INTRODUCTION TO ALAN MOORE’S
"FROM HELL"
(Originally
for La Semana Negra catalogue)
It must have been around 1990, maybe
even earlier, when Alan, as part of his research for his fictional
investigation of the Jack The Ripper Murders, asked me to drive him around
London to investigate the significant locations of his plot. I was happy to play Netley to his Sir William
Gull; to have the distraction of traffic and navigation to alleviate the dark
magic of our treading of the paths of obsession.
My recollection of our perambulation
that day is hazy, impressionistic… superficial even.
I remember the colour of saris under
shawls as Asian women hurried about their business in the sodden grey shadows
of the Hawksmoor church in Spitalfields… and cabbage leaves sprawled limp,
crushed on the granite of Victorian cobblestones still visible in the gutters,
unburied by a century of road resurfacing.
And another church - don't ask me which
- derelict, roofless, peopled by a congregation of scrubby trees twisting
amongst its fallen stone. There was a
locked wrought-iron gate to climb, a dark crypt with an unhealthy smell to
explore. I remember descending into this
with Alan, waiting in the half-light at the foot of the steps, watching him set
off into the pitch blackness of the interior with a flickering cigarette-lighter
held futilely over his head to light his way.
Knowing him to be half-blind even in full light, I expected him to
plunge at any moment into some unseen abyss and hurtle directly to Hell. But he came back from the shadows with his
soul still intact, or so it seemed.
I remember a bridge over the River Thames…
looking down and seeing - protruding from the exposed tidal mud, amongst a
supermarket cart, a punctured football, and an old door - a cheese-coloured
shape that looked disconcertingly like a human pelvis. Then a vague recollection of a small park, a
patch of scabby green amongst the urban brick, some kids lurking in a corner,
but otherwise deserted… a debate amongst us as to whether these were the London
Fields or not -- and that is all. Time
has eroded the rest of the day.
That night we stayed at Steve Moore's
house in Shooter's Hill. I went to bed
tired, feeling grubby, with a nagging headache.
Alan and I shared a room. I
dreamed that I was working as a taxi driver again, driving around with a corpse
in a suitcase in the back of my cab, worrying that the smell would offend my
customers and reduce my tips. I woke
once. Alan twitched, smiling a little in
his sleep. I thought about waking him up
to ask him what he was dreaming… but then decided that I didn't really want to
know.
Soon after that Alan's and my life
diverged. I forgot about From Hell until
a few days ago when someone passed me the tombstone-sized volume containing the
collected story. It has sat by my bed
since. I have to read it. I will read it… I'm just not sure I want to.
Some things have power only because we
invest them with it… make them into symbols.
But in other things that power is intrinsic… beaten into it by the
hammering fingertips of the writer, trapped by his subject in his smoke-filled
dungeon… etched into it by the nib of the artist's pen as he sits scratching at
the paper in the sub-tropical heat of a continent a century and half-a-world
away from the darkness he is capturing as accurately as if he lived it. Eddie Campbell, I admire your skill and
vision… and marvel at your stamina.
I suspect that From Hell is a work of
intrinsic power. I recommend you take
the risk and read it… then at least you will know.
©2000 Jamie
Delano