As Walt Whitman once said of himself, From Hell is “large” (576 pages) and does “contain multitudes,” and-like any thing large and multitudinous-it is full of tantalizing contradictions. I'm not totally sure I even finished it, although I do think I remember some very unsatisfying closing scene with two old dudes on a bluff talking about how no one ever found out what they'd done? Did that happen? I don't fucking know, it's two years since I read it and I think I blocked most of it out.Īlan Moore’s graphic novel From Hell is an extraordinary creation, difficult to encapsulate for someone like me, who strives to epitomize the essence of a work in a relatively short review. Or something like that, I don't fucking know.Īlan Moore is a very insane man, and although I was blown away by Watchmen, this book made me never want to read anything else he's written ever again. I even hated the massive heft of the goddamn book itself, which was impossible to hold comfortably in any position, especially outside on my stoop, especially on the subway, especially anywhere except I guess sitting in a massive velvet armchair in some vast dark-wood-paneled drawing room where rich white men drink sherry and chortle over their monocles. I hated the inexplicable worlds-within-worlds twistiness of the myriad occult subplots. I hated all the characters-the flippety-gibbet women and the cold cruel calculating men and everyone in between. I hated the gore and the period-'appropriate' racism and classism. I hated the stark, sketch-y drawing that were so vague you couldn't ever tell who was who. Going back and messing with a classic isn’t always a great idea, but sometimes it works out just fine.I hated the cramped, schizophrenic writing that made my eyes cross. The re-edited version was released in 1998 to wide acclaim and is now considered the definitive cut of the movie. But he did famously specify a series of modifications to the 1958 studio cut of Touch of Evil, changes that weren’t enacted until after his death. Orson Welles never went back and added color to Citizen Kane. Everything that made From Hell great in black and white is still there, and the new elements add a lot more than they subtract.

In the end, then, Campbell’s care and craft are succeeding, so far, in threading the needle. Note the eyebrows and hair in the “From Hell, Netley” panels above, or the details of the woman’s face and her slightly smaller hat in the “Not your brother” panels. In some panels the effect is strikingly new and effective, especially in close-ups of characters’ faces where features had been formerly delineated by masses of black lines.

Eddie campbell from hell