Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta is a stirring, ostensibly realistic homily of the superman and freedom for the late twentieth century.

Begun in 1981 and finished in 1988, with a five year hiatus somewhere in between, this comic is a stylized, dystopic conceit of its era. Indeed, V for Vendetta, along with Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen as well as Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, defined a "darker," "adult-oriented" tone and style in comics.

Each featuring distinctive art with sophisticated philosophy and social commentary, these comics became astonishing hits almost entirely misunderstood in the publishing business itself, indirectly influencing the graphic novel hubbub and the direct-marketing debacle the comics industry almost killed itself with during the 90s.

Truly, the aforementioned works by Moore, Miller, et al. were and remain mythic for anyone associated with or interested in comics. However, all that aside, V for Vendetta remains a singular case for a variety of reasons. At its heart--a very impassioned heart at that--it draws metaphors that still stand resonant, but its messages mire those metaphors in entailments they can't always transcend.

There are surface singularities of V for Vendetta that frame its metaphors and engender its mythos. For one, the setting is England, not the United States. Alan Moore emphatically remarks upon this decision he and Lloyd made in his article "Behind the Painted Mask," reproduced in the trade paperback collection of Vendetta: "Dave and I both wanted to do something that would be uniquely British rather than emulate the vast amount of American material on the market."

Further and consubstantial to the setting, the character V himself is physically modeled after Guy Fawkes, a postmodern mime of a British rebel figure, largely meaningless to an American audience. Resultant from these essential story elements, the conflict of this comic is refreshingly high-minded.

Gone are the mainstream comic book characterizations of testosteronal tough guys fighting criminals or grim government goons fighting communists, Iraqis, or the enemy du jour.

In their place stands V.

More substantial than a mere vigilante, V is a rebel terrorist with revenge against a technological fascist regime on his agenda. This regime systematically exterminated intellectuals, homosexuals, minorities ... all "the usual suspects" totalitarian types like to get rid of ... but along the way they also conducted medical experiments upon a select few of their prisoners. V was the sole survivor of the experimentation. As a result, he has become superhuman in intellect and physical ability, a veritable incarnation of Nietzsche's maxim: "That which does not kill me makes me stronger." Deemed mad by his keepers at the concentration camp where he is guinea pig, he engineers his escape and vows to avenge himself upon his captors.

But, that's only the beginning. From the inside out, V seeks to destroy the entire Orwellian government he opposes. Specifically, his guerrilla tactics are ultimately ideological, not militaristic.

Does this "ideological" attack sound high-minded enough for a comic book?

There's more.

The fascist "baddies" have destroyed or shut away the arts and the humanities, even those trifles of pop culture like jukeboxes. As in any "ideal state" from Plato to the present, art, history, media, and entertainment are governmentally created and controlled. However, concommitent to V's philosophic warfare, he houses in an abandoned portion of Victoria Station--loosely his "Batcave" or "Fortress of Solitude"--an archive/library/museum filled with books, paintings, and music he has amassed before the fascists have gotten their chance to destroy it all. Hence, V is a protector of the Humanities--all those things that make us uniquely human, all those expressions of society's and the individual's highest accomplishments.

Further, V's ideological assault is far-sighted. Again, echoing Nietzschean ethics, V is the hammer who sounds out the hollowness of the fascist idol he undermines. In his role as hammer, he is destroyer, an end fostering a new beginning, a beginning he must leave a successor to realize. Like Miller's Dark Knight who teams up with a somehow more satisfying Carrie Kelley as his Robin, V selects a young female, Evey Hammond, to follow up on his legacy and to fulfill his vision. However, unlike Miller's elder Batman, V personally initiates his protege in the harshest ways, all in keeping with the grim political atmosphere of Vendetta.

