History ComicBook / FromHell

--->'''Moore''': I was not at all interested in who Jack the Ripper was. That's ''Literature/HardyBoys'' 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.

-->'''Gull''': [[AllOfThem 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.

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

'''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?"

** Moore's essay (drawn by Campbell) at the end, titled "Dance of the Gull-Catchers". After giving a short history of the various Ripper theories, he ends with a meditation on the unsolvability of the murders, at one point jokingly suggesting an alien invasion as a plausible theory.

* DeadGuyJunior: 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 a dry and caustic sense of humor. In Gull's case, he shows low tolerance towards his social inferior. In Abberline's case, it's exasperation at his fellow officers and the media.

* DepravedHomosexual: Prince Albert's boyfriend displays a misogynist attitude towards the dead prostitutes. He uses sex to distract the Pribce from the murders.

** Polly Nichols tells the other girls about a dream she had where she met her dead brother engulfed in fire on a bridge somewhere in London. On the night of her death, she joins a group of people gawking at a warehouse fire from a bridge over the Thames. Shortly afterwards, she becomes Gull's first victim.

* HumanSacrifice: Gull goes well beyond his initial assignment and decides to use the killings as a holy rite, to bind of the symbolic power of womanhood for the next century.

** Nearly 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 and Aleister Crowley.

* 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]].The climactic scene also implies that Gull's actions might have led [[spoiler:to his rejection by his own gods and banishment to Hell]].

* MagicMirror: When Gull is about to kill his second victim, he walks past a window looking into an apartment which seems to be from another time period, suggesting a two-way street regarding ghost sightings. According to the the appendix, a guy living on Hanbury Street in the 70s said he'd seen people in Victorian era garb walk past his window.

** Nearly everyone, right down to random background characters on the street. Pretty much everyone of historical significance who was alive at the time, including Oscar Wilde and Aleister Crowley.

** Early in the novel, Gull visits Joseph Merrick, a.k.a the Elephant Man. He is depicted as civil and eloquent man, despite his deformities. Gull treats him upmost respect.

-->''' 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."

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

-->"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!]]"
* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: Nearly all of them drawn from real life. There's also a nice detail in the Master Edition: the endpapers have portraits of all the dramatis personae.
* LonersAreFreaks: The reason the Masons select Monty Druitt as their patsy for the murders: someone with no real social life or connections. It'd be trivial to fabricate a case against him. And nobody would care to look closely if he (apparently) killed himself.

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

* 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 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 Adolf's conception decades ago.

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

* NotSoStoic: Abberline has an emotional collapse after observing 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 thay the corpse in the apartment was likely the "Fair Emma" he had been planning to ask on a date that day.

* PretenderDiss: Gull holds the Masonic Council in contempt, dismissing them as social climbers who have forgotten the values of their order.
-->'''Anderson''': Knight of the East, you stand accused of mayhems that have placed our brotherhood in jeopardy, before your peers, Masons and doctors both.\\

* PyrrhicVillainy: Gull's message is that London is very much a pagan city. The killings are an elaborate ritual to ensure male societal dominance over women. Gull does complete his ritual and avoids being incriminated. But [[spoiler:when the killer briefly time-travels to the modern world]], he is appalled at how spiritually-hollow it is. Mixed-sex offices are a symbolic manifestation of the matriarchy's counterattack on Victorian inequality. In response to his missionary zeal, the Masons confine him to an asylum where he dies alone and unmourned. There also exists the possibility that Mary Kelly was able to escape (which would possibly invalidate his ritual) and banish him to Hell. Moore doesn't provide any clear-cut answers, so their fates are left purely up to interpretation.

** ''From Hell'' is quite a divisive book. It inevitably appears in recommendation lists, so people obviously love it, but you also get responses from people who hated it: didn't like the walls of text, had issues with character recognition, and the art resembles old tintype photography. Something about the inky black pen scratches and geometry of the line work; fuzzy genetic memories from a less-developed stage in the public conciousness. It isn't there to provide a clear picture of what's going on.

