History Comicbook / FromHell

* 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 indicates otherwise-he sees Mary Kelly alive and she sees him and tells him to "go back to hell."]]

** Dr. William Gull is a real life doctor and highly respected professional who was also by all accounts an ordinary decent gentleman, as well as a supporter of women trying to pursue a career in medicine. There is no real evidence linking him to the Jack the Ripper killings or, as Moore portrays him, a misogynistic Masonic shaman who regarded the killings as a quasi-magic ritual. Moore admits as much and said 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.

* CharacterFilibuster: Gull does this in the fourth chapter "What doth the lord require of thee?".

* AmbiguousDisorder: Polly Nichols appears to have some kind of developmental disability beyond the effects of alcoholism and malnutrition that were common among lower class sex workers of the time. Given the notoriously poor understanding of mental illness of the time it's impossible to know what was really wrong with her, but what little information we have about the real Polly Nichols describes her as childlike and having poor impulse control.

* 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.

* AbsurdlySharpBlade: Gull's weapon is a Liston knife, a surgical blade which he brags can saw through a full human leg in less than a minute.

* YouCantFightFate: The story posits an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time) eternalist]] conception of time, which is pretty much the most extreme conception of this idea as applied to quantum physics, in which past, present, and future all coexist in an unchanging four-dimensional block where all events are preordained because they have, in effect, already happened.

* AbsurdlySharpBlade: Gull's WeaponOfChoice is a Liston knife, a surgical blade which he brags can saw through a full human leg in less than a minute.

-->'''Creator/AlanMoore:''' ''I was not at all interested in who Jack the Ripper was. That's Hardy Boys stuff… It was the behavior of the culture that fascinates me and still does. The William Gull figure is the culprit I came upon because he was the most interesting. Because he connected to a much bigger world than any of the others, so I could use him to explore all these kinds of mythical aspects of the Jack the Ripper 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 indicates otherwise-he sees Mary Kelly alive and she sees him and tells him to "go back to hell".]]
* AbstractApotheosis: [[spoiler: Gull, in his dying madness, believes this to be happening to him. Specifically, it's his spirit that gives rise to all modern serial killers]].
--> ''"[[spoiler:I am set free from flesh and time. I am become a symbol in the human soul, a fearful star in mankind's inner firmament.... I am not man so much as syndrome; as a voice that bellows in the human heart. I am a rain. I cannot be contained. Free of Life, how then shall I be shackled? Free of Time, how then shall history be my cage? I am a wave, an influence. Who then shall be safe from me?]]"''
* AbsurdlySharpBlade: Gull's WeaponOfChoice is a Liston knife, a surgical blade which he brags can saw through a full human leg in less than a minute.

* TheAlcoholic: Catherine Eddowes is a heavy boozer who tends to get in trouble with the law when she's knocked back a few. [[spoiler: This ultimately gets her killed, as she drunkenly gives her name as Mary Kelly to the police when she's brought in, drawing Gull to her]].

* AmbiguousEnding: [[spoiler: It's not made clear whether Gull truly became a god or whether Mary Kelly survived and moved to Ireland]].
* 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 (with himself on the side of the former, naturally).
* AntiVillain: Netley feels disgust and horror at the crimes he assists in, and only continues helping Gull due to being weak-willed.
* ArcNumber: 5, which holds significance in Masonic ritual as a symbol of order. Gull demonstrates to Netley how [[MysticalCityPlanning significant London landmarks can be arranged into a pentagram shape]], and considers his ritual complete upon killing his fifth victim.

* ArmorPiercingQuestion: Gull to Lees after [[spoiler: confessing to the murders]].
--> '''Gull:''' Tell me, Mr. Lees: Have you ever ''truly'' had a vision? A ''real'' vision?
--> '''Lees:''' I... I, uh...
--> '''Gull:''' No? I didn't think so... but I have.

* AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence: [[spoiler: Gull believes he is doing this near the end, which genuinely seems to be the case because he keeps witnessing future events. When the woman who may be Mary Kelly tells him to go back to hell, it's not clear if Gull has been foiled or if it was just one last glimpse of the repercussions of his actions before the ascension.]]
* AstralFinale: The final chapter before the epilogue [[spoiler: is Gull's journey through space and time as his body dies]].
* AuthorTract: In the "Dance of the Gull-Catchers" Moore declares that no one will ''ever'' solve the mystery of the Whitechapel murders, that over a century of investigation has only exposed more details but nothing that will actual solve the crime. Moore also outright declares that no one actually cares about justice for these five women, instead everyone is obsessed with the mystery which he likens to being titilated by a striptease.
* BadassBookworm: Sir William performs some pretty impressive pouncing for a scholarly doctor and stroke victim in his seventies.
* BadCopIncompetentCop: Aside from Abberline and Godley, the police by and large don't know what they're doing, with prominent officers like Bill Thick pursuing inane leads in an attempt to quickly get the case over and done with so they can secure a promotion. The top brass, meanwhile, are aware of the conspiracy and actively working to cover it up, going so far as to [[spoiler: frame Monty Druitt for pedophilia and then have him murdered]] to make the press suspect he's Jack the Ripper so they can bury the investigation.

* BadPresent: [[spoiler: The world of the late 20th century, the ultimate fruit of Gull's labors, is to him a drab, horrifying place where mankind is ensconced in technological wonder yet lacks the imagination to appreciate any of it]]. See HorrifyingTheHorror below.
* BasedOnAGreatBigLie:

--> '''Creator/AlanMoore''': ''I was not at all interested in who Jack the Ripper was. That’s Hardy Boys stuff… It was the behavior of the culture that fascinates me and still does. The William Gull figure is the culprit I came upon because he was the most interesting. Because he connected to a much bigger world than any of the others, so I could use him to explore all these kinds of mythical aspects of the Jack the Ripper 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, as the most plausible theory has it.
* BeautyIsNeverTarnished: The final fate of [[spoiler: Mary Kelly[[labelnote:*]]Or possibly Julia, depending on your outlook[[/labelnote]]]] may be one of the most thorough aversions in the comics medium. The mass of gristle Gull leaves behind is barely recognizable as having once been a woman.
* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor:

* BilingualBonus: When [[spoiler: Alois and Klara Hitler]] show up, their dialogue is in untranslated German.

* BookEnds: The prologue and epilogue chapters, both titled "The Old Men on the Shore", are about an aged Abberline and Lees reminiscing about the murders in 1923. The first and last panels both focus on a dead [[AnimalMotifs seagull]].
* BourgeoisBohemian: Highlighted and lampshaded in the opening scene, during a political debate between Frederick Abberline (a working-class Tory) and Robert Lees (an upper middle-class Socialist). Lees seems to feel that his own privileged background is just evidence that the whole world will eventually come to embrace Socialism, since even the wealthy are sympathetic to its tenets; Abberline disagrees, feeling that ''only'' the wealthy can afford to rant about populist revolutions, since they've never had to worry about feeding themselves. It's suggested in that same chapter [[spoiler: that Abberline's opinions on how working-class people think stem from his guilt over accepting bribe money to keep the truth behind the murders secret.]]

* DeadGuyJunior: [[spoiler: At the end, the woman who might be Mary Kelly has named her three daughters Katey, Lizzie, and Polly, presumably after Catherine Eddowes, Liz Stride, and Polly Nichols]].
* DeadpanSnarker: Gull and Abberline both have dry and caustic senses of humor; in Gull's case it's mostly condescension towards his social inferiors, while in Abberline's case it's mostly the result of exasperation at his fellow officers and the media.

* DeityOfHumanOrigin: [[spoiler: Gull's possible fate, if Mary Kelly failed to send him back to hell.]]

* DidNotGetTheGirl: Abberline and Fair Emma's burgeoning feelings for each other go unfulfilled, on account of one being married and the other [[spoiler: disappeared and possibly dead]].
* DisposableSexWorker: Very much averted. All of the victims are given significant amounts of characterization 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.

* DoingInTheScientist: [[spoiler: Gull's genuine visions of the future would seem to dispel the notion that he's merely insane and hallucinating]].
* DoorStopper: The 500-page collected edition would probably kill you if it fell on your head. And it's a ''paperback''.

** [[spoiler:To keep him from revealing the conspiracy in his dementia, the Freemasons stage a fake death and funeral for Gull in 1890 and have him locked away in a BedlamHouse under the pseudonym [[MeaninfulName Tom Mason]], where he dies for real of a stroke six years later.]]

