STIC 2 (1) pp.

3956 Intellect Limited 2011

Studies in Comics
Volume 2 Number 1
2011 Intellect Ltd Ideology. English language. doi: 10.1386/stic.2.1.39_1

ANDRS ROMERO-JDAR
University of Zaragoza

A hammer to shape reality:

Alan Moores graphic novels
and the avant-gardes
Keywords

Abstract

Alan Moore
comic book
graphic novel
avant-gardes
postmodernism
Bertolt Brecht

Alan Moores graphic novels have marked essential standpoints in the history of narrative iconical genres.
Works like Watchmen or V for Vendetta helped reorient the 1980s Anglo-American comic book into the
graphic novels of the 1990s by pushing the boundaries of the comic-book genre into the realm of postmodernity. Moores graphic novels depict characters that are suffocated by the grand narratives of capitalist societies, Orwellian dystopias and totalizing ideologies. In this vein, his works may be placed in the context of
postmodernist thinking postulated by Jean-Franois Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard or Fredric Jameson. However,
the rebellious attitude shown in his narratives against those globalizing definitions of the self and homogenizing social orders strongly recalls the efforts of the early twentieth-century avant-gardes to provoke their
bourgeois audiences into action by fostering their radical distaste. The aim of this article is to consider certain
examples of Alan Moores graphic novels as direct inheritors of the committed ideology and technical experimentalism proposed by avant-garde movements at the beginning of the twentieth century. As Brecht famously

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argued, art is not a mirror to reflect the world, but a hammer with which to shape it. This article will thus
centre on Moores works that best reflect the same experimental spirit of revolutionary art forms fostered by
Cubism, Modernism, Futurism and other European avant-garde movements. These movements, by using the
power of artistic creation, called audiences to social action against the rising fascist discourses of the first
decades of the twentieth century. It is my contention that graphic novels like Lost Girls, Watchmen, From
Hell and V for Vendetta connect with the recovery of avant-garde ethics and aesthetics, and seem to renew
their attacks against the moral double standard of bourgeois, accommodated social classes. Then, Moores
graphic novels raise public awareness and serve as social denunciation, becoming, at certain moments, examples of intellectual terrorism against the status quo.

1.

The research carried

out for the writing
of this article is part
of a research project
financed by the
Spanish Ministry of
Science and Innovation
(MICINN) and the
European Regional
Fund (ERFD) (code
HUM 200761035).

Alan Moore has proved to be one of the most important comic-book and graphic novel writers of all
time.1 Works like V for Vendetta (19821988), Watchmen (19861987), From Hell (19931997), Lost
Girls (19912006) or his novel take on The Swamp Thing saga (19831988) have pushed the boundaries of the respective genres into the realm of postmodernity, and have marked essential standpoints
in the development of narrative iconical texts. Moores texts can be conceived as products of a characteristically postmodernist conscious rejection of grand narratives of the definition of reality. In this
respect, Moores works may be placed in the context of Jean-Franois Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard or
Fredric Jamesons denunciation of the suffocating nature of grand narratives (1979, 1983 and 1984,
respectively). At the same time, his graphic novels may be said to offer illustrative responses against
globalizing definitions of the self that reduce the individual to clear-cut roles in a standardized status
quo. This rebellious attitude against any homogenizing social order strongly brings to mind the
efforts of the early twentieth-century avant-gardes to provoke their bourgeois audiences into action
by fostering their radical distaste.
This article aims to consider certain examples of Alan Moores graphic novels under the light of the
committed ideology and technical experimentalism proposed by pre-World War II avant-garde movements and artists such as Bertolt Brecht, Igor Stravinsky, Vladimir Mayakovsky or Luis Buuel. In the
following pages, this article will examine the connections that relate Moores writing to avant-garde
ethics and aesthetics. Particular attention will be paid to the representation and response to grand
narratives that oppress the diegesis of his graphic novels. To do so, I will first define avant-gardes in
the context of worldwide artistic movements and place Moores creations as direct inheritors of their
subversive attitude. By means of polyphonic texts that reflect upon concepts of time and globalizing
discourses, Moores graphic novels raise public awareness of unjust social situations, with the ultimate
objective of moving the audience to take social action. Thus, the corpus of works in this article is imbued
with the experimental spirit of revolutionary art forms fostered by Cubism, Modernism, Futurism and

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A hammer to shape reality

other European avant-garde movements that, by using the power of artistic creation, called audiences
to social action against rising fascist discourses at the beginning of the twentieth century. Consequently,
this article will centre on those graphic novels by Alan Moore that best reflect the attacks against the
taste and fashions of the bourgeoisie and its double standard of morality: to wit, Lost Girls (2006) as
intellectual terrorism; Watchmen (1987) and the responsibility of the citizen; From Hell (2001) and the
repressive machinery of the status quo; and V for Vendettas (1990) emphasis on rebellion against dictatorial states by moving the audience to action as in a Punch and Judy puppet show.