V first rescues Evey from the police who are about to violate then murder her. Then, he allows Evey to choose to implicate herself in one of his vengeful murders. Next, as she wrestles with the ethics of that murder, he abandons her so that she may experience for herself the cold, harsh corrupt world. On her own, she has a short-lived affair with a middle-aged black market dealer who is brutally murdered by his cohorts, and, when she seeks to kill those who killed her lover, V abducts her and subjects her to the cruelest initiation of all. In an elaborate pantomime, V locks Evey away as if she were a political prisoner. He tortures her. He threatens her with death. When Evey is finally reduced to choosing the death of her body over the death of "her principles," she is allowed free and realizes all V has done to her (for her?). The result for Evey is an epiphany. As Moore puts it, the notion is "that ideas are more important ... than the material" world, than mere life alone in itself.

This potent myth of ideas over circumstance is the major premise of V for Vendetta, and it rises above the caricatures of a masked man and postmodern Nazis, distilling itself into the parable of anarchy over fascism.

The metaphor of these two ideological/political entities stands in bold relief in the comic. V's broadcast in Book 2, Chapter 4 is a polemic addressed to the audience in the book as well as the audience reading the book. Citing all humanity's lack of self-governance and responsibility throughout real history and the narrative's history, the broadcast is a Sartrean indictment of inauthenticity and a call to anarchic freedom, that political philosophy where there is no government, no leader except the individual who takes charge of himself or herself.

This call is the quintessential humanistic leap of faith, trusting that every person can and should take charge of his or her life, can and should live his or her life according to Sartre's imperative in "The Humanism of Existentialism": "I am responsible for myself and for everyone else. I am creating a certain image of man of my own choosing. In choosing myself, I choose man."

However, such a "tall order" of absolute autonomy is almost insanely idealistic and naive, especially when one takes even a moment to consider the consequences of such a polity.

Nonetheless, the anarchic freedom in Vendetta is a strong metaphor, a perpetual notion, but it is also a myth lost in the means of the message.

The first mire of the message in Vendetta is the messenger himself. The character of V is comic book pure, an early, perhaps unconscious, imprint of Moore's fixation now clearly evident in his current quest to revitalize comic book heroes like his Tom Strong. In an October 2000 article at Salon.com, Sridhar Pappu analyzes this urge in Moore. He writes that Moore is interested now in "taking just the plain nub of what makes superheroes appealing and 'fusing it with a progressive sensibility--something that can be retrograde and avant-garde at the same time. So you get the best of what comics were, sort of distilled in some way to make the fuel for what comics will be.'"

As Moore puts it, he is attempting to rewind "the tape of the superhero" to before Superman in the late 1930s. Such a goal and characterization fits V. V is undeniably retrograde in appearance and avant-garde from at least the high schooler's or the freshman or sophomore university student's point of view. V is a purveyor of values that are suited to a liberally educated teen and a twenty-something audience at the time of the book's publication.

Therefore, V, in the final analysis, is merely a trope of intellectual "cool" and the man of action for the young, comic-reading cerebral set. It is in this romantic sense that he may be appreciated, and, it is in this kind of appreciation that V has his shortcomings as a character. The messenger, hence, in the end, becomes only a fantasy along with his message, demystifying the myth of anarchic freedom as an overweened pipe dream of the young and smartly smug.

To this end, V for Vendetta is often read by its admirers as if it were scripture. Some Vendetta fans memorize and claim to apply V's maxims and musings to their "everyday lives." They delve into the text's images and words to eke out hierophantic associations. They explicate and annotate references in the book, totally missing its mythic relevance as an invitation to their own minds, their own thinking, their own lives.

The irony of such devotion is the antithesis of Vendetta's myth. Relevant to this situation, Moore himself asserts, "I got my morals more from Superman than I ever did from my teachers and peers. Because Superman wasn't real--he was incorruptible. You were seeing morals in their pure form."

Perhaps, given time, Moore's take here is applicable to those V worshipers, and they will one day sublimate their comic book devotions into adult morals.

More than likely, however, they'll remain Vendetta Trekkies, totally ignorant of the book's urging to its readers for them not to settle for the sermonizing front man in cloak and mask but to settle for themselves in owning up to the responsibility for their unique freedom of thought and action instead of slavish and narrow-minded comic book exegesis.

