Why Must Read V for Vendetta 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition?

Given the current political climate in the United States it’s chilling that V for Vendetta opens with the “voice of fate” imploring every man to seize the initiative to “make Britain great again”. There is no single charismatic leader at the head of the fascist state in Britain but the government is clearly using fear of minorities to seize power. Unlike in the U.S. there was a singular catastrophic event that turned people towards fascism and in this case it was a bit more of a seizure of power rather than an embrace of fascism by some of the populace. With 30 years gone by since V for Vendetta was first published by DC, the story is now more relevant than ever and the classic Guy Fawkes mask has only grown more iconic. Technically speaking V for Vendetta started being published in Britain in 1982, which is well beyond 30 years, but it was cancelled after just two issues worth of material. To the eternal credit of DC they picked up the baton in 1988 and completed the 10 issue series. This is one of those once in a lifetime stories that Alan Moore used to produce on a regular basis and arguably his most influential story ever. It’s also one of Alan Moore’s earliest works and it is not without flaws. The story follows V’s revenge against those who experimented on him and others at a concentration camp but after his revenge is complete the story kind of loses focus and meanders around. I also think the ending was not one of Moore’s better ones. V was set up as some superhuman result of scientific experiments and the ending, having him pass on the mantle to an absolutely normal human, seemed highly unlikely and I guess we’re to believe that the V persona can be passed from person to person. It would be like Batman bestowing his legacy to Joe Blow except it’s even worse because Bruce Wayne wasn’t superhuman. One of the things I don’t love about the story is the politics of it and although I respect Alan Moore tremendously as a writer I don’t agree with him politically. This is not to say that I don’t want writers to include their own personal beliefs in their stories but V is such an amazing character and then he says things that I found ridiculous. Alan Moore is a self described Anarchist as is V so I think we can assume that when V is promoting Anarchy he’s speaking as Moore. Anarchy seems to resemble Libertarianism in the belief that if you remove state power that liberty will fill its place. More likely power would accumulate in an increasingly small number of non-governmental, unaccountable institutions and individuals. V seems to see the difference between Anarchy and Chaos being that Anarchy is Chaos running swimmingly but to me that sounds like a pipe dream. Although V points the finger at the people of Britain as the cause of the fascist regime I get the feeling that his blame is more for inaction rather than actively creating the situation. Alan Moore would have been around 30 when he conceived of the story and I think he was a little naive even as his writing was brilliant. Fascism doesn’t just spring from the Earth. It nearly always has a tremendous amount of initial popular support and that support often remains even as the darkest aspects of fascism take hold. To think that there could be a popular uprising against a fascist regime after a few bombings and a video speech seems unlikely but the comic medium IS generally an idealized medium. The Deluxe Edition is a bit unique in my collection in that the slip cover and book cover have a matte finish with a soft feel. DC also went with a cheaper non-glossy page but I suspect this was done for reasons other than cost. The artwork would seem completely out of place on glossy paper and speaking of artwork I’ve never really liked it. I think I finally figured out what the problem is. The art of the first two issues were done in black and white and the color was added later by DC. The problem is that black and white is a different kind of medium that tends to use heavier inking and when color is added looks rather unpleasant. It would have been better if the color had not been added but this is what we get and it’s much more of a story driven comic anyway. I also found it difficult to distinguish characters which made the very complex story even more difficult to follow. V for Vendetta is not a perfect story but it is a great one and absolutely deserving of a deluxe edition. Along with the story we also get a 7 page article on V for Vendetta by Alan Moore from 1983 which means it was written while the story was still being worked on. We also get 18 pages of artwork. I’ll probably read the story at least once more because it’s very complicated with a lot of moving parts and I might have a slightly different opinion on a second read. If so, I might edit my review but I highly doubt I’d ever give it less than 5 stars.