Alan Moore and the avant-gardes

In his book, Five Faces of Modernity ([1987] 1999), Matei Calinescu traced the origins of the term
avant-garde back to a military context in the Middle Ages. The term developed a figurative meaning
as early as the Renaissance and centuries later, became imbued with the political stance of the utopian
philosophy of Saint-Simon at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It then adopted Romantic
militant politics and transformed the figure of the lyrical poet into a bellicose prophet fighting for the
revolutionary forces of freedom. After several transformations, the term avant-garde became an
artistic concept in the second decade of the twentieth century. Calinescu argues that its appearance
is historically connected with the moment when some socially alienated artists felt the need to
disrupt and completely overthrow the whole bourgeois system of values, with all its philistine pretensions to universality ([1987] 1999: 119). When I employ the term avant-gardes in this article, I refer
to these pre-World War II artistic movements. The avant-gardes fostered an aesthetic extremism that
reflected upon the status of their own modernity: urbanism, technologism, dehumanization, primitivism, antinomianism and experimentalism (Calinescu [1987] 1999: 142). Interestingly enough, Alan
Moores contemporary graphic novels may be said to reflect upon similar concerns.
Moores fictions depict complex urban worlds, loaded with a vast plurality of characters who
compulsively act out their individual suffering in the complex social network of the metropolis. His
narratives unfold polyphonic creations (employing Bakhtinian terminology) with the aim of presenting the complexity of a plural reality that contains thousands of tiny voices. As Robert Stam contends,
the concept of polyphony calls attention to the coexistence, in any textual or extratextual situation, of a plurality of voices that do not fuse into a single consciousness but exist on different registers, generating dialogical dynamism among themselves (1989: 229). Similarly, Alan Moore and
Dave Gibbons Watchmen portrays a complex world where different, sometimes contradictory,
discourses coexist and become essential for the comprehensive understanding of reality. In this
graphic novel, the reader finds no single character with which he or she is expected to identify;
rather, the reader confronts an impressive collectivity of individual stories that intertwine so as to
create the complex web of a truthful diegesis.

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Alan Moores polyphonic creations seem to emphasize the assumption that reality must be
apprehended through smaller realities, all of them of equal importance. Those tiny voices synchronously exist and speak themselves out into existence. Thus simultaneity becomes central to the
representation of society. This concern about time may be said to be a point of convergence between
Moores fictions and avant-garde productions. Andrew J. Webber argues that simultaneity is
perhaps the battle-cry of the avant-garde (2004: 62). The avant-garde movements in the arts aimed
to represent simultaneity in their works. As Webber explains, the experience of time as radical
acceleration and of space as foreshortened to the point of virtual simultaneity fuels a cult of simultaneous representation in the art of the avant-garde (2004: 6162). Accordingly, the beginning of the
twentieth century witnessed many varied attempts to capture and reproduce the effects of time
simultaneity. For instance, Marcel Duchamps painting, Nu descendant un escalier (1912), exemplifies
a Cubist attempt to apprehend different moments of time in the same canvas. Further, the developing arena of 1920s cinema explored the concept of simultaneity in the city symphonies, with titles
such as Paul Strand and Charles Sheelers Manhatta (1921), Walther Ruttmanns Berlin, die Symphonie
der Gro stadt (1927) or Jean Vigos A Propos de Nice (1929).
Similarly, Moore and Gibbons Watchmen emphasizes the synchronous existence of a vast plurality of voices in its fictional New York. Watchmen breaks the linear representation of time to express
simultaneity at certain moments of the narrative. For example, in Chapter 3, two characters, Dan
Dreiberg and Laurie Juspeczyk, walk along a street in the second panel of page 11 (Figure 1). They
turn a corner to enter a dark alley where a group of offenders, dressed in the knot-top fashion, try
to assault them, oblivious to the fact that both Dan and Laurie are masked vigilantes. The fistfight
unfolds in the following seven pages of the chapter. Then, in the second panel of page 18, the narrative breaks the linearity of time and takes the reader back to the instant when Dan and Laurie were
about to turn the corner. In this second moment, the focalization relies not on these two characters,
but on the news-stand at the opposite street, where Bernard and Bernie discuss a third synchronous
event: Dr Manhattans embarrassing appearance on a TV show. Thus, Watchmen breaks the comfortable linearity of time that conforms to traditional bourgeois narratives and, instead, seems to revamp
the experimentalism of avant-garde productions.
In Moores fictions, the metropolitan world where the collectivity of voices dwells tends to be
represented as a dystopian future with Orwellian overtones, as England is depicted in V for Vendetta,
or as decadent societies suffocated by the imposition of a totalitarian perception of reality and existence. This is the case in From Hell, wherein characters are trapped in the oppressive double standard
of Victorian morality. Similarly, we find the imposition of totalitarian thinking at the end of Lost Girls
with the rise of fascism and the destruction of the symbolic mirror of love (Moore and Gebbie 2006:
Chapter 30, 5). This representation of society strongly recalls the postmodernist postulates of Marxist
thinkers such as Fredric Jameson or even Jean Baudrillard, as reality is seen in Moores fiction as a

