From Hell by Alan Moore Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of From Hell
Book Review: masterful potraya of the Ripper
Summary: 5 Stars
From Hell is Alan Moore's best work. It is a graphic novel about Moore's interpretation of the Jack the Ripper murders and is buttressed by excellent research which is included in an appendix at the end of the story. Moore's use of dialogue and potrayal of the complexity and intrigue of the Ripper case are both first rate and Eddie Campbell's grim often grotesque art works here as well. One of the all time best graphic novels.Book Review: meticulous brilliance
Summary: 5 Stars
I had no idea what this was going to be about when I picked it up. I didn't even read the back to find that it was about Jack The Ripper untill I was a couple chapters into it...(gulp)
My slow paced readings over the next week had me fixed in a horrific exuberance. Rekindling my paranoid curiousity, I again allowed myself to question popular intentions and limitations of man. Not what I would call a joy, but then yes I would. I will never look at black ink the same way again.
Book Review: ripperologists rejoice
Summary: 5 Stars
FROM HELL is writer Alan Moore's and artist Eddie Campbell's stab (pun intended) at Jack The Ripper. But this isn't your usual story about the Whitechapel murders. Alan Moore doesn't conceal the killer's identity until the very last page, he reveals it in chapter two; FROM HELL is not about who the killer was. FROM HELL is a treaties (worthy of a ph.d) about why the killer did what he did, how he did it, and about all the people who knew about it; Mostly, it's about the latter. Alan Moore is a serious conspiracy theorist (respect...); His conclusion is of Royal connection, police corruption, and Freemason involvement. Everybody has got their hands dirty; London is presented as a decrepid and rotten society. I have not yet seen the filmadaptation of FROM HELL, but I've read that there is a shot in the film which "begins with the London skyline, pans down between towers and steam trains, and plunges into a subterranean crypt where a Masonic lodge is passing judgement on one of their members" (from Roger Ebert's filmreview). This is what the story is about; A society that is ruled by the few; By the men who hides in the shadows; By the true architects of history (as said in FROM HELL).Alan Moore tells a story that sends you spiraling into madness, into the mind of the killer and the society of the killer; Into Hell. The sketchy black and white drawings of Eddie Campbell conjurs up a world of filth, and not the romantesized version of Victorian England that we have all grown accustomed to; "London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained," (from Sir Arthur C. Doyle's A STUDY IN SCARLET). Both Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell have based their work on an impressive amount of research; FROM HELL is about as accurate as any other non-fiction book about Jack The Ripper. But this implies that FROM HELL demands that you're intrigued by the circumstances surrounding the case, and that you don't mind reading through hundreds of pages with long dialogues that are weighed down with facts; If you're only after a quick scare and a murder mystery, then you'll probably be disappointed with FROM HELL. Its audience are the numerous 'ripperologists'. If you fit into this latter category, then you'll relish FROM HELL.
Book Review: unmissable if you love London, steam era, serial murders or simply comics
Summary: 5 Stars
A great work, both historically and artistically.
Reading the massive notes by Alan Moore to each page looks challenging but adds unmissable informations, plus they're often funny. Moore and Campbell did a great research on Victorian era history, life and photographs.
Very dark.
Book Review: virgin comic reader comes up trumps
Summary: 5 Stars
Being a literature teacher I have probably pooh-poohed comic books, but this was the perfect text to initiate me into the genre. It was like learning to "read" again and I really enjoyed the mixture of explicit and enigmatic panels throughout Moore and Campbell's work. I know, as other reviewers have pointed out, that Alan Moore scraped the material from many sources and that his theories are not new, but there is a real sense of intelligence and thoughtfulness behind his telling of the Whitechapel Murders. As a rampant feminist I also applaud the way Moore has politicised in some way the plight of women in the Victorian underclasses, without creating saints or cretins of the women. (I urge other readers to have a look at Robert Hughes' The Fatal Shore which spends a chapter on underclass living in London. Fascinating stuff.)I loved the inclusion of details about Blake, Shaw, Wilde and Yeats, and Gull's "tour" of London given to Netley. I resist the criticism given by an earlier reviewer that Moore is pretentiously over-intellectualising the territory of occultism and phrenology in From Hell. I think it gives his work richness and raises it above the stereotypical "whodunnit" narrative. I so so so enjoyed Moore's apendices - I really loved the style and energy of his approach. I am ready for more of this comic book thang!