Another element of the message in Vendetta that obscures its vital myth is V's opponents in the story.

The fascist state that V fights against is yet but another trope not practically applicable to the real world. The uniformed authority figures and corrupt yes-men who populate the book are easily identifiable, merely allegorical.

However, in reality, the Orwellian prophecy and personages seen in Vendetta are much more subtle and much more insidious than anything available in fiction. Politicians, publicists, the media, advertisers are only the symptom of a rottenness that has totally proliferated.

It's actually us. We perpetuate an agenda of political correctness and "family values" over any semblance of reasonableness. We perpetuate raw, self-interested greed and a vague, mercurial morality over any sense of compassion or decency.

The most emblematic proof of this last notion in America is the election of George W. Bush in an election that should never have even been close to begin with. Now, we willingly allow the Eye and the Ear into our private lives and call it entertainment: "reality television" and "webcams." "Concerned" parents want the government to act as censor, providing v-chips, labels on recordings as well as books, and soon "regulation" of the internet. Politicians are elected upon their stance on "returning prayer to school" which is nothing less than the beginnings of a state religion, the cornerstone of true fascism. Health care is more about money and legalistics than ethics or healing. We "invest" in corporations that continue to grow so huge and convoluted that they are fractal in structure, all so we can have a comfortable retirement, a college education for our children, and an inheritance for those who outlive us.

The complicity with totalitarianism is nothing like conspiring with the Nazis. There is no Hitler or Mussolini anymore. There is no single face of tyranny; there are instead a multitude of faces. Some of them look at us in the mirror. In short, if the secret police ever come knocking at our door to take us away for torture and extermination, we put them there. This interpretation, then, is the myth that V offers in colorful comic book metaphors.

Finally, there is the message of gender and sexuality gnawing at the myth V for Vendetta.

V, superhuman that he is, is genderless and asexual, totally nonrealistic, absolutely perfect except for some strong shades of misogyny (all characteristics equally applicable to his foil, the fascist leader, Adam Susan). Nonetheless, it is this masculine creature who appoints a woman to usher in the new era of humanity, and she goes through hell to do it, all at his hands.

What is this saying about women?

First, it asserts that it takes a man to make a woman human (which becomes doubly relevant in the case of Dr. Surridge). Given Moore's Victorian fetish, V is the Henry Higgins to Evey's Eliza. That's about as sexist as any work can get. It's not difficult to see Evey's ascension as the next V as nothing more than the token female in a masculine fantasy.

The other women in Vendetta are mostly unflattering pitiable or vicious sorts. Rosemary Almond goes from battered wife, to hapless widow, to mistress of her husband's jealous homosexual adversary, to exotic dancer, to V-manipulated assassin of Adam Susan. Helen Heyer is the stereotypical conniving evil bitch adultress who ends up the chattel of some bums. Dr. Delia Surridge was the evil bitch doctor who performed the experiments at the concentration camp and later repents, waiting only to be finished off by V so that she can die with a relieved conscience.

Perhaps, the only woman treated with any reverence is the dead lesbian actress, Valerie, who stands more in the role of martyr and muse than as a flesh and blood human being. Sexually, all romantic relationships end in miserable tragedy, the highest treatment of a sexual relationship being the lesbian affair of Valerie.

The message of sexuality and gender in Vendetta is thus actually a hierarchy of female homosexuality over heterosexuality and masculinity dominating and shaping femininity--all these notions most clearly voiced in V's musical composition "This Vicious Cabaret."

Overall, as a whole, V for Vendetta is a flawed masterpiece where the merits of its mythos struggle with its message's contents and context. Nonetheless, it stands in prophetic vestment, reaching heights most comics can only pretend to.

A dose of caution, however, makes the reading of the text more remarkable, more a work of high fiction than a dogma for the twenty-first century. It will certainly remain at the margins of pop culture as an esoteric pleasure for those seeking a contemporary extension to timeless mythic heroism. That's a virtual realm where ideas always transcend the limitations of actual reality.