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Figure 1: Moore 1987: chapter 3, page 11, panel 2; and page 18, panel 2, respectively.1
The figures employed in this essay are in copyright of their respective authors. They have been reproduced here for
scholarly purposes.

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Figure 2: Moore 1990: page 10, panel 1.

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2.

In works such as Pat

Mills A.B.C. Warriors
(1979), Gerry FinleyDays Rogue Trooper
(1981), Warren Ellis
Black Summer (2007)
and Supergod (2009),
Iain Banks A Song
of Stone (1997) and
Transition (2009), or
James Morrows Towing
Jehovah (1994) and The
Philosophers Apprentice
(2007).

simulacrum (Baudrillard 1983) without essential meanings, based on ever-present advertisements

(as in Watchmen) and radio broadcasts (as in V for Vendetta) that do not reflect the suffocating social
situation within which characters find themselves. Hence, drawing on Jamesons ideas, we witness
the death of neighbourhood culture (1984: 54) that leads to the isolation, the alienation and, finally,
the fragmentation of the subject in the world.
The reader of Alan Moores fictions, in this vein, is continuously confronted with characters that
dwell in a world whose official messages fail to describe an everyday reality. Evey Hammond, a leading character in V for Vendetta, offers an illustrative example at the beginning of the graphic novel.
Sixteen-year-old Evey is listening to the radio broadcasting, the news, while she is getting ready
for her first night as a prostitute. The voice coming from the speakers offers a version of reality that
has little or nothing to do with her real life, and thus, the news focuses on 16-year-old Queen Zara,
and the suit she was wearing during an official engagement. Thus, whereas the official news
centres on the fairy-tale life of those in power, Evey is forced to prostitution because the money she
makes from her job at munitions is, you know, it isnt enough (Moore and Lloyd [1989] 1990: 11).
This situation strongly recalls George Orwells concept of doublethink in Nineteen Eighty-Four
(1947). Orwell explained doublethink or reality control as the power of holding two contradictory
beliefs in ones mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them (Orwell [1947] 2004: 264); or, in
other words, to tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them ([1947] 2004: 265). In Orwells
dystopian society, it is by means of Doublethink that the Party has been able and may, for all we
know, continue to be able for thousands of years to arrest the course of history ([1947] 2004: 265).
Alan Moore explores this concept by placing characters in a situation of extreme political dissociation from their real experience of society. The same alienated and estranged conception of the
present-day world can be seen in other contemporary British comic-book writers, such as Pat Mills,
Gerry Finley-Day and Warren Ellis, or novelists such as Iain Banks or James Morrow.2 In their
fictions, characters are fragmented and choked by the imposition of a reality that turns them into
outcasts and terrorists. The British anthology 2000 AD, birthplace of the character Judge Dredd, may
be said to be a direct influence on Alan Moores representation of society in these terms. Thus, it is
not surprising to find a similar depiction of society in Moores works originally published in this
magazine, such as The Ballad of Halo Jones (2007).
Nevertheless, Moores graphic novels seem to propose a way of escaping from the imposition of
a single discourse. Following the artistic tradition started by the avant-gardes, and especially, the
German writer Bertolt Brecht and the Russian artist Vladimir Mayakovsky, his works seem to employ
art and, most precisely, comic books and graphic novels, in order to offer an escape from fascist
discourses. His fictions, thus, seem to aim to shape a more tolerant society by making the readership
consider the representation of the world itself. Moore has confessed his admiration for Bertolt
Brechts theatre (in Kavanagh 2000). Further, his ideological connection with Brecht seems obvious

