Alan Moore collaborated with artist Eddie Campbell to create From Hell (1999), which is a work of fiction that explores historical events, specifically the Whitechapel murders and Jack the Ripper. While most works about the Whitechapel murders focus on the true identity of the Ripper, From Hell differs in that Sir William Withey Gull, Physician-in-Ordinary to the Queen, is revealed as the Ripper early in the narrative. He is ordered by Queen Victoria to silence a group of prostitutes, who were blackmailing the monarchy over the existence of an illegitimate child sired by Prince Albert Victor Christian Edward, known as ‘Eddy’, her grandson.
Eric Berlatsky notes that From Hell ‘signalled a rejection of the mainstream’s preoccupation with four-color superheroics’. This reflects the general perception that exists in relation to the place of this text in Moore’s career.[1] However, I will argue that Gull’s story conforms to certain tropes of the superhero genre and therefore shows evidence of closer links to this genre than are generally accepted. Chapter two of From Hell introduces the reader to Gull via an account of his life. This account provides evidence that maps onto narrative conventions of superhero stories.
Firstly, Gull’s father dies when he is a child (fig. 1). The death or loss of a parent or parents is an event that is common to superheroes, as noted by Richard Reynolds in Superheroes – A Modern Mythology.[2] Batman’s parents die during a robbery (fig. 2), while Superman’s parents die on an exploding planet.
Fig. 1 From Hell, Chapter 2 p.4, panels 4-6.
Fig. 2 Detective Comics #33 p.2, panels 1-3.
This representation of parent-related trauma is a common trope in superhero stories. Moore includes a short scene depicting how Gull’s father’s death may have affected him as a young boy. Like Walter Kovacs (Rorschach in Watchmen), when he witnesses his mother having sex with a client, we do not this parent-related trauma as the primary catalyst for taking up the hero role (see chapter three), but the childhood incidents do help us to understand their character more. Gull’s reaction to seeing his father dead is to open his eyelids. This curiosity foreshadows his later interest in biology, while also displaying evidence of emotional trauma, or psychological problems, in relation to the suggestion that young Gull laughs when he opens his father’s eyelids. In contrast, most depictions of the loss of parents in superhero comics conform to it being a primary catalyst. In the first depiction of Batman’s origins story in Detective Comics #33, the panel immediately following their deaths and Bruce’s reaction, we see Bruce kneeling beside his bed, hands clasped almost as if in prayer, taking an oath (fig. 2): ‘And I swear by the spirits of my parents to avenge their deaths by spending the rest of my life warring on all criminals’.[3] The caption box correctly states that this is a ‘curious and strange scene’; the emotional bleakness underscores the trauma of Bruce’s experience in a similar way to Gull’s experience, both having an emotional reaction – despair and laughter respectively. While different, both reactions show a difficulty with processing emotions related to grief and Gull, like Bruce Wayne, occupies the darker side of the superhero rooted in bleaker origins of parental loss.
Secondly, a transformative or visionary experience occurs later in life for superheroes that points towards embracing a destiny as a superhero and the sense of mission this entails: for Batman, this is a bat crashing through a window, while for Captain Marvel, this is an encounter with an old wizard (fig. 3). For William Gull, it is a vision that culminates in the appearance of Jahbulon, a gods associated with the Freemasons (fig. 4).
Fig. 3 Whiz Comics #2 p.5 (February 1940).
Fig. 4 From Hell, Chapter 2 p.26.
Transformative and visionary experiences are a common feature of superhero narratives. They are moments when an event occurs that engenders a mental change, or a physical change, or both. Billy Batson utters a magic word, given to him by a wizard, which changes him into the adult superhero Captain Marvel, and we are reminded that this character was the inspiration for Mick Anglo’s Marvelman, who later became Moore’s Marvelman (later renamed Miracleman). Here, magical and mystical sources form the catalyst for change, as they do for Gull and his transformative vision of Jahbulon. Gull’s change is a mental one, and can be related to heroes who experience a trauma that impacts on their lives to such an extent that they decide to become a superhero through sheer force of will, like Bruce Wayne becoming Batman, who trains himself to the ultimate best of his physical and mental ability. Wayne, like Gull, remains human and does not have superpowers.
Thirdly, superheroes embrace their mission against evil for the power of good: Spiderman fights against evil to honour the memory his dead uncle and to try and cope with the guilt he feels over his death, while Batman is driven by the desire to try and avenge the death of his parents (fig. 1); Gull perceives that he is ridding Victorian society of a threat to the monarchy and that he is undertaking a mystically significant series of tasks to fulfil his destiny (fig. 5).
Fig. 5 From Hell, Chapter 2 p.28, panels 7-9.
