History Comicbook / FromHell

''From Hell'' is a comic book series written by Creator/AlanMoore, speculating about the identity of {{Jack the Ripper}}. The series was published in 10 volumes between 1991 and 1996, and an appendix, ''From Hell: The Dance of the Gull-Catchers'', was published in 1998. The entire series was collected in trade paperback, published by Eddie Campbell Comics in 1999.

* [[FingerInTheMail Kidney in the Mail]]: TruthInTelevision, after [[spoiler:the death of Catherine Eddowes]], Gull removes her kidney post-mortem, has Netley write the famous "From Hell" letter and sends it by mail to George Lusk of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee. Of all the many letters claiming to be from the killer, this is unsurprisingly, the only one serious researches, consider to have sound claims as coming from the real culprit.

* ShoutOut: ''Dance of the Gull Catchers'' features Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell [[ItMakesSenseInContext carrying a pair of butterfly nets walking around outside a group of Ripperologists chasing after a gull with their own nets]] while Moore [[BreakingTheFourthWall looks out to the reader and goes]] [[LooneyTunes "Be vewy vewy quiet.]] [[CrowningMomentOfFunny We'we hunting wipers!"]]

* InspiredBy: Alan Moore extrapolated the story from Stephen Knight's theory on the Ripper murders. The idea of conducting an "autopsy" of the period also stemmed from DouglasAdams's ''DirkGentlysHolisticDetectiveAgency'', in which to solve a crime holistically, one would need to solve the entire society in which it occurred.

[[redirect:ComicBook/FromHell]]

[[quoteright:348:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/FromHell_4057.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:348:[[TabletopGame/{{Clue}} Dr. Gull, in the low rent apartment, with the Liston Knife]].]]
->"''[[TitleDrop From hell]]''

->''Mr Lusk,\\
Sor\\
[[FingerInTheMail I send you half the kidne I took from one women]] [[StylisticSuck prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise. I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer]]''

->''signed\\
Catch me when you can Mishter Lusk''"

->''"It is beginning, Netley. Only just beginning. For better or worse, the twentieth century. I have delivered it."''
-->-- Sir William Withey Gull

''From Hell'' is a comic book series written by Creator/AlanMoore, speculating about the identity of {{Jack the Ripper}}. The series was published in 10 volumes between 1991 and 1996, and an appendix, ''From Hell: The Dance of the Gull-Catchers'', was published in 1998. The entire series was collected in trade paperback, published by Eddie Campbell Comics in 1999.

''From Hell'' takes as its central premise Stephen Knight's theory that the Ripper murders were part of a conspiracy to conceal the birth of an illegitimate royal baby fathered by Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence. Moore himself has written that he found Knight's theory to be rather unlikely, but felt it would serve the purpose of his story, which uses the killings to explore and [[{{Deconstruction}} deconstruct]] Victorian society. As he wrote the story, Moore came to believe that the murders and the media spectacle it created in its time marked the beginning of the 20th Century.