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when we consider his origins in the narrative iconical genres. Moore employed the pen name of
Curt Vile, a distortion of the real name of the German composer Kurt Weill, for the signature of
Roscoe Moscow, the comic strip that he created for the music magazine Sounds in 1979. Weill
composed the score for Brechts The Threepenny Opera (1928), a work that presents the world of the
lowest social classes, in their struggle to endure the suffocating reality that capitalism had instigated.
Being essentially a rewriting and adaptation of John Gays The Beggars Opera (1728), Brecht adapted
the British play to the context of the beginning of the twentieth century.3
At the core of this production lies Brechts personal belief that art is not a mirror to reflect the
world, but a hammer with which to shape it. Commonly attributed to either Mayakovsky (Samuels
1993: 10) or Brecht (Duncombe 2002), this quotation fits this analysis of Moores fictions. A work of
art that is limited to the reproduction of social conditions, such as the massive works of so-called
realist writers such as Dostoyevsky, Balzac or Zola, is not what Brecht understood as real art.
According to the German author, a work of art had to be committed to the cause of changing the
world, of shaping reality by hammering it to pieces if necessary. As Brecht contended, we need a
type of theatre which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses possible within the particular historical field of human relations in which the action takes place, but employs and encourages
those thoughts and feelings which help transform the field itself ([1957] 1964: 190). With this idea
in mind, Brecht aimed at producing real innovations [to] attack the roots ([1957] 1964: 41) of art,
literature and society.
Brecht and Weills The Threepenny Opera exemplifies avant-garde efforts to raise public awareness of the intolerable social situations that capitalism and industrialization had brought about. As a
committed tool with political and social purposes, art was expected to provoke and move the bourgeois audience into social action. In their efforts to raise this awareness, the avant-gardes were ready
to foster bourgeois radical distaste in their works. With this aim in mind, Vladimir Mayakovsky literally offered A Slap in the Face of Public Taste (1912).

3.

Interestingly enough
for this analysis, at
the beginning of the
twenty-first century,
Alan Moore recovers
the central character
of these operas, Jack
MacHeath, in his palimpsestic comic-book
series The League of the
Extraordinary Gentleman, Century: 1910
(2009).

Lost Girls: Intellectual terrorism against bourgeois taste

Within the context of contemporary comic books and graphic novels, Alan Moore and Melinda
Gebbie may be said to have thrown a defiant slap in the face of public taste with Lost Girls. In this
work, the reader is offered a pornographic account of the sexual experiences of Wendy, from Barries
Peter Pan stories (1902), Dorothy from Baums The Wizard of Oz (1900) and Alice from Carrolls
Alices Adventures in Wonderland (1865). However, under the palimpsestic surface lies another
message denouncing Europes hypocritical attitude towards sexuality at the beginning of the twentieth century. Thus, in Chapter 9, the reader realizes that Alice was forced to create the magic and
nave Wonderland as a dissociative response to cope with the trauma of having suffered sexual

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abuse when she was 14 (Moore and Gibbie 2006: Chapter 9, 2). In this vein, Moores narrative
becomes a denunciation of an oppressive social situation and hypocritical morality endured by thousands of women.
Directly related to avant-garde manifestations, Lost Girls recalls an outstanding historical example in Chapter 10. The three protagonists attend the premier of Igor Stavinskys ballet, The Rite of
Spring, in Paris. On that night in 1913, the cultural elite rioted in response to Stravinskys music, and
the grand opening ended in an impressive fistfight between those who supported the experimentalism of the Russian composer and those who advocated the neoclassical tradition in music. Structured
in two parts, Stravinskys Le sacre du printemps/The Rite of Spring depicts a pre-Christian society that
celebrates the coming of spring with the sacrifice of a young girl. In terms of musical composition,
the music of the ballet was a conscious attempt to defy fashionable tastes. Its patterns are irregular
and, as Eric W. White argues, so restless a method of thematic exposition was certainly calculated to
exasperate listeners who had been nurtured on the regular formal music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ([1966] 1979: 210). Drawing on Stravinskys attack against bourgeois fashions,
Moore and Gebbies graphic novel seems to establish a parallel between the ritual death of the
female dancer in Stravinskys ballet, and the repression of female desire in the world that Alice,
Wendy and Dorothy belong to.
Lost Girls is perhaps also a conscious attempt to provoke disgust against its readers sensitivities.
The graphic novel makes the readership face the concept of sexuality from many different perspectives. Its pages depict heterosexuality and homosexuality, but also explicit scenes of zoophilia, incest
and paedophilia. In this vein, this work can be seen as an act of intellectual terrorism, comparable to
Stravinskys composition, with the aim of making the readership confront certain aspects of daily life
that are commonly left unquestioned. Thus, Lost Girls can be compared with other provocative works
such as Luis Buuel and Salvador Dals Un chien andalou (1929). In this surrealist film, the spectator
is exposed to a series of disgusting situations, for instance, a man who slits his wifes left eye with a
razor. The films seemingly chaotic structure, Peter Evans affirms, aimed at subvert[ing] bourgeois
obsessions with order (1995: 159), and the assault on the viewers eye can be seen as a gesture of
specifically sexual as well as of more generally social significance (1995: 85). One can contend that
this film was another slap in the face of bourgeois taste. It was designed to provoke harsh and
uncomfortable feelings in the viewers, to make them feel disgust, and then, to move them to action.
In a similar vein, Lost Girls can be seen as an act of terrorism against public taste. With references to
repressed sexual practices in our contemporary societies, Moores narrative offers a reflection on the very
concept of sexuality and makes the reader consider how much of it may be biased by prejudiced conceptions of reality. This work revamps the efforts of the avant-garde movements to subvert the double
standard of morality that was present at the beginning of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, the reader
also witnesses the failure of this revolution when fascism enters the work, in the form of three German