** Abberline is clever and he has a good eye but, due to a mixture of dated methods, false leads (from people seeking attention), and interference from his superiors, he never comes close to solving the case. It's only through pure chance that Robert Lees leads him to Gull, who by then is giddy enough to freely confess to the killings; but by that point, there's nothing Abberline can do about it but resign.
** Jack the Ripper is hardly the only murderer to vanish. Unexplained stops are common among unidentified killers and, as far as we can tell, other killers like Zodiac and the Original Night Stalker/East Area Rapist were dormant for decades; so we have to admit that we don't have a handle on why serial killers stop killing. "Dance of the Gull-catchers" alleges that the Ripper drives people insane because the mystery is impossible to solve, since there are questions as to the authenticity of some evidence. In Moore's version, the original letter identifying the sender as "Jack" is a fabrication by a hack journalist (as the most plausible theory has it).
* ShoutOut: "Dance of the Gull Catchers" features Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, carrying a pair of butterfly nets, walking by group of Ripperologists chasing after a gull with their own nets. Moore looks out at the reader and says, "[[WesternAnimation Be vewy vewy quiet. We'we hunting wippers!™]]"

** Early in thr novel, Gull visits Joseph Merrick, a.k.a the Elephant Man. He is depicted as civil and eloquent man, despite his deformities. Gull treats him upmost respect.

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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 very early on.]] ''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 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.

In 2018, it was announced that Top Shelf would put out a new version of the book. The original was in black-and-white. The "Master Edition" was colorized by the original artist (Campbell) with Moore's consent. The idea was to colorize the trade paperback edition and publish it serially in chapters, with a new epilogue written and drawn by Moore and Campbell. This wasn't the first time that Moore's work was retroactively colorized: ''ComicBook/CaptainBritain,'' ComicBook/VForVendetta,'' and [[{{ComicBook/Marvelman}} Marvelman/Miracleman]]'' were originally published in B&W in Britain, and when they were reprinted or continued (in the case of the latter two) by American companies, they were colorized.

* AffablyEvil: Gull is polite even to people he's about to murder. Though it often comes from a place of condescension.

** Chapter 5. No, nothing's wrong with your copy; that's the way it's supposed to look. Moore and Campbell wanted to juxtapose Gull's posh live with the terrible conditions the sex workers live under. These panels are more 'painterly'.

-->"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?"

* BourgeoisBohemian: 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.

* BreakThemByTalking: Gull exposing hos working class coachman to the true history of London, and the Freemasons' role in all of it. Netley grows noticeably more agitated and disturbed throughout the day, until by the end he's violently ill.

* CheshireCatGrin: The one Gull flashes for Netley, at the conclusion of their psychogeographical trip through London.

** An early chapter shows Gull riding around town with his sidekick, lecturing him on the supposed Masonic/pagan symbolism of London landmarks. Which itself was actually based on the book Jack the Ripper, the Final Solution written in 1976 by Steven Knight. The story of which 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.
--->'''Moore''': "I was not at all interested in who Jack the Ripper was. That's ''Literature/HardyBoys'' 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.

* CountryMatters: An awful lot, it focuses heavily on working class English people after all. The perpetually disillusioned Abberline uses it to refer to his superiors a lot, in particular.

* DeadpanSnarker: Gull and Abberline both have a dry and caustic sense of humor. In Gull's case, he shows low tolerance towards his social inferior. Whereas in Abberline's case, it's exasperation at his fellow officers and the media.

* DoorStopper: The 500-page collected edition would probably kill you if it fell on your head. And it's a paperback.

** Gull is a burning misogynist who eagerly hunts, kills and maims women. Yet he looks down on Lees for exploiting the bereaved with his phony psychic powers. Conversely, Lees is an absolute clown and charlatan, but is deeply shaken by the evil emanating from Gull.
** Queen Victoria, who ordered the killings to begin with, is horrified by the savagery of them, though it's ambiguous as to whether it's genuine moral outrage or merely dismay at the publicity she created.

* FingerInTheMail: After the death of Catherine Eddowes, Gull removes her kidney post-mortem. He then has Netley write the famous "From Hell" letter and sends it George Lusk of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee. Of all the many letters claiming to be from the killer, this is the only one academic researchers consider to have sound footing as coming from the real culprit.

* FootnoteFever: The collected editions has a detailed set of annotations written by Moore himself going into exhaustive detail about the painstaking research he had conducted, pointing out every bit of Artistic License he had taken and the factual basis for even the most minute subplots and connections.

* GoAmongMadPeople: Annie Crook is a sane woman in an asylum...until Gull drives her authenticly mad by removing her thyroid, thus ensuring that no one will believe her story about her baby being taken from her.

* {{Gorn}}: The final fate of Mary Kelly (or possibly Julia) is one of the most graphic examples in the comic medium. The mass of gristle Gull leaves behind is barely-recognizable as having once been a woman.