It was adapted into a [[Film/FromHell film of the same title]] in 2001, starring JohnnyDepp as Inspector Abberline.
----
!! This Graphic Novel contains examples of:
* AGodAmI: [[spoiler: In Gull's last moments of life, he seems to believe that he's becoming a God. It [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane might just be]] the hallucinations of a depraved, dying mind. Though what we see near the end subverts that, he sees Mary Kelly alive and she sees him and tells him to "go back to hell".]]
* AncientConspiracy: One which goes even beyond the Freemasons and the Illuminati, and stretches back to the beginnings of Human Belief when Female worship was supplanted by Male worship. Gull sees the whole of Human History as being a conflict between Men and Women.
* ArcWords:
** Several characters state that they "just made a little sound" at particularly overwhelming moments.
** "What is the fourth dimension?"
* AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence: [[spoiler: Gull believes he is doing this near the end...only for a woman who may possibly be Mary Kelly to tell him to go back to hell.]]
* BadassBookworm: Sir William performs some pretty impressive pouncing for a scholarly doctor and stroke victim in his seventies.
* BasedOnAGreatBigLie:
** Moore makes no secret of the fact that he doesn't really believe Knight's theory, but damned if it doesn't make for a great story.
** In the story itself, the original letter sent to the police that describes its sender as "Jack the Ripper" is shown as nothing more than a fabrication created by a hack journalist.
* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor:
** Gull sees his murders as a ritual binding the lunar or irrational influence on human minds. He succeeds, only to be horrified at the future, where people are surrounded by the fruits of the rational mind but feel no wonder at all.
** Not to mention QueenVictoria and the masons, who certainly didn't expect something so gruesome when they asked Gull to take care of their problem.
* BlackEyesOfEvil: [[spoiler: Sir William Gull a.k.a Jack The Ripper show these for a moment]].
* BonusMaterial: Part of the experience of reading ''From Hell'' is going through the two appendices, one being an in-depth explanation of themes and scenes, the other being the ''Dance of The Gull Catchers'', a brief history of Ripperology.
* UsefulNotes/BritishCoppers
* TheBritishEmpire: Depicted as being in a state of decline, with references to General Gordon's death in the Mahdi uprisings.
* ConnectTheDeaths: A pre-meditated attempt at that. Gull in his insanity takes Netley through a tour of London and its famous landmarks, focusing on the architecture of Nicholas Hawksmoor which he beloves had strong masonic resonance and would set the scene for their killings.
* ConspiracyKitchenSink: Royal cover-up, Masonic involvement, Police complicity, ritualistic murder, Paganism, Time Travel and Baby Hitler. It's all here.
* ContractOnTheHitman: The conspirators contemplate having William Gull killed when his mental illness reveals him as a liability.
* ContrastMontage: The life of William Gull, Queen's surgeon, vs. the life of Mary Kelly, prostitute.
* ComicBookFantasyCasting: Inspector Abberline was modelled after Robbie Coltrane.
* CrapsackWorld: Whitechapel is a pit of criminality, depravity and poverty. England is a decaying empire afflicted with corruption and weak rulers. Even our modern times are dull and banal.
* ADateWithRosiePalms: A particularly tragic and depressing example, during which Netley has a brief moment of remorse and self-loathing at his part in Gull's murders.
* {{Deconstruction}}: ''From Hell'' deconstructs perceptions of the Victorian era, especially the late Victorian period, showing where many of our 20th Century obsessions (detective fiction, sensationalist tabloid journalism, serial killers) originated.
* DepravedHomosexual: Prince Albert's boyfriend, who [[JerkAss displays a misogynist attitude towards the death of the prostitutes]] and uses sex to distract the latter from the murders
* DisposableSexWorker: Very much averted. All of the victims are given significant amounts of characterisation and the main characters definitely do not forget about their murders, even if the government does. ''From Hell'' is something of a {{Deconstruction}} of this trope. The point of ''The Dance of the Gull-Catchers'' is that nobody actually cares about the prostitutes killed, or the continuing exploitation and objectification of women in modern times, only the fame for being the guy who solves the case.
* DissonantSerenity: Part of what makes Gull so unnerving is his calm and dispassionate exterior. As he butchers his final victim, he conducts himself as if conducting... well... an autopsy.