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soldiers who destroy the symbolic mirror of love that Alice had kept for generations in her family (Moore
and Gebbie 2006: Chapter 30, 5). The discourse of freedom and liberation proposed by the free sexuality
of Lost Girls protagonists is destroyed by the imposition of the globalizing discourse of fascism.

Watchmen and the citizens responsibility

Drawing on these ideas, we can consider another of Alan Moores graphic novels. Moore and
Gibbons Watchmen provides a complex representation of a society in which different characters try
to survive and find meaning to their existence. The reader is offered as many Weltanschauungen, or
world views, as characters appear in the narrative. As a polyphonic city symphony, the narrative
presents the world through the eyes of the social psychopath Walter Joseph Kovacs (Rorschach),
who understands existence as a clear-cut opposition between good and evil. However, Rorschachs
conception of reality must coexist alongside Dr Manhattans multi-dimensional perception of the
Universe. These two grand narratives prove no better than the explanations given by characters such
as Bernard, the newsvendor; Bernie, the young boy who reads The Tales of the Black Freighter; Joey,
the taxi driver; or Moloch, the decadent supervillain.
Watchmen seems to raise public awareness against globalizing discourses by depicting the catastrophic outcome of the imposition of one persons view over a complete community. The triumph
of Adrian Veidts conception of reality results in the destruction of the physical world, the end of the
neighbourhood culture of the street where the action takes place and, subsequently, the death of
freedom. As Ozymandias ideology is imposed by force and terror, the world is destroyed and the
self dies. Even in small details, Moore presents a world that is collapsing under the grand narratives
of capitalism and patriarchal ideology. To give a simple example, Chapter 6 centres on the life of
Rorschach, the first character to appear in the story. At the end of the chapter, the reader finds some
reports on his life at New York State Psychiatric Hospital and at Charlton Home. In the first of these,
his mothers vicious murder is described in the following terms: Her body had been found in a back
alleyway in the South Bronx, the cause of death being the forced ingestion of Drano cleaning fluid.
A man named George Patterson, Mrs. Kovacs pimp, was later charged with her murder (Moore
and Gibbons 1987: Chapter 6, 30). The tragic death of Kovacs mother is to be read in the context of
a society that allows this behaviour in its own streets. Thus, the way in which she is killed, the
forced ingestion of Drano cleaning fluid is significant. In fictional terms, this is the same modus operandi that is depicted in a brutal taxi scene of the 1973 film, Magnum Force, which allegedly inspired
the real-life Hi-Fi Murders in Utah in 1974. Drano is a real drain cleaner that was invented in 1923
and is still produced today. It will be helpful to consider here one of the first Drano advertisements.
The text of this 1932 advertisement reads: Hes a man who doesnt talk very much But I could
feel his eyes accusing me every time the bathroom drains slowed up. Hed look at me as much as to

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Figure 3: Henry 1932.

Figure 4: Moore 1987: chapter 6, page 10.

