I love horror stories, but there’s a corner of the genre that I have never been comfortable with, Serial Killers. It’s not just exploitation of someone’s pain for a buck that turns me off, it“s how the story always starts hunting for a monster in human flesh and ends in a clumsy apotheosis of the killer. The link between murder and commerce is nothing new, of course. In 1830, you could buy a “penny blood”“ booklet full of salacious crime tales. But From Hell Master Edition is putting something a little extra into the Jack the Ripper story; craftsmanship.
For the most recent installation in the imaginations of who was Jack the Ripper, we travel to London in 1889 for the well-worn story of Jack the Ripper. The story starts off shockingly enough, with the Ripper in mid-enucleation. From Hell #7 “The Tailor of Tailors” takes us step by step with the thought process behind each cut and removal of the organs.
The meticulousness in each step is shocking and makes the issue a step up from the story you thought you knew. An extraordinary interpretation of the scandalous Jack.
From Hell diverges from some of the accounts of Jack the Ripper, in that where most focused on investigating the profile of the type of person it took to commit the murders, but here it focuses on the thinking behind each step that the killer took in disfiguring the victims. Interestingly, some place around the halfway purpose of the book, things begin to get quite jumbled and unfocused, with a confounding blast of random images that are meant to insinuate Jack’s mental state.
Alan Moore is one of the greatest writers of this century, and to see his take on one of the most sensational crimes in history, was pleasure, especially his departure from the lazy glorification of the psychological gratification. Once you wade through the blood and terror, Alan Moore’s horror thrillers have a unifying theme at heart: The only thing serial killers love more than murdering people is completing a really ambitious arts and crafts project.
Best panel(s): Jack the Ripper is transported, as a spirit to a current day cubicle office.
Best Dialogue(s): In order for water to rise despite itself it must be transmuted to steam, it must be touched by the purifying spirit of fire.
It would seem we are to suffer an apocalypse of Cockatoos… morose barbaric children playing joylessly with their unfathomable toys…where comes this dullness in your eyes, how has you century humbled you so?
One thing that can’t be is the is the totally staggering work of art, gave here by Eddie Campbell. Having a great degree of detail all through out and some realistic settings, each of his panels deserve examination.
This was an easy 4/5. Simply put this book will delight Jack the Ripper enthusiast and Alan Moore fans.
Writer: Alan Moore
Artist: Eddie Campbell
Publisher: IDW
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