* HeroAntagonist: Abberline. With the caveat that he never even comes close to catching the killer.
* HistoricalPersonPunchline: In one scene, Abberline has a brief conversation with a young boy named "Alexander" who believes in magic. He tells Abberline that he's wrong for doubting the supernatural. Though the scene itself doesn't quite make it clear, the appendix reveals that the young boy is a young Aleister Crowley, who was born "Edward Alexander Crowley" before changing his name to "Aleister" as an adult.

** 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, 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. Probably a mortician or butcher's assistant with a good memory.)

* HeManWomanHater: Gull is convinced that he's a defender of human civilization itself, [[HystericalWoman which he interprets as being inherently masculine]]. In his mind, the murders are part of a continued effort by masculine rationalityto constrain lunar female power.

* DeadpanSnarker: Gull and Abberline both have dry and caustic senses of humor. In Gull's case, he shows low tolerance towards his social inferior. Whereas in Abberline's case, it's exasperation at his fellow officers and the media.

* TheFundamentalist: The Queen and the other players in the book seem to have forgotten that their power is derived entirely from the faith their subjects have in their rule. However, Gull 100% believes in the religious aspects and sees the system for what it is. Of course, in the fiction of the book, Gull actually claims to be clairvoyant; this following a brain aneurysm which causes him to hallucinate the gods of Freemasonry, strengthening his belief. He is pointing out all of the arcane symbols that were placed around the city, which the nobles are not even aware of anymore.

-->'''Gull''': {{ALL of them}}, your majesty?\\

** Gull sees his murders as a ritual binding the lunar or irrational influence on human minds. He succeeds, only to be mortified by the world he created, where people are surrounded by the fruits of the rational mind but feel no wonder at all.

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

* SanitySlippage: By the end, he has completely taken leave of his senses. His disturbing motivations for the killings are both magical and secular:

* TruthInTelevision: Polly Nichols [[OlderThanYouLook looks and acts much younger than her 43 years]]; impressive given her miserable living situation. Her youthful manner and appearance are in fact noted in contemporary accounts.

* VisionaryVillain: Gull's motive with the murders is nothing less than shaping the course of the 20th century; to ensure the continued dominance of men over women; of rationality over irrationality.

* BritishCoppers: Show up as extras, usually either cordoning off the crime scenes or rounding up suspects. The most well developed one is Lieutenant Thick, who is depicted as an incompetent Glory Hound.

* GodSaveUsFromTheQueen!: Queen Victoria sets the ball rolling with her orders.

* OldFashionedCopper: Considering it's 1888, all of them.

* PetTheDog: Gull exchanges pleasantries with Joseph Merrick, comparing him to Ganesha and saying he'd be worshiped if he was born in India. Merrick is clearly quite moved by that. Unbeknownst to him, Gull does not view Merrick as a human being equal to himself, but rather a religious icon who will bring good luck to him on his mission.

** Lieutenant Bill Thick is shown to be a very dumb person.

* Soiled City on a Hill:
Whitechapel is a pit of crime, depravity and poverty. England is a dying empire afflicted with corruption and weak rulers. Present-day London is culturally bankrupt.

'''''From Hell''''' is a comic book series, written by Creator/AlanMoore and drawn by Eddie Campbell, speculating about the identity of UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper. 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.

%%

-->-- '''Sir William Withey Gull'''

''From Hell'' is a comic book series written by Creator/AlanMoore and drawn by Eddie Campbell, speculating about the identity of UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper. 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 they created in their time marked the beginning of the 20th Century.

In 2018, it was announced that Top Shelf would put out a new version of the book. The original was in black-and-white but the second version would be colorized by the original artist Eddie Campbell with Moore's consent. The plan is to colorize the trade paperback edition, publish it serially in chapters, with a new epilogue written and drawn by Moore and Campbell.

