For christ sake, can we talk about From Hell?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > For christ sake, can we talk about From Hell?

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Hodgepodge: Jan 29, 2006; Can't post for 235 days!

Danger posted:

I mean I even get that but like the entire premise of watchmen shits all over comic books and super heroes, so this unique combination of takes: Moore sucks for criticizing this but the same thing he said 20 years ago rules; I find funny.

it's canon to them, they like it but have no idea what it means or even what it says at face value

# ? Nov 3, 2020 03:14

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# ? May 5, 2024 19:24

Fried Watermelon: Dec 29, 2008

Looks like From Hell is available as an ebook from my local library.

Anyone have experience with the Ebook PDF? Worth reading or should I track down a physical copy? I'll be reading it on a computer screen or mobile phone and not an eReader.

# ? Nov 3, 2020 05:49

Toph Bei Fong: Feb 29, 2008

Danger posted:

also underlying the entire theory of historical narrative is a premise of materialism but I guess it wasn�t woke enough?

Yeah, I mean, the entire book is about how systems of violence are perpetuated by the upper classes preying on the weak and marginalized. It's literally about how awful it is that a cishet white man is allowed to brutally murder sex workers (one of whom is depicted, with credible evidence in the end notes, as a lesbian), with government approval, just so an upperclass twit can get out of taking responsibility for getting a lower class woman pregnant (said woman is also brutally disposed of via brain surgery and incarceration in an insane asylum), because it might be embarassing for those in power.

I'm not even getting into subtext; this is literally what is depicted on the page. Gull says pretty directly that the purpose of his "ritual" is to keep women oppressed.

It's a nasty, brutish book about a grisly subject. It's not really meant to be fun.

The art, on the other hand, is pretty clearly a tribute to the illustration style of the time period, and many of the contemporary illustrations of the events are incorperated into the art of the book:

This one has bare breasts

# ? Nov 3, 2020 07:13

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

Toph Bei Fong posted:

Yeah, I mean, the entire book is about how systems of violence are perpetuated by the upper classes preying on the weak and marginalized. It's literally about how awful it is that a cishet white man is allowed to brutally murder sex workers (one of whom is depicted, with credible evidence in the end notes, as a lesbian), with government approval, just so an upperclass twit can get out of taking responsibility for getting a lower class woman pregnant (said woman is also brutally disposed of via brain surgery and incarceration in an insane asylum), because it might be embarassing for those in power.

I'm not even getting into subtext; this is literally what is depicted on the page. Gull says pretty directly that the purpose of his "ritual" is to keep women oppressed.

It's a nasty, brutish book about a grisly subject. It's not really meant to be fun.

also literally sacrificing a gay man to the Thames to try and absolve the crown and end the investigation.

# ? Nov 3, 2020 14:38

StashAugustine: Mar 24, 2013; Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

Fried Watermelon posted:

Looks like From Hell is available as an ebook from my local library.

Anyone have experience with the Ebook PDF? Worth reading or should I track down a physical copy? I'll be reading it on a computer screen or mobile phone and not an eReader.

I read it on a laptop and it was fine, with the aforementioned caveat that you can't flip back and forth to the notes as easily

# ? Nov 3, 2020 14:42

StashAugustine: Mar 24, 2013; Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

Doubleposting: I'd had this spoiled going in but was either Aberline falling in love with Kelly or Kelly escaping supposed to be ambiguous? Neither is directly stated and both are kind of obfuscated but they're both really obvious imo

# ? Nov 3, 2020 14:45

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

StashAugustine posted:

Doubleposting: I'd had this spoiled going in but was either Aberline falling in love with Kelly or Kelly escaping supposed to be ambiguous? Neither is directly stated and both are kind of obfuscated but they're both really obvious imo

yes, it�s drawn purposefully ambiguous. it�s discussed a bit in gull catchers and Campbell clarified it was his intent recently in his discussion of colorizing.