-->'''Alan Moore's annotation for the scene''': [[spoiler:The cryptic scene upon page 23 must go without an explanation for the moment. [[ViewersAreGeniuses Work it out yourself.]]]]

** Gull is also a greater evil in the story as he [[spoiler: inspired several British serial killers, such as Sutcliffe and Brady]], in addition to his crimes.
* TheGrotesque: Gull visits Joseph Merrick, a.k.a the Elephant Man, early in the novel. He is portrayed as civil and eloquent despite his deformities, and Gull treats him with respect.

* HistoricalDomainCharacter: Damn near everyone, right down to random background characters on the street. Pretty much everyone of historical significance who was alive at the time, including Creator/OscarWilde, the Elephant Man, Creator/AleisterCrowley, and [[spoiler: Adolf Hitler's parents]] make an appearance.

** While interviewing the Wild West showman "Mexico Joe", Abberline scoffs at a book of prophecies that predicts that Russia and the United States will be the most powerful nations on Earth one day.

* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: Lees states early on that all his prophecies and claims of psychic powers were made up. But he does trail off when he wonders about how they all came true anyway. Additionally his last words in 1923 is how a dream about the Jewish quarter of London make him think there is going to be another war, the exact same vision that Klara Hitler had at the moment of Adolph's conception decades ago.
* 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.]]
** More straightforwardly, Lieutenant Bill Thick is shown to be a very, very dumb person.
* MindRape: Gull pulls a soft form of this on Netley by exposing the working class coachman to the true history of London and the Freemasons' secretive role in all of it. Netley grows noticeably more agitated and disturbed throughout the day, until by the end he's vomiting out of fear.

* NotSoStoic: Abberline has an understated but very noticeable emotional collapse after he observes the corpse of the final victim. He has an explosive outburst at a prostitute who tries to solicit him on the street afterward, and when he gets home he admits to his wife that he considers himself a weak man and asks her to hold him. It's implied that he subconsciously realizes the corpse in the apartment was likely [[spoiler: the "Fair Emma" he had been planning to ask on a date that day]].

-->'''Frederick Abberline''': To be honest, I felt worse than sick. I came out that room and I felt somethin' bad 'ad 'apened. Not just to 'er, to everythin'. I felt as if everythin' were lost.
* OddFriendship: Abberline and Lees are two people from completely different walks of life who strongly dislike each other at first, but maintain a lifelong friendship due to [[spoiler: being two of the only people who know the truth about Jack the Ripper]].

* PlatonicProstitution: Abberline's relationship with "Fair Emma", who [[spoiler:is implied actually Mary Kelly]].

* PyrrhicVictory: [[spoiler:Gull's ritual to influence the course of the next century results in a cold, dull, soulless world that has no place for people like him. The climactic scene also implies that Gull's actions might have lead to his rejection by his own gods and banishment to hell.]]

* SparedByTheAdaptation: [[spoiler: The final chapter seems to reveal that Marie Jeanette Kelly (one of the Ripper's five historical victims) actually survived and fled to Ireland, and that Gull mistakenly killed her friend Julia instead.]]
* StealthPun: On the night of her death, Polly Nichols exits a pub called the Frying Pan and subsequently joins a crowd of people observing a nearby dock fire. Shortly afterwards, she becomes Gull's first kill. Out of the Frying Pan, into the fire.[[labelnote:Historical note]]Moore points out in the appendix that the pub was real, and Nichols really did go drinking there on the night of her death. There really was a large dock fire that night as well, and while there's not much proof that Nichols went to watch it, the ominous connotations associated with the scene were too good to pass up.[[/labelnote]]
* StoutStrength: Gull is broad-shouldered and physically imposing, able to snap a woman's neck with his own hands despite being an aged stroke survivor.

** Gull is a highly educated physician with keen interests in history, mythology, mysticism and art, and a tendency to deliver long lectures about each subject at the drop of a hat; his "minion", Netley, is a barely-literate coachman just trying to squeeze out a few extra pounds. The book derives a few welcome moments of BlackComedy from the two's interactions.