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say, Your fault!. In this patriarchal world, women are to be blamed for every domestic fault. The
husband allegedly has the right to accuse and hate his wife for such trivialities as the bathroom
drains being blocked. In the world of Watchmen, Kovacs mother dies because she is forced to
become a prostitute and, thus, her pimp makes her swallow the drain cleaner associated with the
enforcement of patriarchy. Awful as this may seem, the worst part of it is the unexplainable indifference and indolence that the rest of society shows towards such behaviour. People stay warm in their
houses while less fortunate women are massacred in the streets. Accordingly, Moores graphic novel,
in Chapter 6, brings to the fore the real case of Kitty Genovese, a woman who was brutally assaulted
and murdered, on 13 March 1964, outside her own apartment building while her neighbours
watched without even bothering to call the police.
Watchmen presents a strong ethical and philosophical question, who watches the watchmen?
But the apparent answer and reference to these watchmen may be easily mistaken. For instance,
Annalisa Di Liddo affirms that the masked superheroes that form the team of the Watchmen are far
from being positive figures (2009: 55). Nevertheless, there is no such team named the Watchmen in
this graphic novel. In fact, these watchmen may not refer to those suffering masked adventurers
who rely on a Manichean conception of reality. Rather, the watchmen may be said to be the individuals who passively allow the suffering of other fellow citizens. Therefore, this graphic novel
makes the reader reflect upon whether the citizen needs someone else to watch over them, whether
it be superheroes, capitalism or patriarchy, or whether they should challenge oppressive social structures before society crumbles under the weight of one monstrous globalizing discourse.4

From Hell, Jack the Ripper and the stern machinery of the status quo
Moore has also offered another example of how grand narratives operate in order to maintain the
status quo. From Hell, Moore and Campbells Victorian melodrama in sixteen parts, delves into Jack
the Rippers murders, adding a social dimension to the most famous case in the history of serial killing. Originally published between 1991 and 1998, this graphic novel does not create a whodunit
detective narrative, because the reader discovers the Rippers identity in the second chapter. As the
author himself acknowledged, I was not concerned with whodunit, I was concerned with what
happened, I was concerned with the whydunit aspects of the thing (Vylenz [2003] 2008). Moores
narrative includes an important implication that involves social structures: Doctor Sir William Gull
turns out to be the murderer, but the ideology he is defending is Queen Victorias. Thus, the real
murderer, the one who has ordered the killing of members of the lower classes of society is the
Queen, and therefore, the status quo of the official social order. The victims of Jack the Ripper are
sacrifices that Victorian society must fulfil in order to maintain their double standard of morality.
Hence, William Gull may be easily compared with Rorschach or with Adrian Veidt. All three are

4.

A similar idea can

be found in Moores
previous scripts. In
1985, he wrote the
text of Fathers Day,
issues 17 and 18 of the
Vigilante series. This
1980s series presents
the story of Adrian
Chase, New York
District Attorney, who
becomes a masked
vigilante after the
murder of his family.
In Fathers Day, the
characters that traditionally fulfil the roles
of passive victims, a
prostitute and a young
girl, take an active role
and solve the problem
on their own, whereas
the Vigilante receives a
beating that puts him
in hospital. At the end
of issue 18, the voice
of the homodiegetic
narrator asks a similar
question to the one
proposed in Watchmen:
Is there somebody
who can stand above
it all, and decide who
gets punished and who
doesnt? (1985: 22).

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Figure 5: Moore 2001: prologue, page 6, panels 8 and 9.

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products of their own grand narratives. They become tools of a suffocating system that aims to impose
a single Weltanschauung over the necessary plurality that makes up a more tolerant social order.
Moores fictions portray patriarchal societies that create their own monsters in the figures of vigilantes and saviours of morality like Veidt, Rorschach, Jack the Ripper and, ultimately, Queen Victoria.
Interestingly, the narrative of From Hell begins and ends with the same image, a dead gull in the
white sand of a Bournemouth beach. Alexandra Warwick points out the obvious fact that this dead
gull is a direct reference to Queen Victorias physician, Sir William Gull (2007: 80). In the graphic
novel, Sir William Gull dies in Chapter 14, meaningfully entitled Gull, Ascending, after a glorious
epiphany represented in a full white spread page (Moore and Campbell [1999] 2001: Chapter 14, 24).
Nevertheless, the symbol of his presence in English society will appear later, in the last panel of the
epilogue, and therefore, the end of the narrative. Like the prologue, the epilogue takes place in
Bournemouth in 1923, several years after the Rippers case. Despite the fact that both Sir William
Gull and Queen Victoria have already passed away, the oppressive double standard of morality can
still be felt in the characters behaviour. Abberlines reaction and hatred of prostitutes must be
understood in that context.
Frederick Abberline, the policeman in charge of the Rippers case, becomes an excellent example
of the Orwellian concept of doublethink. Abberline has spent a significant part of his police life fighting crime and trying to discover the identity of the Whitechapel murderer. However, in the end, his
own behaviour towards prostitutes is no different from the Rippers, and therefore, he ultimately forms
part of the status quos repression of sexuality. Thus, although the Ripper is dead, his repressive ideology, symbolized by means of the image of the rotten gull that frames the narrative, is still present.

