A Review of From Hell: Master Edition from Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell
/Written by Ross Webster
From Hell: Master Edition Cover.
By: Alan Moore (writer) & Eddie Campbell (artist)
Published by: Top Shelf
$49.99
A panel from From Hell (B&W) Chapter 09 Page 56.
Upon release of From Hell, their gory decade-long saga of the Whitechapel Murders that plagued London in the late 19th century, Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell could be forgiven for bringing an incomplete masterpiece into the world. In any case critics and readers barely noticed, they were too busy being lured in and mesmerized by its morbid tale of Victorian London at the peak of empire; of the prostitute victims and their hard scrabble lives in the Whitechapel slums; of Frederick Abberline, the troubled Scotland Yard detective’s hopeless pursuit of justice; and of course the murderer at the heart of it all, Jack the Ripper.
A panel from From Hell (B&W) Chapter 09 Page 33.
Although the mystery of the Ripper’s identity remains unsolved 130 years to this day, Moore uniquely gives the killer an identity; Sir William Gull, royal surgeon to Queen Victoria and high-ranking Freemason who is tasked to cover up an illegitimate child of a shopgirl, Annie Crook (fictional) and Prince Albert Victor, next in line to the crown. When the baby is forcibly given away, and the mother is locked up in an asylum and made invalid by Dr. Gull’s intentionally botched thyroid operation, it seems his task is done. However, her prostitute friends, Mary Anne Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly (tragically known to history as the canonical five) discover the plot and threaten to reveal it to the public. To counter this new threat, Gull takes on the persona of the infamous Ripper and hunts them down one by one - and with each ungodly deed, Gull succumbs to his own dark desires and eventually madness.[1]
A panel from From Hell (B&W) Chapter 09 Page 58.
Readers would’ve undoubtedly noticed the series was presented in rough black and white, from lightly sketched pieces almost resembling illustrated magazines of the Victorian era, to oppressive all-consuming nightfall or shadows whose presence in the book is rivaled by one element; blood - which glistens like midnight. Despite how it might seem, the decision to tell this story in black and white was purely one of economics. Printing anything in color was difficult, laborious and expensive, especially in cash-strapped 1980s Britain. The black and white was so intrinsic to the book that Campbell refused initial offers to color it, believing it impossible due to the difficulty of putting color inks on top of originally black and white artwork. However, 30 years later, Campbell finally accepted the challenge and chose to do all his coloring digitally with all of its palates and options previously unimaginable. The big question is this: does the Master Edition improve on Moore and Campbell’s original work? For me, the answer is a resounding yes.
A panel from From Hell: Master Edition Chapter 03 Page 08
I confess that when I first obtained the complete original From Hell, I only read through it partially. While the artwork was impressive, too often it felt muddled and messy combined with the excruciating levels of gore and Moore’s legendarily dense layers of text. For what is otherwise one of the greatest triumphs of the medium, it was one I could only stomach in small doses. However, the first thing one notices if they haven’t read the graphic novel in some time, is just now how everything pops. From the first dead seabird in the prologue to the gas lamp lit streets to the advertisements adorning carriages, hotel lobbies and drugstores. What these new details do is force the reader to examine every detail, every color contrast, and every available line of dialogue all in single go and watch them weave the story. One example where this seems especially true is during Gull’s Psychogeographic tour of London.[2]
A panel from From Hell (B&W) Chapter 04 Page 16.
Before the murders, Dr. Gull instructs his driver John Netley, to tour several London landmarks, Cleopatra’s Needle and the churches of 18th century architect Nicholas Hawksmoor. Their significance according to Gull, are that they are long forgotten places of pagan ritual and mystical power. In the case of St. George’s Bloomsbury Church in the original graphic novel, while it is an impressive structure it does not seem especially out of place in its West End neighborhood.
A panel from From Hell: Master Edition Chapter 04 Page 16.
However, in the Master Edition Campbell introduces blue skies, fog and smog to the landscape and gives color to the surrounding buildings. The Church in turn is a pristine marble island, almost otherworldly and ethereal in a sea of urban human muck. Not only are the readers learning about Gull’s personal beliefs and world view, it is much clearer to see what is going on inside his mind. There is a similar effect with the other most prominent landmarks; Cleopatra’s Needle, and Christchurch Spitalsfield. As he describes their supposed forgotten origins and power, the color contrast transforms them into something more phallic, or blade-like. [3]
A panel from From Hell (B&W) Chapter 10 Page 12.
There is absolutely no way to talk about From Hell without about the blood and gore. It is either the main deal maker or breaker for anyone who dares to read the graphic novel. One of the most stunning and horrific scenes of the whole book is the sequence when Gull proceeds to eviscerate the recently murdered Catherine Eddowes’ corpse and takes on the Ripper persona. The original version was a frightening and relentless journey into the guts of poor violated Eddowes and into Gull’s early days as a surgeon and even a vision of a London corporate office 100 years into the future. As striking as the imagery was, I’m inclined to agree with Eddie Campbell in an interview with Previews Magazine who said that after reading the Master Edition the original will feel like viewing it through a woolly sweater.[4]
A panel from From Hell: Master Edition Chapter 10 Page 19.
In the original sequence it was easy for more squeamish readers to briskly glance and skim through the unpleasantness and dismiss it almost like a fever-dream. Now fully colorized, the reader has no choice but go along with clear eyes and follow Dr. Gull’s macabre ritual cut by bloody cut. It is here that Gull claims to give birth to the twentieth century and its paradoxical proclivities to iniquity and dehumanization amid unimaginable technology wealth and progress. However true this might be, Gull might as well be talking about the times that birthed him.