-> '''Netley:''' I- I don't know where I am anymore, sir, and that's the truth... that's the truth!
-> '''Gull:''' There there, Netley, there there. I shall tell you where we are. We're in the most extreme and utter region of the human mind, a dim, subconscious underworld. A radiant abyss where men may meet themselves... Hell, Netley. We're in Hell.

* UnfortunateImplications: Discussed InUniverse in "The Dance of the Gull-Catchers" where several Ripper-theories posit that Mary Kelly was always the killer's main target, with each theory implying that Kelly must have done something to deserve being so brutally murdered.

* PyrrhicVillainy: [[spoiler:Gull's ritual to influence the course of the next century results in a cold, dull, soulless world that has no place for people like him. The climactic scene also implies that Gull's actions might have lead to his rejection by his own gods and banishment to hell.]]

* KnifeNut: Gull, a master surgeon, performs all his killing with a long surgical knife.

-->'''Lees:''' [[ArmorPiercingQuestion It's the money, isn't it?]] You could shrug off anything but that. We both did well out of doing nothing, Abberline.
-->'''Abberline:''' Yes. Yes, you're right. Nice pension, nice perks, nice expensive residence near the sea-front at Bournemouth... [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone Didn't do bad out of it, did I?"]]

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

* DownerEnding: [[ForegoneConclusion Jack the Ripper is never caught]]. [[spoiler: Neither Gull nor any of his co-conspirators are ever uncovered or brought to justice, Gull's ritual succeeds in influencing the course of the 20th century, Abberline resigns from the police force in disgust, he and Lees are paid to keep quiet and grow into bitter old men filled with regrets, and Gull very possibly becomes a GodOfEvil at the very end. The only possible bright spot is that Mary Kelly possibly survived and banished Gull to hell]].

** When [[spoiler: [[ItMakesSenseInContext Klara Hitler's husband ejaculates inside her]]]], she has a sudden premonition of a sea of blood bursting out of a cathedral and drowning a group of Hasidic Jews, clearly a symbolic premonition of UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust. [[spoiler: In the epilogue, Lees says he had the same dream]].

* EagleEyeDetection: Deconstructed. Abberline's clever and has a good eye, but due to a mixture of dated investigation methods, false leads from people seeking attention, and interference from his superiors, he never comes close to solving the case. [[spoiler: It's only through pure chance that Robert Lees leads him to Gull, who by then is insane enough to freely confess to the killings, and by that point there's nothing Abberline can do about the situation but resign]].

* FacialHorror: [[spoiler: Along with removing most of her internal organs, Gull basically cuts Mary Kelly/Julia's entire face off]].

** [[spoiler: To keep him from revealing the conspiracy in his dementia, the Freemasons stage a fake death and funeral for Gull in 1890 and have him locked away in a BedlamHouse under the pseudonym [[MeaninfulName Tom Mason]], where he dies for real of a stroke six years later]].

* FanDisservice: Towards the end, there's a rather graphic three-way sex scene between Mary Kelly, her boyfriend Joe, and her friend Julia. It's hard to find it arousing, though, since Mary Kelly only goads Joe into it so that she'll have something to take her mind off the fact that [[spoiler: four of her close friends have just been horribly murdered, and she knows damn well that she'll probably be next]]. Not even Joe can get into it, since [[StepfordSmiler he quickly senses that Mary Kelly is deeply troubled by something]].
* FateWorseThanDeath: Even in a book full of grisly murders, Annie Crook's fate is absolutely ''horrifying''. [[spoiler: She's forcibly taken away from her husband and infant daughter and dragged to an insane asylum, kicking and screaming all the while, where Gull successfully manages to ''make'' her insane by slicing out her thyroid gland. When Sickert sees her again, she's a gibbering lunatic wandering through the streets in the rain, with apparently no memory of ever having a baby.]]

* FluffyCloudHeaven: [[spoiler: Gull sees one at the very end of his ascension, inhabited by all the deities of the Freemasons]].

-->'''Alan Moore's annotation for the scene''': [[spoiler:The cryptic scene upon page 23 must go without an explanation for the moment. [[ViewersAreGeniuses Work it out yourself]].]]