V for Vendetta and Punch: Puppet shows and avant-gardes

Despite this apparently pessimistic message, Moores fictions have also offered certain alternatives
to elude grand narratives. The basic premise, as Moore and Lloyd seem to state in V for Vendetta, is
to start questioning the system in which the citizen lives and that he or she usually takes for granted
as the only possible reality. V for Vendetta, published between 1982 and 1987, depicts a world where
a totalitarian regime has imposed itself over the different individual ways to define and understand
reality. Through the establishment of a stern bureaucratic organization, the system works as a hierarchy where the figure of the leader stands at the top. This leader, Adam Susan, spreads his influence by means of a social organization where the citizen remains at the lowest level of its scale. The
leader employs different tools to control the system, and relies on a complex structure of ministries
and offices meaningfully called the Finger, the Head, the Eye, the Ears and the Nose. However, this
system also creates its own nemesis. Motivated by revenge as well as by idealism, a terrorist called
V, disguised under the mask of Guy Fawkes, starts to demolish, physically and ideologically, the

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foundations of the fascist regime. Using art and literature as his language, he aims to destroy the
oppressive structure and instigate peoples awareness of their need of freedom. His final aim, as he
states in Chapter 7 (Moore and Lloyd [1989] 1990: 236), is to become the simple idea of questioning
a totalitarian regime that condemns homosexuality and race, and pushes its women to become
either housewives or prostitutes for the delight of those male figures in power (either politicians or
priests).
V and Jack the Ripper might be responses to their own societies. Nevertheless, the difference is
obvious. Whereas Sir William Gull was the official product, and therefore supporter of the Victorian
double standard of morality, V is the failed attempt of the system to control individual thinking. V is
the nemesis of the system. He was born from its meanest horrors, at Larkhill Resettlement Camp,
with the aim of shattering totalitarian reality and its false leadership. In a very interesting moment of
the narrative, in Chapter 4 of the first book, V swaps his Guy Fawkes mask for one based on the
satirical puppet Punch. His own words are telling,
Im going to bring the house down. Theyve forgotten the drama of it all, you see. They abandoned their scripts when the world withered in the glare of the nuclear footlights. Im going to
remind them about the two penny rush and the penny dreadful (Moore and Lloyd [1989] 1990: 31,
panel 6).
With the Punch mask on his unknown face, V aims at making the world relearn the atrocities
that a society can also create. It will be helpful to remember here that Punchs puppet show is
often terribly violent and a product that may well traumatize a young boy (as Neil Gaiman and
Dave McKean managed to portray in their graphic novel The Comical Tragedy or Tragical Comedy of
Mr Punch, in 1994). Punch is the meanest creature on stage, more wicked than the Devil himself.
But he is a character that moves the audience to action, filling the children with the passion to
shout at the stage. This is the spirit that V wants to recover from the puppet show. In the end, both
the Punch and Judy show and avant-garde movements try to make the audience react to what
they are witnessing.
The use of masks in this graphic novel produces a strange effect in the reader, as he or she is
prevented from having a character to identify with. Thus, there is a certain emotional distance
that strongly recalls Bertolt Brechts alienation effect (a-effect) in his conception of theatre (Brecht
[1957] 1964). V attracts a certain emotional sympathy from the reader, when he is first depicted
as a caped crusader that fights totalitarianism and saves young damsels in distress, such as Evey
Hammond. However, this identification is completely destroyed when he kidnaps and viciously
tortures Evey in Chapter 10, making her suffer the same type of humiliation that V went through
at Larkhill Resettlement Camp. The different masks that V employs, Guy Fawkes and Punchs,
seem to strengthen this a-effect, as the reader is prevented from seeing the face of V,

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Andrs Romero-Jdar

and therefore, he remains as a simple idea, as a concept not to identify with, but to rationally
think about.

Concluding remarks
To conclude, Alan Moores graphic novels depict stories whose characters suffocate under the imposition of single discourses. His narratives draw attention to the dangerous result that fascism,
disguised under any of its different faces of totalitarian thinking, has over the individual voice. Thus,
reality cannot be understood from one single point of view, be it from the perspective of scientific
discourse and the New Physics of Dr Manhattan; from the fascist perception of Rorschach or Veidt;
from the murderous scalpel of Jack the Ripper and Queen Victoria; or from the dictatorial stand of
Adam Susan and his England prevails slogan in V for Vendetta. Alan Moores fictions, in the tradition of the committed experimentalism of avant-garde movements and Brechtian theatre, may be
said to be aimed at moving the readership into action, so that the citizen stops being the witness, the
watchman, of the murder of reality and freedom. The graphic novel, in the hands of Alan Moore and
his collaborators, becomes a tool, a hammer to hit official discourses and shape realities under a new
and different light. Accordingly, Moore employs narrative techniques that revamp the avant-gardes
aesthetic efforts to subvert bourgeois expectations and aim to make the readership reflect upon their
own society and values. His fictions not only show an ironic disgust with globalizing discourses that
govern the individuals life, they also seem to emphasize the need of taking part in the social action
that will bring about change and the end of social injustices. In this vein, his graphic novels coincide
with the avant-gardes call to action by creating committed works of art that, in the end, raise public
awareness against totalitarian states and ideologies.

