For Fans of V for Vendetta

V for Vendetta is misread every time someone treats the Guy Fawkes mask as a symbol of general rebellion. Moore's point is sharper: V wears it because he has already been destroyed as a person by the state, and the mask is what remains. Anonymity, in his reading, is not cowardice but a refusal to let power have a target. The mask migrated into real-world protest after the film, most visibly with Anonymous and Occupy. Whether that bothers you or delights you probably depends on how closely you read the original argument.

Alan Moore disowned the 2005 film adaptation and refused any credit. His objections were partly personal (his fraught relationship with DC and Warner Bros.) and partly political: he felt the film softened V into a more palatable action hero and stripped out some of the book's anarchist specificity. Both readings are defensible. The film is genuinely good: it preserves the mood, Natalie Portman's Evey transformation is harrowing, and Hugo Weaving does something remarkable with a voice and a mask. But the book's Evey is younger and her journey is darker. Knowing both versions enriches each.

No other writer has produced so many individually important comics as Alan Moore. Swamp Thing reinvented what horror comics could do. Watchmen asked whether superhero stories could carry real moral weight. From Hell spent a decade reconstructing Victorian London and the psychology of institutional violence. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a love letter to pulp fiction rewritten as satire. Moore walked away from the mainstream industry, but the industry has never walked away from him: every ambitious comic published after 1986 is partly a response to what he proved was possible.