* GenreRoulette: Done subtly. In keeping with Moore's (and Dr. Gull's) view of history as a complex multi-faceted structure that can be viewed and understood from multiple angles and perspectives, the story sometimes seems to shift genres depending on whose viewpoint we're seeing. To whit: from Abberline's perspective, the story comes off as a more-or-less standard PoliceProcedural following the heroic detective pursuing the evil {{serial killer}}; from the prostitutes' perspective, it's a gritty crime drama following the daily struggle to survive in the seedy underbelly of London; from Walter Sickert's perspective, it's a personal drama about middle-class Victorian life; and from Gull's perspective, it's experimental {{speculative fiction}} incorporating concepts like mysticism, predestination and [[spoiler:time travel]]. [[note]]Note that the fantastical elements are never seen from anyone's perspective other than Gull's, leaving open the possibility that he was an UnreliableNarrator.[[/note]]

* GoAmongMadPeople: [[spoiler:Annie Crook]] suffers a particularly unsettling case of this. [[spoiler: She ''is'' a sane woman in an asylum...until Gull makes her insanity authentic by surgically removing her thyroid, thus ensuring that no one will believe her stories about having her baby taken away from her.]]

* HorrifyingTheHorror: [[spoiler:The ordinary society of the late 20th century does this to Gull, who is disgusted by how complacent and coddled humanity has become because of the technological advances that have happened since his time. To his mind, he's looking upon people who might as well be gods but lack so much perspective that they can only be bored by it]].

* HumanoidAbomination: [[spoiler:Creator/WilliamBlake's perception of Gull's spirit]]. The vision inspires his painting, ''The Ghost of a Flea''.
* InSeriesNickname: Mary Jane Kelly is also called Ginger and Emma. [[spoiler: The latter name is how Abberline knows her, so he does not realise why she does not meet him.]]

* KarmaHoudiniWarranty: [[spoiler: Years after the murders, Gull appears to Netley as an apparition which spooks his horse and causes it to cave his head in]].

--> '''Anderson:''' Knight of the East, you stand accused of mayhems that have placed our brotherhood in jeopardy, before your peers, masons and doctors both.
--> '''Gull:''' I have no peers here present.

--> "Mark my words, [[SelfDeprecation in 'undred years there'll still be cunts like 'im, wrapping these killings up in supernatural twaddle, making a living out of murder]], Godley... [[HypocriticalHumor And that's OUR job!]]"
* LonersAreFreaks: The reason the Masons select Monty Druitt as their patsy for the murders; as someone with no real social life or connections, it'd be trivial to fabricate accusations against him, and nobody would care to look closely if he [[spoiler: apparently killed himself]].

* MadDoctor: Gull began to have hallucinations after a stroke, though he seems inclined to cruelty from early on. [[spoiler:After his final murder his sanity degenerates almost entirely.]]

** 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.]]

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: [[spoiler: Gull experiences this when he glimpses the future he's brought about through his ritual, though notably his reaction has nothing to do with the atrocities he's committed and more to do with his horror at the decadence of the modern world]].

* NeverSuicide: Needless to say, the police don't inquire too closely into the death of [[spoiler: Montague John Druitt]].

--> '''Frederick Abberline''': To be honest, I felt worse than sick. I came out that room and I felt somethin' bad 'ad 'apened. Not just to 'er, to everythin'. I felt as if everythin' were lost.

** [[spoiler: One of Gull's manifestations during his ascension is as]] a mist that moves strangely through the Tower of London.

* PetTheDog: Gull speaks to Joseph Merrick pleasantly and respectfully, comparing him to Ganesha and telling him he'd be worshiped if he was born in India. Merrick is clearly quite moved by this. Zigzagged in that, while Gull's respect seems to be genuine, it's less that he views Merrick as a human being equal to himself and more that he considers him a religious icon who will bring good luck to him on his mission.
* PhonyPsychic: Robert Lees says he makes up all his predictions. [[PropheciesAreAlwaysRight They all come true anyway]]. It's never clarified if he's good at making educated guesses, if he's genuinely psychic but doesn't realize it, or if it's all just a coincidence.

* PlatonicProstitution: Abberline's relationship with "Fair Emma", who [[spoiler: is implied actually Mary Kelly]].