----
!! This graphic novel provides 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 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.
* AdaptationalAttractiveness: Defied by Alan Moore, who notes that the women were not the sultry temptresses portrayed in other media, but perfectly ordinary women (albeit in worse shape than many due to their poor situation). Mary Kelly and Polly Nichols are drawn as attractive as reflecting contemporary comments though.
* AffablyEvil: Gull is polite even to people he's about to murder, and though it often comes from a place of condescension, none of it seems to be feigned.
* 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]].
* AllThereInTheManual: The identity of the mysterious woman in [[spoiler:Gull's final vision]] only becomes clear if one reads the annotations, where Moore drops a large hint to help the reader solve the riddle. She is implied to be [[spoiler:Mary Kelly, who survived because Gull accidentally killed the wrong woman.]]
* 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.
* ArtisticLicenseHistory: When talking about the symbolism of the Sun in gender politics to Netley over lunch, Gull describes how it will eventually grow "red and bloated as a leech" and devour its "daughter" the Earth. Nobody in the Victorian era would have known about stellar evolution, as the theory that stars were powered by nuclear fusion wouldn't be proposed until 1920. This may be an early symptom of Gull's temporal instability, though it happens before the first murder. Assuming the concept of "before" [[TimeyWimeyBall is even applicable]].
* 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.
* TheBadGuyWins: Would seem to be a ForegoneConclusion, but it's more complicated than that. [[spoiler:Gull does indeed complete his ritual and avoid getting caught, but it ultimately turns out to be a PyrrhicVictory, as the world he creates by doing so horrifies him with its banality, and furthermore his brutality leads the Masons to confine him to an insane asylum where he dies alone and unmourned. If, upon his death, he did indeed ascend to godhood, it would seem to be played completely straight, but there also exists the possibility that Mary Kelly was able to escape (which would possibly invalidate his ritual) and banish him to hell, at which point this trope would be subverted entirely. Moore doesn't provide any clear cut answers, so Gull and Kelly's final fates are left purely to reader interpretation]].
* 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:
** 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.
--> '''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:
** Gull sees his murders as a ritual binding the lunar or irrational influence on human minds. [[spoiler: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 UsefulNotes/QueenVictoria and the masons, who certainly didn't expect something so gruesome when they asked Gull to take care of their problem.
* BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy: William Gull, Queen's Surgeon, is actually Jack the Ripper, who performed masonic rituals and [[spoiler:at least temporarily ascended to a higher level of existence, where he shaped past and future events.]]
* BilingualBonus: When [[spoiler: Alois and Klara Hitler]] show up, their dialogue is in untranslated German.
* BlackComedy: In the middle of a fairly oblique and dark drama there are flashes of Black Comedy.
** The biggest moment that could be counted as MoodWhiplash comes from a montage of the numerous false "Jack the Ripper" letters being written. It drives home how much HumansAreBastards by having a Reverend, a sadomasochist and kids all writing letters.
** A few moments of Gull being a DeadpanSnarker about mocking Netley's stupidity with Netley ComicallyMissingThePoint.
* BodyHorror: The fate of the final victim. [[spoiler:At the very height of his derangement, Gull enters a trancelike state after cutting her throat and begins a meticulous, ritualistic mutilation of the body that leaves behind a mass of gore that can hardly be recognized as having once been a woman, all without the benefit of a GoryDiscretionShot at any point. The face and breasts are cut off, the thighs are flayed down to the bone, and the entire abdomen is cut open and the intestines removed]]. It's no wonder that Abberline proclaims the death of Victorian society after seeing the aftermath.
* 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.]]
-->'''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?"]]
* UsefulNotes/BritishCoppers: Show up as extras quite frequently, usually either cordoning off the crime scenes or rounding up suspects. The most well developed one is Lieutenant Thick, who is depicted as an incompetent GloryHound.
* UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire: Depicted as being in a state of decline, with references to General Gordon's death in the Mahdi uprisings.
* CentralTheme: Predestination, specifically the idea of time existing as a fourth dimension of space, a state in which free will can't exist because everything has already happened. This is borne out through the repeated references to the fourth dimension as well as numerous instances of characters accurately predicting or even perceiving the future.
* CharacterizationMarchesOn: In his first appearance Netley was a creepy man who admits to drunkenly having incest. He quickly becomes an AntiVillain teetering into VillainWoobie as he is horrified by what Gull has done.
* ConnectTheDeaths: A premeditated 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 believes 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.