** In his appendix, Moore [[spoiler:when describing the final murder of the last victim came to the conclusion that the mutilations while ghastly were free of cruelty, since the victims were already dead and so could not endure the pain. When wondering how to get into Gull's mind to portray the mutilation, he relied on the real life doctor's descriptions of his childhood memories of picking flowers and grass, believing that Gull in his madness approached human viscera with the same childish spirit of inquisitiveness.]]
** Campbell's subdued artwork, the rigid page layouts, the loose handwritten lettering and the time period all conspire to create a more or less constant illusion of serenity; observe for instance Abberline's apoplectic verbal assault on a fellow copper, carried out in what seems at first glance to be calm and reasonable tones for a full page, until we see the cop shivering and wiping the sweat from his face.
* DoorStopper: The collected edition would probably kill you if it fell on your head. And it's a ''paperback''. Though its basically five hundred pages.
* TheDragon: Gull for the royal family, with Netley as TheBrute
* EagleEyeDetection
* FakingTheDead: [[spoiler:The last chapter implies that Gull killed the wrong woman in place of Mary Kelly, who escaped to live a life of anonymity back home in Ireland. Or maybe not...]]
* FaintingSeer: Robert Lees has dramatic seizures, complete with convulsions and cryptic phrases which he chokes out.
* FramingTheGuiltyParty: Lees tries to frame Gull as Jack the Ripper, which turns out to be quite true. Lees actually had no idea that Gull was in any way connected. Lees was just trying to get revenge for an insult. He is still distressed by it years later.
* FunetikAksent
* GainaxEnding: [[spoiler: The last chapter (not including the epilogue) features Gull going on an elaborate spiritual journey, traveling back and forth in time, before seemingly [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence reaching the source of all enlightenment...]] only to be confronted by a woman who may or may not be Mary Kelly fled to Ireland who tells him to go back to hell.]]
* {{Gayngst}}: Prince Albert displays some
* GoMadFromTheRevelation:
** Netley undergoes this during their tour of London chapter with the former starting to realise that he is AloneWithThePsycho as he starts talking of all kinds of masonic symbols and associations that connects London together. When he tries to back out, Gull forces him to look at the horse's herald and realize that it too had an emblem and this scares Netley into serving Gull.
** The appendix "Dance of the Gull-catchers" describes the Jack the Ripper killings as something that makes people crazy since the crime is impossible to solve. Moore compares it to a Koch snowflake, a mathematical fractal curve which suggests that a fixed and finite location in space-time, Whitechapel London in the late 1880s can have an infinite number of curves, sides and tangents which makes seeking a solution to the Ripper killings an impossible effort.
* {{Hallucinations}}: These play a large part in Gull's story. Or maybe they are more than hallucinations?
* InspiredBy: Alan Moore extrapolated the story from Stephen Knight's theory on the Ripper murders. The idea of conducting an "autopsy" of the period also stemmed from DouglasAdams's ''DirkGentlysHolisticDetectiveAgency'', in which to solve a crime holistically, one would need to solve the entire society in which it occurred.
* HistoricalDomainCharacter: Apart from the central characters, most of whom are based on real people, a number of historical celebrities pop their heads in, from OscarWilde, to the Elephant Man, to Alan Moore favourite Creator/AleisterCrowley.
* HistoricalVillainUpgrade:
** Queen Victoria is given one, ordering first a lobotomy of the prostitute Prince Albert has impregnated and then giving mandate to Gull for the murder of five prostitutes as a cover-up. In his appendix, Moore noted that this was something he especially relished as a TakeThat to the popular image of the Queen though Eddie Campbell wasn't entirely on board with it.
** Dr. William Gull is a real life doctor and highly respected professional who was also by all accounts an ordinary decent gentleman. There is no real evidence linking him to the Jack the Ripper killings or as Moore portrays him, a kind of Masonic shaman who regarded the killings as a quasi-magic ritual. Moore admits as much that he accepts the Gull hypothesis as an ''assumption'' and story-telling convention and doesn't really think that Gull is the real culprit any more than the myriad other suspects suggested over the years.
* HumanoidAbomination: [[spoiler:Creator/WilliamBlake's perception of Gull's spirit.]] The vision inspires his painting, ''The Ghost of a Flea''.
* InfoDump: An early chapter is basically Gull traveling around town with his sidekick lecturing him on the secret Masonic/pagan symbolism of London landmarks.
* JackTheRipper: ...yup.
* [[FingerInTheMail Kidney in the Mail]]: TruthInTelevision, after [[spoiler:the death of Catherine Eddowes]], Gull removes her kidney post-mortem, has Netley write the famous "From Hell" letter and sends it by mail to George Lusk of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee. Of all the many letters claiming to be from the killer, this is unsurprisingly, the only one serious researches, consider to have sound claims as coming from the real culprit.
* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: Nearly all of them drawn from real life.
* MadDoctor: Gull, who begins to have hallucinations after a stroke, though he seems inclined to cruelty from early on.
* MeaningfulName: In the second appendix, Moore points out that Gull is a word for a person easily fooled (from where we derive "gullible"). [[spoiler: Gull, of course, is fooled into believing he actually killed Mary Kelly. Twice.]]
* MindScrew: ''"What is the fourth dimension?"''
* NeverSuicide: Needless to say, the police don't inquire too closely into the death of [[spoiler: Montague John Druitt]].
* NothingIsTheSameAnymore: How Abberline feels when he [[spoiler:sees the body of the final victim, mutilated beyond reason. He tells his deputy that he feels all of them, that is the whole of Victorian society, died in that room.]]
* OldFashionedCopper: Considering it's 1888, all of them, really.
* OminousFog: It's Victorian London. It's always foggy.
* PhonyPsychic: Robert Lees. He's making it all up. [[PropheciesAreAlwaysRight But it all came true anyway]].
* PoeticSerialKiller: Gull is a particularly disturbing example of this trope.
* PoliceProcedural
* PlatonicProstitution: Abberline's relationship with "Fair Emma".
* PsychoForHire: Sir Wiilliam Gull. He's hired for his discretion, but turns out to be quite AxCrazy.
* [[ViewersAreGeniuses Readers Are Geniuses]]: The work is teeming with references to historical figures and events, a lengthy exchange on fourth dimensional theory, psychogeography, Masonic ritual and Pagan mysticism and the Illuminati. Reading the appendix is not just recommended. It's a necessity.
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech:
** Gull delivers one to Lees, which ironically prompts Lees to try to frame him for the Ripper murders. Gull starts to deliver a real apocalyptic one to the Masonic Council before his dementia catches up with him and he trails off in confusion.
** At the very end, [[spoiler:Gull receives a long awaited one from Mary Kelly who's Not Quite Dead while he's in the astral plane, she sees him and tells him that he's a monster and he will not hurt the children she's raised in Ireland, telling him in no uncertain terms to "go back to hell."]]
* ReverseWhodunnit: The Ripper's identity is revealed in the opening chapters. It's not so much a ''Whodunnit?'' as a ''Whydunnit?'' or not even that, Moore examines the Jack the Ripper killings as a medium to portray all of Victorian society, and indeed as the real end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the far DarkerAndEdgier 20th Century.
* UsefulNotes/ScotlandYard: The highest brass as well as a few grunts are a part of the conspiracy, some more willing than others.
* ShoutOut: ''Dance of the Gull Catchers'' features Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell [[ItMakesSenseInContext carrying a pair of butterfly nets walking around outside a group of Ripperologists chasing after a gull with their own nets]] while Moore [[BreakingTheFourthWall looks out to the reader and goes]] [[LooneyTunes "Be vewy vewy quiet.]] [[CrowningMomentOfFunny We'we hunting wipers!"]]
* ShownTheirWork: The comics includes lengthy annotations section detailing the research he put into making the comic, and the truth (or not) behind the more fantastic elements. Indeed even the moment when Dr. Gull collapses on the meadow was based on a real life incident. More to the point, the minutiae of London of that time is portrayed with a lot of accuracy.
* SlasherSmile: The one which Gull flashes especially for Netley at the conclusion of their psychogeographical trip through London is horrible.
* StylisticSuck: Gull and Netley's letter to the police. Gull has the barely literate Netley write it so as to protect himself.
* TitleDrop: Gull very pointedly insists that Netley begin their letter, "From hell."
* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: Nobody really knows the truth behind the Ripper murders. There are a lot more credible theories than the one presented in this story, though. Moore himself has openly stated that he doesn't believe a word of the theory he uses, rather he wanted to deconstruct the entire Ripper killings as a post-modern myth by exploring the events with a fully formed hypothesis rather than a new attempt at solving the unsolvable.
* VictorianLondon: The setting.
* VillainsBlendInBetter: Inverted. When the killer briefly time-travels to the modern world, he is horrified by how soulless and banal everything is.
* VomitingCop: George Godley, upon finding the corpse of Jack the Ripper's last victim. [[spoiler: Also Abberline once he discovers the full extent of the conspiracy.]]
* VomitIndiscretionShot: Netley has an adverse reaction to Sir William Withey Gull's Walking Tour of London.
* WifeHusbandry: Walter Sickert allegedly helped raise Alice Crook after her mother was lobotomized by Gull, then when she came of age fathered a child with her, said child being Joseph Gorman, the man who told Stephan Knight about the putative conspiracy theory that Moore based the comic on.
* WrongSideOfTheTracks: Limehouse, Whitechapel.
----