References
Baudrillard, J. (1983), Simulations, New York: Semiotext[e].
Brecht, B. ([1957] 1964), Brecht on Theatre. The Development of an Aesthetic (trans. J. Willet), London:
Methuen.
Calinescu, M. ([1987] 1999), Five Faces of Modernity. Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch,
Postmodernism, Durham: Duke University Press.
Di Liddo, A. (2009), Alan Moore: Comics as Performance, Fiction as Scalpel, Jackson: University Press
of Mississippi.
Duncombe, S. (2002), The Cultural Resistance Reader, London and New York: Verso.
Evans, P. (1995), The Films of Luis Buuel. Subjectivity and Desire, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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Gaiman, N. and McKean, D. (1994), The Comical Tragedy or Tragical Comedy of Mr Punch, London:
Bloomsbury.
Henry, J. (1932). Drano advertisement, http://graphic-design.tjs-labs.com/show-picture?id=1096903755. Accessed 8 August 2010.
Jameson, F. (1984), Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, New Left Review,
I: 146, pp. 5392.
Kavanagh, B. (2000). The Alan Moore interview, http://blather.net/articles/amoore/. Accessed 30
June 2010.
Lyotard, J. ([1979] 1989), The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press.
Moore, A. and Baikie, J. (1985), Vigilante #18: Fathers Day, New York: DC Comics.
Moore, A. and Campbell, E. ([1999] 2001), From Hell, Atlanta: Top Shelf.
Moore, A. and Gebbie, M. (2006), Lost Girls, Atlanta: Top Shelf.
Moore, A. and Gibbons, D. (1987), Watchmen, New York: DC Comics.
Moore, A. and Gibson, I. (2007), The Complete Ballad of Halo Jones, London: Rebellion.
Moore, A. and Lloyd, D. ([1989] 1990), V for Vendetta, New York: DC Comics.
Moore, A. and ONeill, K. (2009), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Century: 1910, Marietta and
London: Top Shelf and Knockabout Comics.
Orwell, G. ([1947] 2004), Nineteen Eighty-Four, Fairfield: First World Library.
Samuels, A. (1993), The Political Psyche, London: Routledge.
Stam, R. (1989), Subversive Pleasures. Bakhtin, Cultural Criticisms, and Film, Baltimore and London:
The John Hopkins University Press.
Vylenz, D. ([2003] 2008), The Mindscape of Alan Moore, London and Amsterdam: Shadowsnake
Films.
Warwick, A. (2007), Blood and Ink: Narrating the Whitechapel Murders, in A. Warwick and
M. Willis (eds), Jack the Ripper: Media, Culture, History, Manchester and New York: Manchester
University Press, pp. 7187.
Webber, A. (2004), The European Avant-Garde: 19001940, Cambridge and Malden: Polity.
White, E. ([1966] 1979), Stravinsky: The Composer and his Works, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University
of California Press.

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Suggested citation
Romero-Jdar, A. (2011), A hammer to shape reality: Alan Moores graphic novels and the avantgardes, Studies in Comics 2: 1, pp. 3956, doi: 10.1386/stic.2.1.39_1

Contributor details
Andrs Romero-Jdar holds a B.A. and an M.A. in English Philology, and a B.A. in Spanish Philology
from the University of Zaragoza (Spain). He is a Research Fellow in the Department of English
and German Philology of the University of Zaragoza, and is part of the research group entitled
Contemporary Narrative in English. He is currently working on his doctoral thesis on sequential
art, iconical genres and representation of trauma in graphic novels in English, and has published on
these and related subjects in academic journals such as Atlantis, Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad
Complutense, Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses, Revista de
Literatura and Tropelas.
Contact: Departamento de Filologa Inglesa y Alemana, Facultad de Filosofa y Letras, Universidad
de Zaragoza, C/ Pedro Cerbuna, 12, 50009 Zaragoza, Spain.
E-mail: anromero@unizar.es

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