* ComicBookFantasyCasting: Inspector Abberline was modeled after Robbie Coltrane (who ended up playing George Godley in [[Film/FromHell film adaptation]]).
* CountryMatters: An awful lot, it focuses heavily on working class English people after all. The perpetually disillusioned Abberline uses it to refer to his superiors a lot, in particular.
* 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.
* CreepyCathedral: One memorable chapter has Gull taking Netley on a tour of London's cathedrals and lecturing him on their mystical significance. They show up in many other scenes looming in the background, even becoming a sort of ArcSymbol.
* CrossoverCosmology: The Freemasons believe that all gods going back to ancient Sumer are different disguises of a single being they refer to as the Great Architect, and so their rituals incorporate elements from many different mythologies.
* 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.
* DawnOfAnEra: The premise of the story is that the Jack the Ripper killings marked the real origins of the 20th Century and its DarkerAndEdgier future. After killing [[spoiler:the woman he thinks is Mary Kelly]] William Gull tells Netley:
--> ''"It is beginning, Netley. Only just beginning. For better or worse, the twentieth century. I have delivered it."''
* 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.
* {{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.
* DecoyProtagonist: The first chapter deliberately fools the audience into thinking that the protagonist is either Prince Eddy or Walter Sickert, only introducing Gull--the closest thing in the novel to a true [[VillainProtagonist protagonist]]--in the second chapter. As the later chapters gradually make clear, Walter and Eddy are both solid cases of SmallRoleBigImpact, and they drop out of the story when TheConspiracy and the resultant murders grow beyond their control. Likewise, Mary Kelly appears to be a minor character in the first chapter (she first appears as Sickert's maid), but she later turns out to be the most developed of the Ripper's five victims.
* DeityOfHumanOrigin: [[spoiler: Gull's possible fate, if Mary Kelly failed to send him back to hell.]]
* 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.
* DerangedTaxiDriver: Downplayed with Netley the coachman (a Victoria-era version of a cab driver). He comes off as an average working Joe, and even shows some resistance to the story's more sinister themes. It doesn't make him any more sane for his current fare: transporting Dr. William Gull, AKA Jack the Ripper, as he commits his infamous murders.
* 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.
* 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 an autopsy. In his appendix, Moore asserts that the Ripper's mutilations, while ghastly, were free of cruelty, since the victims were already dead. 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.
* 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''.
* 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]].
* TheDragon: Gull for the Royal Family, with Netley as TheBrute.
* DragonWithAnAgenda: Gull's real motives are much more ambitious and strange than merely preserving the royal family's honor.
* DreamingOfThingsToCome:
** 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]].
** Polly Nichols tells the other girls about a dream she had where she met her dead brother engulfed in fire on a bridge somewhere in London. On the night of her death, she joins a group of people gawking at a warehouse fire from a bridge over the Thames. Shortly afterwards, she becomes Gull's first victim.
* DrowningMySorrows: Mary Kelly copes with the knowledge of her impending death by drinking like a fish, causing her boyfriend Joe to leave her after a vicious argument.
* 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]].
* EvenEvilHasStandards:
** Gull is a flaming misogynist who eagerly hunts, kills and maims women, yet looks down on Lees for exploiting the bereaved with his phony psychic powers. Conversely, Lees is an absolute clown and charlatan, but is shaken to his core by the unrepentant evil emanating from Gull.
** Queen Victoria, who ordered the murders to begin with, is horrified by the savagery of them, though it's ambiguous as to whether it's genuine moral outrage or merely dismay at the publicity they've created.
* EvilOldFolks: Gull doesn't begin his campaign of violence until he's well into his seventies.
* FacialHorror: [[spoiler: Along with removing most of her internal organs, Gull basically cuts Mary Kelly/Julia's entire face off]].
* 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...]]
** [[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]].
* FailureIsTheOnlyOption: The reader knows from page one that none of the girls are going to get out alive and that the police will never catch the killer. [[spoiler:Subverted with the strong implication that Mary Kelly actually escaped and lived a happy life back in Ireland at the end.]]
* FaintingSeer: Robert Lees has dramatic seizures, complete with convulsions and cryptic phrases which he chokes out.
* 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.]]
* FingerInTheMail: 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 researchers consider to have sound claims as coming from the real culprit.
* FluffyCloudHeaven: [[spoiler: Gull sees one at the very end of his ascension, inhabited by all the deities of the Freemasons]].
* FootnoteFever: The collected editions has a detailed set of annotations written by Moore himself going into exhaustive detail about the painstaking research he had conducted, pointing out every bit of ArtisticLicense he had taken and the factual basis for even the most minute subplots and connections.
* ForegoneConclusion: In real life the police never caught Jack the Ripper, so obviously they don't get him in this story either. However, the comic suggests some of them were aware of the killer's identity but remained silent for various reasons, which is pure speculation on Moore's part.
* {{Foreshadowing}}: It's an Alan Moore comic with a prominent focus on fourth-dimensional theory and predestination, so needless to say there's a ''lot'' of it, most of it only apparent upon rereads. In particular, pretty much all of Gull's "hallucinations" end up becoming actual premonitions of subsequent events in the novel, but that's only the most obvious example.
* FramingTheGuiltyParty: In retaliation for an insult, PhonyPsychic Lees claims to have visions of Gull committing the Whitechapel murders. He turns out to be RightForTheWrongReasons, which still haunts him years later.