''From Hell'' takes as its central premise Stephen Knight's theory that the Ripper murders were part of a conspiracy to conceal the birth of an illegitimate royal baby fathered by Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence. Moore himself has written that he found Knight's theory to be rather unlikely, but felt it would serve the purpose of his story which used the killings to explore and [[{{Deconstruction}} deconstruct]] Victorian society on the whole. As he wrote the story, Moore came to believe that the murders and the media spectacle it created in its time marked the beginning of the 20th Century.

It was adapted into a [[Film/FromHell film of the same title]] ([[InNameOnly and not much else]]) in 2001, starring JohnnyDepp as Inspector Abberline.

''From Hell'' takes as its central premise Stephen Knight's theory that the Ripper murders were part of a conspiracy to conceal the birth of an illegitimate royal baby fathered by Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence. Moore himself has written that he found Knight's theory to be rather unlikely, but felt it would make a good story.

* AGodAmI: [[spoiler: In Gull's last moments of life, he seems to believe that he's becoming a God. It [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane might just be]] the hallucinations of a depraved, dying mind. Though what we see near the end subverts that, he sees Mary Reilly alive and she sees him and tells him to "go back to hell".]]
* AncientConspiracy: One which goes even beyond the Freemasons and the Illuminati, and stretches back to the beginnings of Human Belief when Female worship was supplanted by Male worship. Gull sees the whole of Human History as being a conflict between Men and Women.

** At the very end, [[spoiler:Gull receives a long awaited one from Mary Reilly who's Not Quite Dead while he's in the astral plane, she sees him and tells him that he's a monster and he will not hurt the children she's raised in Ireland, telling him in no uncertain terms to "go back to hell."]]

* DisposableSexWorker: Very much averted. All of the victims are given significant amounts of characterisation and the main characters definitely do not forget about their murders, even if the government does. ''From Hell'' is something of a {{Deconstruction}} of this trope.
** Indeed the point of [[spoiler:''The Dance of the Gull-Catchers'' is that nobody actually cares about the prostitutes killed, or the continuing exploitation and objectification of women in modern times, only the fame for being the guy who solves the case]].

* HistoricalVillainUpgrade: Queen Victoria is given one, ordering first a lobotomy of the prostitute Prince Albert has impregnated and then giving mandate to Gull for the murder of five prostitutes as a cover-up. In his appendix, Moore noted that this was something he especially relished as a TakeThat to the popular image of the Queen though Eddie Campbell wasn't entirely on board with it.

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Gull delivers one to Lees, which ironically prompts Lees to try to frame him for the Ripper murders. Gull starts to deliver a real apocalyptic one to the Masonic Council before his dementia catches up with him and he trails off in confusion.
** At the very end, [[spoiler:Gull receives a long awaited one from Mary Reilly who's NotQuiteDead while he's in the astral plane, she sees him and tells him that he's a monster and he will not hurt the children she's raised in Ireland telling him in no uncertain terms, to "go back to hell".]]

* GeniusBruiser: Sir William performs some pretty impressive pouncing for a scholarly doctor and stroke victim in his seventies.