A panel from From Hell: Master Edition Chapter 11 Page 37.
When reading From Hell it is easy to over-fixate on Dr. Gull and his obsessions with dead flesh and to overlook everyone concerned with keeping flesh alive. This seems truer in the original black and white where given all the additional text and focus on characters both historic and otherwise, less patient readers might feel tempted to skip those insights until the next Ripper murder. As with the fully colorized Gull arch it is much harder now to ignore the story of Inspector Abberline or his pale perpetually tired sunken face conveying frustration, rage and despair at his inability to escape the Whitechapel or solve the murders which his own Scotland Yard conspires to keep under wraps.
A panel from From Hell: Master Edition Chapter 03 Page 07.
It’s also harder to gloss over the Ripper’s victims namely Mary Kelly and their outfits conveying bright pretty yet faded colors and the slight rose tint of their bodies which is also their trade and often means of survival (though at times, their skin appears faded and drained when worn down by the hardness of their lives. The colors also seem to symbolize their friendship and their struggle to get by amid the daily challenges and cruelty dealt out to them and of course the horror that stalks them which we in the 21st century tragically know they won’t. This to me is perhaps the ultimate justification for coloring up the original graphic novel. Whether it’s Watchmen, or V for Vendetta or From Hell, it’s easy to define Alan Moore’s work purely on the darkest tropes; compromised antiheroes, the ultra-violence, gratuitous sex, the oppressive politics, his obsession with the occult, and crushing forces of power and order. What often goes overlooked in Moore’s work are tiny slivers of humanity bravely shining despite them. In From Hell: Master Edition, they can now shine a little brighter against the darkness.
A panel from From Hell: Master Edition Appendix 02 Page 22.
My first experience with From Hell was the 2001 Hollywood adaptation by the Hughes Brothers and starring Johnny Depp as Abberline, Sir Ian Holm as Dr. Gull and Heather Graham as Mary Kelly. It was only years later when I first glanced into the graphic novel, I realized what a tremendous disservice the movie was to its source material. Although Moore notoriously despises all adaptations of his work, his wrath is especially justified against the feature film.[5] Despite initial difficulties reading I had already come to regard it as Moore’s finest work and while Watchmen will always be his most popular story (and possibly the greatest superhero series of all time), From Hell is really more of what Moore’s all about.[6]
A panel from From Hell: Master Edition Appendix 02 Page 22.
Perhaps even more importantly for me, From Hell was my introduction to Eddie Campbell. Though I really wouldn’t come to fully appreciate him until I read ALEC: The Years Have Pants, his massive series of autobiographical comics spanning from his days as young Scottish cartoonist eking to make a living in 1980s London to middle age raising a family in Australia.[7] His art style is distinguished by the near photo-realism of his human subjects which is often undercut with absurdist humor.[8] Before returning to From Hell, Campbell had already started experimenting in color including The Lovely Horrible Stuff, The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains(a multimedia collaboration with Neil Gaiman) and Bizarre Romance (written by Audrey Niffenegger) so when I first heard about the Master Edition I was ecstatic.
A panel from From Hell: Master Edition Chapter 10 Page 20.
To say From Hell is a challenging read is a gross understatement regardless of edition. Aside from all the aforementioned gore sex and violence it is nearly 600 pages of dense history, Psychogeography, folklore, and super-dense layered text characteristic of all of Moore’s work (Moore himself did not add much new material to the Master Edition save for more of his copious notes). Veteran fans may object to the notion of coloring what to them is a perfect masterpiece. That is a matter of preference, and I won’t challenge it. All I can offer is my own experience - which was that for me From Hell: Master Edition is a welcome enhancement and was far more horrifying, illuminating and transcendent than I ever imagined it could be again.
[1] this theory of the Ripper’s identity was first proposed in journalist Stephen Knight’s 1976 book, Jack The Ripper: The Final Solution. Most Ripper scholars dismiss the theory as Gull was 72 and had recently suffered a stroke at the time of the murders. Neither Moore and Campbell put any stock in the theory and even lampoon it in their addendum comic “Dance of the Gull Chasers,” which examines all of the proposed Ripper identity theories and the continuing cultural obsession with the murders a century onward.
[2] From Wikipedia: Psychogeography is an exploration of urban environments that emphasizes playfulness and "drifting". It has links to the Lettrist and Situationist Internationals, revolutionary groups influenced by Marxist and anarchist theory, and the attitudes and methods of Dadaists and Surrealists. Psychogeography was defined in 1955 by French Philosopher Guy Debord as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals." As a practice and theory, psychogeography has influenced a broad set of cultural actors, including artists, activists and academics (Perhaps to most famous psychogeographer today is London-based Iain Sinclair, who is also personal friend of Moore’s).
[3] In a 2018 interview with Previews World, Campbell noted that when returning to colorize these tour segments he found that about a dozen panels were no longer historically accurate hand have been completely replaced in the Master Edition.
[4] Ibid. 2018 Interview.
[5] The primary crime of the feature film being that what was essentially deep and complex character study of the murderer, the victims and the detective is compacted into run-of-the-mill whodunnit.
[6] Especially given that following Moore’s ongoing legal battles with DC Comics for the IP rights, he has effectively disowned Watchmen.
[7] Currently Campbell lives between Chicago with his new partner novelist, Audrey Niffenegger and London where his adult daughter from his previous marriage, Hayley Campbell also lives and works as a journalist.
[8] While living in Australia, Campbell was often employed as a courtroom sketcher.