# ? Nov 3, 2020 14:47

bvj191jgl7bBsqF5m: Apr 16, 2017; IÍÌÌ° ÍÌ¯ÌÌ«Ì¹Ì¯Ì¤AÒmÍÌºÌ© ÍÌ¬AÌ¡Ì®ÌÌ ÍÍÌ±Ì« KÌ¶eÍgÍ.ÌÌ»Ì±ÌªÍÌ¹Ì

Big spoiler: Dr. Bilbo Baggins is Jack the Ripper

# ? Nov 3, 2020 14:47

StashAugustine: Mar 24, 2013; Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

bvj191jgl7bBsqF5m posted:

Big spoiler: Dr. Bilbo Baggins is Jack the Ripper

See this is the #1 reason I'm mad the movie sucks because that is perfect casting

# ? Nov 3, 2020 14:50

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

StashAugustine posted:

Doubleposting: I'd had this spoiled going in but was either Aberline falling in love with Kelly or Kelly escaping supposed to be ambiguous? Neither is directly stated and both are kind of obfuscated but they're both really obvious imo

one important caveat to this is that there is no allusion that Kelly escapes with Abberline, that was totally an invented plot in the movie.

# ? Nov 3, 2020 16:22

StashAugustine: Mar 24, 2013; Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

Yeah I need to double check when I get home, but what I see was Kelly/Emma is trying to get money out of Aberline so she can get out, but Gull acts quicker than expected. Aberline doesn't seem to make a connection between the two. He does get some ambiguous evidence that people saw Kelly after her supposed death (having stayed out later than she planned) and that one of her girlfriends is missing; but all Aberline knows of "Emma" is that she ripped him off and ran off with the money. Then the end sort of implies that Gull sees Kelly alive as an old woman.

E: I guess the thing is that I had this all spoiled for me but the book itself is playing cute with it I don't think you ever see Emma's face, for example so idk what people reading it fresh thought

StashAugustine has issued a correction as of 17:20 on Nov 3, 2020

# ? Nov 3, 2020 17:14

bvj191jgl7bBsqF5m: Apr 16, 2017; IÍÌÌ° ÍÌ¯ÌÌ«Ì¹Ì¯Ì¤AÒmÍÌºÌ© ÍÌ¬AÌ¡Ì®ÌÌ ÍÍÌ±Ì« KÌ¶eÍgÍ.ÌÌ»Ì±ÌªÍÌ¹Ì

StashAugustine posted:

See this is the #1 reason I'm mad the movie sucks because that is perfect casting

When I first saw the movie I had no idea about Allan Moore or this comic, so I thought it was just a fun slasher film

# ? Nov 3, 2020 17:23

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

StashAugustine posted:

Yeah I need to double check when I get home, but what I see was Kelly/Emma is trying to get money out of Aberline so she can get out, but Gull acts quicker than expected. Aberline doesn't seem to make a connection between the two. He does get some ambiguous evidence that people saw Kelly after her supposed death (having stayed out later than she planned) and that one of her girlfriends is missing; but all Aberline knows of "Emma" is that she ripped him off and ran off with the money. Then the end sort of implies that Gull sees Kelly alive as an old woman.

E: I guess the thing is that I had this all spoiled for me but the book itself is playing cute with it I don't think you ever see Emma's face, for example so idk what people reading it fresh thought

I think the Emma/Kelly thing serves a thematic purpose as well regardless of if they were the same when Abberline invites her to a room.

Danger has issued a correction as of 17:57 on Nov 3, 2020

# ? Nov 3, 2020 17:30

Toph Bei Fong: Feb 29, 2008

StashAugustine posted:

Then the end sort of implies that Gull sees Kelly alive as an old woman.

Re: the ending

This is completely my interepetation, and I can't claim that it's backed up with anything but fanciful evicence, but I always got the impression that Gull was, at the end, seeing Heaven. The victims, having lived awful, nasty, and short lives, finally get a place to live happily, before Gull is finally diasppated into the ether.

The only backing I have for this is an interview with (legitimately crazy person) Dave Sim (which I am trying to locate, but don't have on hand), where Sim talks about Moore getting into magic. He says that Moore told him that he a vision, wherein he was in a large room with all the famous men of learning and magic: Dee, Blake, Hermes, etc. And, looking around, Moore started to wonder where all the women were. He assumed that there must be a seperate "sitting room" where they've all congregated, and he's simply in the "smoking lounge" with the men. Sim, on the otherhand, because he's a misogynist, assumes that it's because no woman has ever been a great magician. During a different interview (also with Sim), Moore brings up how some women of the period wished (perhaps ironically) that they could have been the victims, because it would have turned them into saints in the public's eyes, all their sins wiped away.