To our frame of reference, Gull’s violent acts are evil, but he sees them as being necessary for the greater good. Gull’s belief in his actions show that he sees himself as good, a reversal of the good : evil opposition that underpins superhero stories from our perspective, but also alludes to anti-heroic characters like the Punisher and Rorschach, but taken to an extreme level as almost an horrific parody of vigilantism.
In addition, superheroes engage in their activities at a high personal cost: Spiderman discovers that the Green Goblin is his best friend’s father (fig. 6); Superman defeats Doomsday and dies in the process (although is later resurrected); Gull, while ridding the world of the group of prostitutes and attaining his destiny, is then declared insane and incarcerated in an asylum (fig. 7).
Fig. 6 Amazing Spider-Man #39 p.20, panels 3-5.
Fig. 7 From Hell, chapter 12 p.25, panel 1.
Here, the reversal of the opposition between good and evil, one that fueled Gull’s perceptions of his own actions, is restored to its original balance as Gull’s evil leads to his imprisonment and death. Furthermore, positioning the Ripper as a superhero has significant ideological implications, as this engenders a binary opposition that equates the villain with the female victim. This accords with Gull’s view of the prostitutes he murders in the context of this narrative, with Gull taking on the role of the ‘good’ force against the ‘evil’ prostitutes. However, the restoration of the good : evil opposition at least underscores the female characters position as victims, rather than the villains in Gull’s twisted logic and the machinations of Queen Victoria and the monarchy. As such, From Hell extends some of the ideas Moore investigated in his superhero work in terms of the questionable morality of a supposedly moral construct of the superhero based on the good : evil opposition, specifically in relation to how morality is pliable according to how a character perceives their own role and actions. Gull’s intractable nature links him to characters like Rorschach from Watchmen and Ditko’s Mr A and the Question (see chapter three), as these characters are representations of self-proclaimed heroes who embody a kind of inflexible and flawed moral code that exceeds liberal ideology.
Another important element of the superhero character is the secret identity; for example, Superman lives an ordinary life as Clark Kent (Superman), while Spider-Man is a student and photographer called Peter Parker, and Batman is the millionaire playboy and businessman Bruce Wayne. William Gull can be viewed in this context as a kind of secret identity for Jack the Ripper, which further extends the correlation with the figure of the superhero. While the readers are privy to the fact that Gull is the Ripper, as Peter Parker is Spiderman and Bruce Wayne is Batman, the three characters’ civilian identities remain widely hidden to the inhabitants of the characters’ respective diegetic universes. In addition, the nature of secret identities in superhero comics echoes some of the ideas put forward in ‘Dance of the Gull Catchers’, a story included as an epilogue in the collected volume, in which Moore and Campbell give an account of the real-life development of some of the theories of the Whitechapel murders. It is evident in this piece that an actual identity for the Ripper can now never be established, and it makes the case that the theories surrounding potential suspects are effectively examples of:
quantum uncertainty [which is] unable to determine both a particle’s location and its nature, [and] necessitates that we map every possible state of the particle: its superposition. Jack’s not Gull, or Druitt. Jack’s a super-position.[4]
Essentially, while Jack is not Gull or Druitt, he also has no identity because the idea of Jack the Ripper has transcended any chance to identify his historical identity. This is reflected in the following image taken from the appendix (fig. 8):
Fig. 8 From Hell, Appendix II p.16, panel 7.
Here, the candidates for the identity of the historical ripper encircle a silhouetted figure who is carrying a case and a cane and wearing a top hat, which is a standard default image adopted in numerous portrayals of the Ripper. The image suggests that any of these people could be the Ripper, or not, and that that we only have a shadowy image of the Ripper to base any conception upon. The Ripper could be anyone, which leads to a mythic version of the Ripper rather than a historically verifiable one. This sense of mutable of identity, in the application of potential identities onto the Ripper, has an interesting parallel with some superhero characters. Much like the Ripper, who is attributed different identities by researchers and investigators, characters will often try to ascertain the civilian identity of the superhero. Furthermore, certain superhero identities have been assumed by more than one ‘civilian’ character over time, and has often been needed to invigorate stale intellectual property, much like the emergence of new Ripper candidates over the decades since the crimes were committed, serving to reinvigorate interest in Ripperology.[5] Taking one superhero to illustrate this, the Flash, a character owned and published by DC Comics, the secret identity of the first incarnation of this character (1940 – 51) was Jay Garrick, a college student. Following a period where the popularity of superhero comics waned, a new version of the character appeared in 1956, with a redesigned costume and new secret identity: Barry Allen, a police scientist (also referred to in chapter two). Following Allen’s death in 1986, Allen’s ‘kid sidekick’ Wally West (Kid Flash) adopted the Flash identity. Moore’s works in superhero comics did not actually involve any identity transitions like those affecting the Flash, as he retained the sole identities for characters like Marvelman and Captain Britain, preferring to build on pre-existing stories rather than recreate characters and new secret identities. In From Hell, choosing William Gull as a specific identity for the Ripper echoes this characteristically stricter adherence to characters and their secret identities.
