graphic novel later inspired a film of the same name in 2001. While the film maintains several of the elements surrounding William Gull, Johnny Depp’s portrayal of Inspector Frederick Abberline radically departs from the source material to the point of essentially being an original character created for the film. Also, unlike the film which is more of a mystery, the graphic novel is clear about Gull’s involvement from the start and uses it to tell and far grander story than a comparatively simple conspiracy. ( ) DarthDeverell | Feb 6, 2020 | 1  sockatume | Jun 18, 2019 | ) rabbit-stew | Mar 29, 2019 | Well, that was that. From Hell is overflowing with sublime images, there is also a strident lyricism to the prose, My appreciation for both was hampered by my bullshit alarm ringing incessantly. There's this London school of the subversive, to which Moore belongs: Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd are also practicing partners. They parse and weave, finding anecdote and parallel in the accrued centuries of history along the banks of the Fleet and the Thames. The ancient grit and whispered airs both haunt and charge, maintaining spectral currents which cross the city. Everything from the Druids to Oscar Wilde to the Final Solution is duly linked. It does tax and test, but the assemblage is admirable, the loud warnings of a bus stop prophet. So much is recycled and applied elsewhere -- an conservation of totems, a self organizing oracle down pissy alleys amid take-away menus and lottery tickets -- therein lies the true eschatological -- away from the louche plastic of muggle money. Away. I have seen the film adaptation a number of times, so the arc was familiar. The detail revealed within the text was at times spellbinding, the sepia charm of gaslight and decomposition. ( ) jonfaith | Feb 22, 2019 | |
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Moore and Campbell use Gull and Freemasonry to engage with metaphysical ideas, adding a touch of fantasy that blends with the realistic horror and changing times to imbue the story with an atmosphere more intense than mere murder mystery. In 1887, Gull suffered the first of a series of strokes. Drawing on the mysticism associated with Freemasonry in popular culture, Moore and Campbell portray this as Gull seeing the true face of god and seeking to achieve greater wisdom through blood rituals. When tasked to eliminate women with knowledge of Prince Albert Victor’s secret marriage and child, he draws upon concepts of London’s sacred geometry to use his murders for this knowledge.
In the midst of killing Mary Jane Kelly, Gull has a vision of a twentieth-century office. Looking about him at the changing fashions and how people interact, he pontificates, “It would seem we are to suffer an apocalypse of cockatoos… morose, barbaric children playing joylessly with their unfathomable toys. Where comes this dullness in your eyes? How has your century numbed you so? Shall man be given marvels only when he is beyond all wonder? Your days were born in blood and fires whereof in you I may not see the meanest spark! Your past is pain and iron! Know yourselves! With all your shimmering numbers and your lights, think not to be inured to history. Its black root succours you. It is INSIDE you. Are you asleep to it, that cannot feel its breath upon your neck, nor see what soaks its cuffs?” (chapter 10, pg. 21, punctuation in the original). His judgment reflects his previous discussion of the importance of blood and ritual. Having glimpsed the future, he stats, “It is beginning, Netley. Only just beginning. For better or worse, the twentieth century. I have delivered it” (chapter 10, pg. 33).
Tying into ideas about metaphysics and fourth dimensionality, the Ripper’s crimes and spirit influence Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (chapter 14, pg. 15), William Blake’s painting, The Ghost of a Flea (chapter 14, pg. 16), and inspires Peter Sutcliffe and Ian Brady (chapter 14, pg. 14). Further, Gull witnesses the London Monster, who attacked women between 1788 – 1790 and who several characters referenced earlier in the book. In this, Moore further develops themes about the nature of time that he first explored in Watchmen. Unlike Watchmen, however, where Doctor Manhattan actually can exist across time, Moore maintains an air of ambiguity and artistic license, where Gull’s visions may simply be the result of the strokes he continued to have following his first in 1887.
In his second appendix, Alan Moore describes his approach to writing a story about Jack the Ripper and how he embraced ambiguity and did not set out to tell an authoritative story, but rather to elucidate its deeper meaning. He writes, “By autumn 1988 I’m thinking seriously about writing something lengthy on a murder. The Whitechapel Killings aren’t even considered. Too played-out. Too obvious. Publicity around the crimes’ centennial, however, leads me to Knight’s book. Ideas coalesce. Deciding on a serial in Steve Bissette’s Taboo, I contact Eddie Campbell. The rest is dodgy, pseudo-history. Slowly it dawns on me that despite the Gull theory’s obvious attractions, the idea of a solution, any solution, is inane. Murder isn’t like books. Murder, a human event located in both space and time, has an imaginary field completely unrestrained by either. It holds meaning, and shape, but no solution” (Appendix II, pg. 16). The collected volume’s first appendix includes significant notes, demonstrating Moore and Campbell’s efforts to faithfully recreate the world of London in the late nineteenth century while also disclosing which elements Moore invented for the sake of a good story.
The graphic novel later inspired a film of the same name in 2001. While the film maintains several of the elements surrounding William Gull, Johnny Depp’s portrayal of Inspector Frederick Abberline radically departs from the source material to the point of essentially being an original character created for the film. Also, unlike the film which is more of a mystery, the graphic novel is clear about Gull’s involvement from the start and uses it to tell and far grander story than a comparatively simple conspiracy. (