* FunetikAksent: Thick London accents get written into the dialogue.
* 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 having fled to Ireland who tells him to go back to hell.]]
-->'''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]]
* GigglingVillain: Gull likes to punctuate his sentences with light laughter when he is in a good mood, to the point that it's a VerbalTic.
* 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.]]
* GoMadFromTheRevelation:
** Netley undergoes this during their tour of London chapter with the former starting to realize that he is AloneWithThePsycho as he starts talking about all kinds of masonic symbols and associations that connect 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, and how most theories and attempts to solve the murder only contribute to the legend of the killer rather than provide genuine investigation:
--->''"[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_snowflake Koch's Snowflake]] begins with an equilateral triangle, which can be contained within a circle, just as the murders are constrained to Whitechapel 2nd Autumn, 1888. Next, half-sized triangles are added to the triangles' three sides. Quarter-sized triangles are added to the new shape's twelve sides, and so on. Eventually, the snowflake's edge becomes so crinkly and complex that its length, theoretically, is Infinite. [[MindScrew Its AREA, however, never exceeds the initial circle]]. Likewise, each new book provides fresh details, finer crennelations of the subject's edge. Its area however can't extend past the initial circle: Autumn 1888, Whitechapel. What have we to look forward to? Abberline's school nickname or the make of Mary Kelly's shoes? Koch's snowflake: gaze upon it, Ripperologists, and shiver. The complex phantom we project. That alone, we know is real. The [[KarmaHoudini actual killer's gone]], [[RiddleForTheAges unglimpsed, might as well not have been there at all]]."''
* GottaKillThemAll: Queen Victoria assigns Gull to kill four prostitutes to keep them from revealing Prince Eddy's affair with a common woman. Gull pursues this goal with ''far'' more enthusiasm than she expected or intended.

** 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.
* {{Hallucinations}}: These play a large part in Gull's story. Or maybe they are more than hallucinations?
* HeroAntagonist: Abberline.
* 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.
* HistoricalPersonPunchline: In one scene, Abberline has a brief conversation with a young boy named "Alexander" who believes in magic, and flat-out tells Abberline that he's wrong for doubting the supernatural. Though the scene itself doesn't quite make it clear, the appendix reveals that the young boy is a young Creator/AleisterCrowley, who was born "Edward Alexander Crowley" before changing his name to "Aleister" as an adult.
* 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 four 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, 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.
* 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]].
* HumanSacrifice: Gull goes well beyond his initial assignment and decides to turn the murders into this, to serve as a symbolic binding of the mystical power of womanhood for the next century.
* 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.]]
* InfoDump: An early chapter is Gull traveling around town with his sidekick lecturing him on the secret Masonic/pagan symbolism of London landmarks.
* 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 Creator/DouglasAdams's ''Literature/DirkGentlysHolisticDetectiveAgency'', in which to solve a crime holistically, one would need to solve the entire society in which it occurred.
* IronicNickname: {{Discussed|Trope}} when Godley and Abberline talk about fellow Scotland Yard cop [[CorruptCop Bill "Johnny Upright" Thick]].
-->'''Godley:''' Hoho! Bill Thick? "Johnny Upright", all the dips and dragsmen call him.\\
'''Abberline:''' Oh yes? Why's that, then?\\
'''Godley:''' [[LampshadeHanging Well, it could be because he's fair and dependable. Or because he's not. Take your pick.]]