* GoMadFromTheRevelation: Netley undergoes this during their tour of London chapter with the former starting to realise that he is AloneWithThePsycho as he starts talking of all kinds of masonic symbols and associations that connects London together. When he tries to back out, Gull forces him to look at the horse's herald and realize that it too had an emblem and this scares Netley into serving Gull.

** Indeed the sobriety of the art style is what makes the crucial chapter [[spoiler: of the mutilation of the last victim that much horrifying]].

** The [[TrippyFinaleSyndrome Trippy Finale]] explores the legacy of Jack the Ripper in being the first of several 20th Century serial killers with future murderers like the Yorkshire Rippers and the Moors Murderers shown as Ripper's twisted descendants.

* BasedOnAGreatBigLie: Moore makes no secret of the fact that he doesn't really believe Knight's theory, but damned if it doesn't make for a great story.

** The appendix "Dance of the Gull-catchers" describes the Jack the Ripper killings as something that makes people crazy since the crime is impossible to solve. Moore compares it to a Koch snowflake, a mathematical fractal curve which suggests that a fixed and finite location in space-time, Whitechapel London in the late 1890s can have an infinite number of curves, sides and tangents which makes seeking a solution to the Ripper killings an impossible effort.

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: Nobody really knows the truth behind the Ripper murders. There are a lot more credible theories than the one presented in this story, though. Moore himself has openly stated that he doesn't believe a word of the theory he uses, but simply found it entertaining enough to build his work around and decided not to let the 'truth' get in the way of a good story.

* AppropriatedAppellation: The titular "From Hell" letter, which William Gull asks Netley to write and which is signed "Jack the Ripper" is driven by a desire for Gull to reclaim the tabloid legend created around his killings. After [[spoiler:killing a victim, he removes her kidney and sends it in a mail.]]

* {{Reconstruction}}: ''From Hell'' deconstructs perceptions of the Victorian era in order to reconstruct them, showing where many of our 20th Century obsessions (detective fiction, sensationalist tabloid journalism, serial killers) originated.

* ConnectTheDeaths

** Indeed the point of [[spoiler:''The Dance of the Gull-Catchers'' is that nobody actually cares about the prostitutes killed but of the hunt for the killer]].

* ShownTheirWork: The comics includes lengthy annotations section detailing the research he put into making the comic, and the truth (or not) behind the more fantastic elements.

* AGodAmI: [[spoiler: In Gull's last moments of life, he seems to believe that he's becoming a God. It [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane might just be]] the hallucinations of a depraved, dying mind.]]

* DissonantSerenity: Part of what makes Gull so unnerving is his calm and dispassionate exterior. As he butchers his final victim, he conducts himself as if conducting... well... an autopsy.

* DoorStopper: The collected edition would probably kill you if it fell on your head. And it's a ''paperback''.

* FramingTheGuiltyParty: Lees tries to frame Gull as Jack the Ripper, which turns out to be quite true. Lees actually had no idea that Gull was in any way connected. Lees was just trying to get revenge for an insult.

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Gull delivers one to Lees, which ironically prompts Lees to try to frame him for the Ripper murders. Gull starts to deliver a real apocalyptic one to the Masonic Council before his dementia catches up with him and he trails off in confusion.

* ReverseWhodunnit: The Ripper's identity is revealed in the opening chapters. It's not so much a ''Whodunnit?'' as a ''Whydunnit?''

''From Hell'' is a comic book series written by AlanMoore, speculating about the identity of {{Jack the Ripper}}. The series was published in 10 volumes between 1991 and 1996, and an appendix, ''From Hell: The Dance of the Gull-Catchers'', was published in 1998. The entire series was collected in trade paperback, published by Eddie Campbell Comics in 1999.

* HistoricalDomainCharacter: Apart from the central characters, most of whom are based on real people, a number of historical celebrities pop their heads in, from OscarWilde, to the Elephant Man, to Alan Moore favourite AleisterCrowley.

->"It is beginning, Netley. Only just beginning. For better or worse, the twentieth century. I have delivered it."
->-- Sir William Withey Gull