V For Vendetta (graphic novel): Task for Thurs 20 Nov – The ‘Backwards Brief’

Funny, just as I was going to carry on my review on the "V", this task came in just on time...

Alan Moore is a genius who wrote the plot of V for Vendetta, and David Lloyd visualized it with illustration.

Background:

V for Vendetta graphic novel could be found in many comic shops as well as bookstores, and despite the graphic skills at the time were still immature, V has been a classic bestseller till today. In 2006 a film adaption of was released, which is a proof of the classic popularity among readers.

V for Vendetta is a reflection of Thatcher England at around 1980s, when the main character calls himself V and acts as a anarchist revolutionary who takes terrorist-like approaches to fight for his belief of freedom against the conservative politics at the time. Frankly speaking, the whole comic series are a reflection of the author's left-wing thinking which yet is cleverly disguised in an action comic story. It is not hard to see that the story is heavily influenced by the political climate at the time when the Thatcher-led government was responsible for economical depression and great unemployment rate, and there was a chance that the Fascists would take over the regime under such circumstances.


Audience and context:

V for Vendetta 's audience is supposedly the educated readers since its scripts are extremely literate and unconventionally intelligent in using many metaphors that emulate the status-quo of society at the time. Despite the fact that the verbal language used in this graphic novel is somewhat deep and recondite sometimes, the context yet clearly sends the message of individualism to the audience. As one of my favorte quote from V: "Ideas are bulletproof."



Executional guideline:

To be honest, considering this is a nearly 30 year old piece of work, its viusal techniques shall not be viewed by today's standard. Yet, the whole dark and conspiratorial atmosphere is successfully constructed through mainly grey, black, blue and other alike dark colors, which reflects the tension in UK at that time. However, Alan's heroic character "V" is a very astonishing creation in that he is basically eveything a hero was not meant to be like. V is symbol of anti-traditions, dressed up in a weird, ksycho-like Guy Fawkes mask, and throws big words in his pundit talk all the time, and moreover, he kills a lot! Such a character is more than enough to sell the story despite the "so so" illustration skills dated back to 1980s


How would I design this work?

• To study the historical background in 1980s---fascism, nationalism, and especially the Margaret Thatcher led conservative government.

• To look for previous examples similar to the major characters I would like to have in this comic series, which could be used as inspirations for costumes, appearance, characteristics design as well as story developing.

• To find sources for publication, and before doing so I would first try to distribute a simple draft onto daily used multimedia tools such as Facebook to testify the possibility of publication in the future, and from the feedback received I would know how to improve where next to go.