** 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.
** The police ignore the suggestion of dusting a crime scene for fingerprints on account of it just messing things up even more.
* JackTheRipoff: [[spoiler:These copycats are unsettlingly drawn into the story, depicted as being influenced by Gull's spirit as it moves through time and space.]]
* KarmaHoudini: [[spoiler:Gull, if he did indeed ascend to become a god. More broadly, none of the conspirators are ever brought to justice, and history shows that most of them died of natural causes, wealthy and comfortable.]]
* 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]].
* KnifeNut: Gull, a master surgeon, performs all his killing with a long surgical knife.
* KnightTemplar: Gull is convinced that he's a defender of human civilization itself, which he asserts as being inherently masculine.
* TheLastDJ: Gull holds the rest of the Freemasons in contempt, considering them to be nothing but cynical social climbers who have forgotten all the true values of the order.
--> '''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.
* LargeHam: Robert Lees is incredibly theatrical, to better sell his supposed psychic freakouts as genuine visionary moments to his gullible customers.
* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: Abberline comments to Godley about a peddler cashing in on the murders:
--> "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!]]"
* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: Nearly all of them drawn from real life.
* 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.]]
* MaleSunFemaleMoon: The Freemasons worship the sun as a source of rational, masculine power, and conversely revile the moon as a source of feminine disorder.
* 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.
* MindScrew: ''"What is the fourth dimension?"''
* MotiveRant: Gull's InfoDump to Netley about the occult history of London is also partly this, as he lays out in extensive and exacting detail why he feels it necessary to carry out the killings in such a savage, ritualistic manner.
* 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]].
* MysticalCityPlanning: {{Downplayed|Trope}} when Dr. Gull has Netley, the carriage driver he recruited to assist him with his murders, take him on a tour of London, stopping at various landmarks and locations and expounding on their mystical significance, noting that the modern world has forgotten these aspects. When it's all over, the not-very-bright Netley admits that pretty much all of what Gull talked about has gone over his head, but is horrified when Gull points out on a map that the locations they visited are laid out in a pentagram pattern.
* NeverSuicide: Needless to say, the police don't inquire too closely into the death of [[spoiler: Montague John Druitt]].
* NotSoOmniscientCouncilOfBickering: The Freemasons are depicted as a group of craven, backbiting old men who just use the order as a way to acquire power and status. They're unable to control Gull, and he holds them in absolute contempt.
* 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]].
* 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.]]
--> '''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]].
* OldFashionedCopper: Considering it's 1888, all of them, really.
* OminousFog:
** It's Victorian London. It's always foggy.
** [[spoiler: One of Gull's manifestations during his ascension is as]] a mist that moves strangely through the Tower of London.
* ParentalIncest: Annie Crook was molested by her father, which he reveals in a ''very'' uncomfortable moment when he mistakenly believes that her internment in a BedlamHouse was due to this abuse and not Gull lobotomizing her. His wife is suitably horrified and enraged.
* PartingWordsRegret: Joe Barnett's last encounter with Mary Kelly is a vicious, drunken argument where he storms out of their apartment in a rage. He's haunted by this for the rest of his life.
* 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.
* PoeticSerialKiller: Gull is a highly literate gentleman who tends to go on erudite monologues even while hacking apart his victims.
* PoliticallyIncorrectHero: Downplayed. Abberline is basically a decent bloke, but still a product of his time. He displays casual misogyny towards the women of Whitechapel on several occasions, and one of the first suspects he crosses off his list is a native American from an Old West show travelling through the area, purely on the suspicion that the killings might be too savage for an Englishman to commit.
* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: VillainProtagonist to be specific. As Gull seriously believes that his killings will [[HeManWomanHater keep women in line]] and that society has been controlled for millions of years by matriarchies (ignoring how he's been ordered to do this by a female ruler).
* PoliceProcedural: Abberline's story is a rather straightforward example, with the important caveat that [[ForegoneConclusion he never even comes close to catching the killer]].
* PlatonicProstitution: Abberline's relationship with "Fair Emma", who [[spoiler: is implied actually Mary Kelly]].
* PsychoForHire: Sir William Gull. He's hired for his discretion, but turns out to be quite AxCrazy.
* 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]].
* RavenHairIvorySkin: The art style gives this look to Mary Kelly. Historically, her hair color is disputed, with different accounts describing her as being anything from blonde to redheaded to this trope.
* [[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 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."]]
* 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.
* 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]]]].

* 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]] [[WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes "Be vewy vewy quiet.]] [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments We'we hunting wippers!"]]
* 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, such as [[spoiler:Mary Kelly's possible survival]]. 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.
* SigilSpam: Gull shows Netley the Masonic codes hidden all over London, culminating in his reveal of every horse harness in the city bearing the Masonic symbols of the sun and moon. When Netley fully begins to comprehend the implications, he vomits from fear.
* SinisterGeometry: Gull goes on for pages about the architecture of Nicholas Hawksmoor's cathedrals, which he asserts were deliberately constructed to bind and repress the wills of the people living in their shadow.
* SlashedThroat: How Gull kills most of his victims, before he sets about mutilating their bodies. Polly Nichols has her neck snapped instead, and he strangles Annie Chapman with a scarf.
* SlasherSmile: The one which Gull flashes especially for Netley at the conclusion of their psychogeographical trip through London is horrible.
* 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.
* StylisticSuck: Gull and Netley's letter to the police. Gull has the barely literate Netley write it so as to protect himself.
* 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]].
* SurroundedByIdiots:
** 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.
-->'''Gull:''' Netley, do you know what your foremost distinguishing feature is?\\
'''Netley:''' Why, I... I can't think, sir.\\
'''Gull:''' [[DeadpanSnarker Precisely.]]
** Abberline seems to be one of the only officers investigating the case with the least bit of intelligence and honesty. He repeatedly expresses frustration with the way other officers handle the case, particularly Lieutenant Thick.
* TermsOfEndangerment: Gull speaks with a tone of near reverence towards his victims, even after killing them. They're integral parts of his ritual, after all.
* 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.]]
* TitleDrop: Gull very pointedly insists that Netley begin their letter "From hell."
* TroublingUnchildlikeBehavior: William Gull is shown dissecting field mice out of curiosity in his youth.
* 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]].
* 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.
* 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 [[spoiler: briefly time-travels to the modern world]], he is horrified by how soulless and banal everything is.
* VillainProtagonist: Pretty obvious since the main POV is the man who would come to be known as Jack the Ripper. Gull is by far the most prominent character in the story, and while his motives are ''completely'' unsympathetic, he doesn't lack for charisma, nuance, or psychological depth.
* VisionaryVillain: Gull's purpose with the murders is nothing less than shaping the course of the entire 20th century, to ensure the continued dominance of men over women and rationality over irrationality.
* 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.
* 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]].
* WickedCultured: Gull is a well-educated aristocrat who constantly references science, history, and mythology during his monologues.