* PyrrhicVillainy: [[spoiler: Gull's ritual to influence the course of the next century results in a cold, dull, soulless world that has no place for people like him. The climactic scene also implies that Gull's actions might have lead to his rejection by his own gods and banishment to hell]].
* RainOfBlood: [[spoiler: During his ascension, Gull causes one to appear over a ship on the ocean, apparently composed of the blood from his victims]].

* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: [[spoiler:When Abberline discovers the true nature of the conspiracy, he decides that he'll retire from the police force and work with [[PinkertonDetective Pinkerton]]]].

* SurrealHorror: For the most part it's among Alan Moore's most rigorously down-to-earth and realistic works, but there are eruptions of this into the narrative as Gull descends further into madness, culminating in [[spoiler: the horrifying breakdown of reality that occurs during the final murder]].

-->'''Gull:''' Netley, do you know what your foremost distinguishing feature is?\\

* TimeTravel: [[spoiler: Gull has visions of his own future and the 20th Century, and later moves as a disembodied spirit backwards and forwards in time.]]

* UndignifiedDeath: [[spoiler: Gull dies an anonymous death locked away in an asylum where no one knows who he is, passing away from an aneurysm while his apathetic handlers have rough sex a few feet away]].
* UnstuckInTime: [[spoiler: While still alive, Gull experiences flashes of both the future and past, and when he dies his spirit travels all throughout time and space. He has no control over this phenomenon, and believes it to be the guidance of a higher power]].

* VillainsBlendInBetter: Inverted. When the killer [[spoiler: 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.]]

* WhamShot: Late in the book, there are two panels where Gull briefly glimpses [[spoiler: a television set playing inside a house]] and [[spoiler: a steel-and-glass skyscraper in the middle of London]]. Both shots abruptly make it clear that this book isn't quite the by-the-numbers work of historical fiction that it initially seems, but that [[spoiler: Gull's attempts at occult rituals have created a magical effect]].

-> '''Gull:''' There there, Netley, there there. I shall tell you where we are. We're in the most extreme and utter region of the human mind, a dim, subconscious underworld. A radiant abyss where men may meet themselves... Hell, Netley. We're in Hell.

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: Nearly all of them drawn from real life.

-->'''Gull:''' "Tell me, Mr. Lees: Have you ever truly had a vision? A real vision?"

-->'''Netley''': "Oh, God!"\\
'''Gull''': "[[AnswersToTheNameOfGod Ha ha! Yes...]] but not yours."

-->'''Abberline''': "To be honest, I felt worse than sick. I came out that room and I felt somethin' bad 'ad 'apened. Not just to 'er, to everythin'. I felt as if everythin' were lost."

-->'''Gull''': "[[MurderIsTheBestSolution ALL of them]], your majesty?"\\
'''Victoria''': "All of them. Go now, Sir William. Be about your work."

-->''' Moore''': ''Like I say, this caused unanticipated problems, but I imagine they were much worse for Eddie than for me. Writing twenty extra pages isn't anywhere near as much of a physical and mental burden as drawing them.''

-->'''Godley''': "Well, it could be because he's fair and dependable. Or because he's not. Take your pick."

-->"I'm not Tom! I'm not JACK I'm WILLIAM."

-->'''Gull''': "Behold my architecture. Bricks of viscera, with knife as trowel..."

-->"How would I seem to you? Some antique fiend or penny dreadful horror, yet ''you'' frighten ''me!''"

'''Netley''': "Why, I... I can't think, sir."\\
'''Gull''': "[[StealthInsult Precisely.]]"

--->'''Anderson''': "Knight of the East, you stand accused of mayhems that have placed our brotherhood in jeopardy, before your peers, Masons and doctors both."\\
'''Gull''': "I have no peers here present."

-->'''Gull''': "And Gull the doctor says, 'Why, to converse with gods is madness.' And Gull, the man, replies, 'Then who'd be sane?'"

-->"Mark my words, in 'undred years there'll still be cunts like 'im, wrapping these killings up in supernatural twaddle, making a living out of murder, Godley... [[HypocrisyNod And that's OUR job!]]"

-> '''Netley:''' "I--I don't know where I am anymore, sir, and that's the truth... that's the truth!"
-> '''Gull:''' "There there, Netley, there there. I shall tell you where we are. We're in the most extreme and utter region of the human mind, a dim, subconscious underworld. A radiant abyss where men may meet themselves... Hell, Netley. We're in Hell."