Thus, a vision of Heaven that is decidedly pastoral and completely devoid of all the squalor and abuse that their lives consisted of, before Gull's sacrifice is rejected, and he is sent to Hell -- unlike the Christian version of Hell being seperation from God, Gull has, briefly, been God, and now has to exist with the knowledge that he will never be so again. The "And this perplexing vision is the last thing I see before I become God. And then I..." on the last page of his vision would conclue something like "am sent back to my cell and die," as we go right back to his dead body.

Again, a lot of this is my own fancy, and I'm not going to pretend that it's backed up 100% by the text. I'd enjoy hearing other theories!

http://momentofcerebus.blogspot.com/2015/09/correspondence-from-hell-part-2.html posted:

For example, the statements made by Whitechapel women of the period, that I was discussing earlier, to the effect that they wouldn't mind being a victim themselves if it made people say nice things about them. These superficially tragic and desolate sentiments take on a different and more resonant cast if considered in the light of Peruvian families competing for their child to be chosen as the one made holy. It's as if those women had the idea that a lifetime of regret and mean, impoverished living could be wiped clean with one sudden movement of the right knife, in the right hands. Literally at a stroke they would be transformed into a local saint, as Polly Nicholls had been, as Mary Kelly had been.

My own ideas about the nature, of the magical experience revolve around the concept of an "Idea Space", in which some of the more complex of these entities might actually be considered to be "alive" in some special sense. Within this framework, the idea of sacrifice takes on a slightly different colouring. I myself have made sacrifices in a ritual context, but since I'm in the unfortunate position of being a diabolist and vegetarian, I'm afraid living sacrifices were out of the question. My own solution is to consider the mechanics of the act of sacrifice in the following light: if you wish to make a supplication to a supposed entity that is composed entirely of ideas and lives in a realm composed entirely of ideas, then it should be clear that something physical would be of no use whatsoever to such a hypothetical being. Such a being would not traffic in actual things so much as in the ideas of actual things.

Now, let us accept for the moment that any entity or object that we can perceive in the material universe is composed of two basic components. Firstly, there is the reality of its actual physical being: its material presence in space or time. Then, there is the idea of the object or entity, an immaterial presence unbounded by the same considerations of space and time. As a ready example, I could cite the death of a loved one: the physical presence is gone, broken down to its constituent chemicals, its constituent atoms. That person does not exist physically anymore as a discrete physical entity. The Idea-Presence of that person cannot die, however. It hangs around and wakes you up crying at four in the morning. Five years later it taps you on the shoulder while you're doing the washing up and it makes you smile.

Toph Bei Fong has issued a correction as of 21:38 on Nov 3, 2020

# ? Nov 3, 2020 19:34

StashAugustine: Mar 24, 2013; Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

Great post. Its extremely funny to me that Moore did an interview with Sims, about this book of all things

# ? Nov 3, 2020 21:36

Fish of hemp: Apr 1, 2011; A friendly little mouse!

I mean, in how many comic books you see Hitler's parents loving?

This is the best of them.

# ? Nov 3, 2020 22:32

MonsieurChoc: Oct 12, 2013; Every species can smell its own extinction.

Just got my copy of From Hell in the mail.

# ? Nov 12, 2020 22:45

Fluoride Jones: Aug 24, 2009; toot toot

I finished it yesterday and it's probably my favorite thing Moore has worked on. One of the richest things I've ever read. Hard to say whether chapter 4 or chapter 10 was my favorite

# ? Nov 12, 2020 22:53

animist: Aug 28, 2018

just finished it, excellent book. I especially enjoyed the endnotes -- how every so often moore goes "yeah I had a source for this but I can't find it now... It sounds convincing though, right?"

which is, imo, the whole point of the book

wanna listen to that moore chapo interview again now

# ? Nov 12, 2020 23:05

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

gently caress you. read this.

# ? Oct 5, 2022 22:30