* WomanChild: Polly Nichols [[OlderThanTheyLook looks]] and acts much younger than her 43 years, which is especially impressive given her miserable living situation. Her youthful looks and immature attitude are in fact commented on in contemporary accounts.
* WrongSideOfTheTracks: Limehouse, Whitechapel.
* 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.

-> '''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.

** 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 claims to have had the same dream]].

* 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 [[spolier: that Abberline's opinions on how working-class people think stem from his guilt over having accepted bribe money for not revealing the truth about the murders.]]

* 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 [spolier: that Abberline's opinions on how working-class people think stem from his guilt over having accepted bribe money for not revealing the truth about the murders.]]
-->''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?"]

* 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.

* FailureIsTheOnlyOption: The reader knows from page one that none of the girls are going to get out alive and that the police will never catch the killer. [[Spoiler:Subverted with the strong implication that Mary Kelly actually escaped and lived a happy life back in Ireland at the end.]]

The story is a bit less fantastic than some of Moore's other work. It's a creepy kind of whodunnit [[ReverseWhodunnit where you know whodunnit very early on.]] ''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 stated that he found Knight's theory to be rather far-fetched, but felt it served the purpose of his story. It's about [[EndOfAnAge 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-looking.

* HumanSacrifice: Gull goes well beyond his initial assignment and decides to use the killings as an unholy rite, to bind of the symbolic power of womanhood for the next century.

* 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, such as [[spoiler:Mary Kelly's possible survival.]] 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 is historicallt accurate. Not only does it show off the insane level of research that went into the book, but it's one of the first scenes to demonstrate how far down the rabbit hole Gull really is. Interestingly enough, Moore says in the notes in the back of the book that you can do this tour in a single day, walking!

* HumanSacrifice: Gull goes well beyond his initial assignment and decides to turns the killings into a rite, to bind of the symbolic power of womanhood for the next century.

* HumanSacrifice: Gull goes well beyond his initial assignment and turns the murders into a rite, to bind of the symbolic power of womanhood for the next century.

* HumanSacrifice: Gull goes well beyond his initial assignment and performs and unholy rite, to bind of the symbolic power of womanhood for the next century.

* DecoyProtagonist: The first chapter deliberately fools the audience into thinking that the protagonist is either Prince Eddy or Walter Sickert, only introducing Gull--the closest thing in the novel to a true protagonist--in the second chapter. As the later chapters gradually make clear, Walter and Eddy are both solid cases of SmallRoleBigImpact, and they drop out of the story when TheConspiracy and the resultant murders grow beyond their control. Likewise, Mary Kelly appears to be a minor character in the first chapter (she first appears as Sickert's maid), but she later turns out to be the most developed of the Ripper's five victims.

* HumanSacrifice: Gull goes well beyond his initial assignment and decides to turn the murders into this, to serve as a symbolic binding of the mystical power of womanhood for the next century.

* MaskOfSanity: Sir William Gull. He's hired for his discretion, but he turns out to be a fanatic. Ironically, the Ripper can be considered one of the first "celebrities" due to the public's love of violence. His disturbing motivations for the Ripper killings are both magical and secular:

* 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 [[spoiler:Klara Hitler had at the moment of Adolf's conception]] decades ago.

* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: Gull believes his killings will keep women in line, and that society has been controlled for millions of years by matriarchies (ignoring how 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.

* HannibalLecture: Gull holds the the Masonic Council in contempt, viewing them as social climbers who have forgotten the true values of their order. He starts to deliver an apocalyptic speech to the Council before his dementia catches up with him and he trails off in confusion.