I really liked that movie, V for Vendetta. It had Hugo Weaving and moving stories of humanity and some explosions and an important political allegory. Therefore, why not read the graphic novel upon which it is based? I’ve been doing a lot of that anyway, and it is one of the classics of the modern age, and anyway, they can’t all be serialized. Plus, adding to my knowledge of the overall field is cool, because then I get to giggle over things like the reference to Preacher in the last Y I read a few weeks ago.

To those various ends, I did read it. Which, maybe pretty obvious already, I guess. Anyhow, it was good. In the not-so-distant future, England has survived a holocaust that has left most of the rest of the world reeling. And to survive the aftermath and ensure that England prevails, a totalitarian regime has emerged. Was it inevitable, or even necessary? That’s a matter of argument, but in any event some of the actions it took in those early days clearly were unnecessary, and there’s one man who is ready for the regime to crumble and restore the power to where it belongs, in the hands of the governed. He has no name, but he has got a codename, V, and a Guy Fawkes mask, and some pretty sharp knives. And an impressive knowledge of explosives and the inner workings of the evil empire. And he’s got a pupil, Evey Hammond. Mostly, though, he’s got a vendetta. Because some of those unnecessary actions were performed on him.

There were differences of course. Mostly in the order of the story, but also via a few characters changed, added, or left out. For the most part, I ended up preferring the movie, which is probably a matter of blasphemy to some people somewhere. But the pacing was better, the message was just a little bit less scattered, and there were a couple of aspects that wouldn’t have affected me as deeply with still images. I did miss the written-out character of the party bigwig’s wife who loses all of her social support with the death of her husband and has to find a way to live in the world he helped to create. On the other hand, the Leader was mostly unimpressive in the book, which I didn’t like at all. It’s hard for me to credit that people will give up all of their freedom in the name of fear alone. Charisma has to play a part too, in my largely uninformed reading of history.

Lastly, there’s a message in the book that may have been in the movie as well, but I never saw it if so: that governments are inherently negative, and people should live in order without any guidance from leaders at all. Well, okay, I take that back. Should is a pretty strong word, and I think I agree with that as written. But unlike V, I don’t believe that people will do so, and that some amount of governance is therefore imperative. But I’m with him on how that line should be drawn much closer to the individual than it currently is, and especially than it has been at certain points in our history and probably will be again at certain points in our future.