-->'''Gull:''' Tell me, Mr. Lees: Have you ever truly had a vision? A real vision?

* GenreRoulette: In keeping with Alan Moore's (and Dr. Gull's) view of history as a complex multi-faceted structure that can be viewed and understood from multiple angles and perspectives, the story sometimes seems to shift genres depending on whose viewpoint we're seeing. To wit: from Abberline's perspective, it's a procedural starring the heroic police detective pursuing a killer; from the victims' perspective, it's a about their daily struggle to survive in London's underworld; from Walter Sickert's perspective, it's a personal drama about middle-class Victorian life; and from Gull's perspective, it's experimental speculative fiction incorporating concepts like mysticism, predestination and time travel.

-->How would I seem to you? Some antique fiend or penny dreadful horror, yet ''you'' frighten ''me!''

** An early chapter shows Gull riding around town with his sidekick, lecturing him on the supposed Masonic/pagan symbolism of London landmarks. This itself was actually based on the book ''Jack the Ripper, the Final Solution'' written in 1976 by Steven Knight, whose story was proven to be a fantastic hoax. Moore makes no secret of the fact that he doesn't believe Knight's theory, but damned if it doesn't make for a great story.

** It seems like anybody living in Victorian London has been accused of being Jack the Ripper in real life. Dr. William Gull was a highly-respected and famous doctor. He was also, by all accounts, an ordinary, decent gentleman, as well as a supporter of women trying to pursue a career in medicine. There is no evidence implicating him as the killer or (as Moore portrays him) a misogynist and a Masonic shaman who regarded the killings as a quasi-magical ritual. Moore admits the Gull hypothesis is no more likely than the myriad of others suggested over the years. (There was an essay in a crime magazine which ended up online back in the early 2000s demonstrating that the Ripper wouldn't have required any medical training to do what he did, and could just as easily have been a mortician or butcher's assistant with a good memory.)

It's a bit less fantastic than some of Moore's other works. It's a creepy kind of whodunnit [[ReverseWhodunnit where you know whodunnit early on]]. ''From Hell'' which 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 stated that he found Knight's theory to be rather far-fetched, but felt it served the purpose of his story. It's about how the 19th century turned into the 20th century. There's a lot of history and philosophy, and the art resembles an illustrated crime broadside from the time: gloomy and a bit unhinged.

It's a bit less fantastic than some of Moore's other works. It's a creepy kind of ReverseWhodunnit which 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 stated that he found Knight's theory to be rather far-fetched, but felt it served the purpose of his story. It's about how the 19th century turned into the 20th century. There's a lot of history and philosophy, and the art resembles an illustrated crime broadside from the time: gloomy and a bit unhinged.

* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: Gull believes his killings will keep women in line, and that society has been controlled for millions of years by matriarchies ([[BoomerangBigot ignoring that he's been ordered to do this by a female ruler]]). Chapter 4 is just Gull being horsecarriaged around London, giving a lesson on Freemason history to his driver while mocking his mental impairments.

[[folder:D-G]]

[[/folder]]

[[folder:H-Q]]

* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: Abberline comments to Godley on a peddler cashing in on the murders:
-->"Mark my words, in 'undred years there'll still be cunts like 'im, wrapping these killings up in supernatural twaddle, making a living out of murder, Godley... [[HypocrisyNod And that's OUR job!]]"

[[/folder]]

[[folder:R-Z]]

-->Mark my words, in 'undred years there'll still be cunts like 'im, wrapping these killings up in supernatural twaddle, making a living out of murder, Godley... [[HypocrisyNod And that's OUR job!]]

-->I'm not Tom! I'm not JACK I'm WILLIAM.

* KarmicDeath: Gull meets the same fate as Annie Crook: [[spoiler:institutionalized in a place where no one knows who he is, eventually dying from an aneurysm while apathetic orderlies have rough sex a few feet away]]. Also, the climactic scene implies that Gull's actions might have led [[spoiler:to his rejection by his own gods and banishment to Hell]].
-->I'm not Tom! I'm not JACK I'm WILLIAM.

-->'''Gull''': "[[{{AllOfThem}} ALL of them]], your majesty?"\\