A nice dose of the flu
these last couple of weeks has kept me from reading much more than
comic books, and this hefty collection by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell
occupied me for a while.It's a retelling of the Jack the Ripper
murders as a series of masonic rituals conducted by an insane royal
physician trying to cover up the misdeeds of Queen Victoria's grandson.
Taking a total of sixteen episodes, the book follows victims, killers,
and investigators through a bewildering number of London locales. As
the magical theme progresses, the locales become even stranger, mixing
nineteenth and twentieth century cityscapes alongside grisly murder
scenes. Alan Moore's story is well-paced, and his physician is an
intriguing character, but I'm not convinced that this is the great
graphic novel other reviewers have claimed it to be. The prime fault is
Eddie Campbell's art which is workmanlike and even striking at times,
but more often so sketchy and crudely drawn it seems he simply forgot
to go back over the panels. Still, if you don't mind the cover price,
it's a fairly entertaining work if a bit pedantic with its appendices.
Iain Sinclair's novel White Chappell Scarlet Tracings, however, covers
similar territory in a much more intriguing manner.