Gull’s use of violence in chapter eight, pages 37 to 40 (fig. 9) is reminiscent of superhero violence. The fourth panel on page 37 depicts Gull leaping from his carriage, an act that recalls the type of leaps that mark superhero fights. Similar parallels can be drawn between the angular, kinetic arrangement of limbs and body positions, and it seems that Gull’s superhero-like origin is now extended to the type of physicality and display of violence that marks most modern superheroes. One can see the similarities between superhero comic book action and violence and this scene in the two examples included below (figs. 9 and 10), the latter example being taken from an issue of Frank Miller’s run on the Daredevil comic book series.[6] They are visually similar in terms of their composition, with two people engaged in a fight, and the hero figure aiming to deal with their opponent through physical exertion and action.
Fig. 9 From Hell, chapter 8 p.37. Fig.10 Daredevil #181, p.31.
Kevin J. Wanner states that there are three types of violence at work in superhero comics: instrumental (negative, but necessary), aggressive (violence that is enjoyed), and sacrificial or sacred (violence taken upon oneself), noting that instrumental violence is ‘characteristic of superheroes in general’.[7]
Gull’s violence is instrumental in relation to Gull’s own twisted psychological perspective, in that he justifies it in terms of ridding Victorian society of the prostitutes, who he perceives as being evil. This is different to standard superhero stories, where the necessity of violence is arguably more acceptable than in From Hell, in that the villain has to be stopped for reasons of generally accepted notions of public safety. In the example, Daredevil is aiming to stop Bullseye, the villain, as he has recently killed his lover Elektra. The necessity of violence, for Gull, is related to these acts being needed to fulfil orders from the monarchy to protect their reputation, as he has been tasked with dealing with these women who are attempting blackmail in relation to Prince Eddy’s illegitimate daughter. They also tie in with Gull’s own psychological purposes, which are bound up with his freemason affiliations, in addition to the personal psychological problems not necessarily known about by the monarchy initially. This also highlights how violent acts are justified by a consensus of the majority in any given society, particularly for superheroes, otherwise they become manifestations of questionable and problematic moral perspectives, like Gull’s. Ultimately, Gull has to be rejected by Victorian society in the form of his Freemason brothers, who lock him away in order to maintain the status quo, the monarchy, and the conventional morality of good and evil as a whole.
Bibliography:
Berlatsky, Eric L., Alan Moore: Conversations (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2011) p.x
Finger, Bill and Bob Kane, ‘The Batman Wars Against the Dirigible of Doom’ in Detective Comics #33 (New York: Detective Comics Inc., November 1939)
Miller, Frank, ‘Last Hand’ in Daredevil #181 (New York, Marvel Comics, April 1982) p.31
Moore, Alan and Eddie Campbell, From Hell (USA: Top Shelf, 2006) Appendix II p.16
Odell, Robin, Ripperology: A Study of the World’s First Serial Killer and a Literary Phenomenon (Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2006)
Reynolds, Richard, Superheroes – A Modern Mythology (London: B.T. Batsford Ltd, 1992)
Wanner, Kevin J., ‘In a World of Super-Violence, Can Pacifism Pack a Punch?: Nonviolent Superheroes and their Implications’ in The Journal of American Culture, 39:2, 2016.
Bio:
Dr. Andrew Edwards is a writer and scholar. His research interests include comics and graphic novels, science fiction, horror, intertextuality, and representations of gender. He has written on these topics for a number of publications. He is also an Academic Skills Tutor and Sessional Lecturer at Wrexham Glyndwr University. His book, Beat Your Writer’s Block, is forthcoming from Sage Publishing. He can be followed on Twitter @AndrewEdwards88 and blogs at https://drandrewedwards.blogspot.com/ .
Footnotes:
[1] Eric L. Berlatsky, Alan Moore: Conversations (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2011) p.x
[2] Richard Reynolds, Superheroes – A Modern Mythology (London: B.T. Batsford Ltd, 1992)
[3] Bill Finger and Bob Kane, ‘The Batman Wars Against the Dirigible of Doom’ in Detective Comics #33 (New York: Detective Comics Inc., November 1939).
[4] Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, From Hell (USA: Top Shelf, 2006) Appendix II p.16
[5] Robin Odell, Ripperology: A Study of the World’s First Serial Killer and a Literary Phenomenon (Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2006)
[6] Frank Miller, ‘Last Hand’ in Daredevil #181 (New York, Marvel Comics, April 1982) p.31
[7] Kevin J Wanner, ‘In a World of Super-Violence, Can Pacifism Pack a Punch?: Nonviolent Superheroes and their Implications’ in The Journal of American Culture, 39:2, 2016.