The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Alan Moore, with Eddie Campbell · a comic in black and white, a Prologue, fourteen chapters and an Epilogue, with two appendices · serialised from 1989, collected by Eddie Campbell Comics, 1999 · written by Alan Moore and drawn by Eddie Campbell; script, page design, drawing and lettering scored as one text, read from knowledge; no text in hand, and nothing quoted from the book
Mode
Historical fiction as a comic; murder story, police procedural, occult speculation and an annotated history in one book
Mythos
The sun against the moon and the male principle against the female, built into a murderer’s design on the map of London; the Ripper as the archetype of the modern murderer, made in front of the reader
Phase
The autumn of 1888 in London, reached back to Gull’s childhood, framed by two old men on a shore decades after, and carried forward in Gull’s visions to the late twentieth century
Presentation
Comic in black-and-white pen and ink, sixteen parts, mostly on a regular grid of small panels, with long silent sequences; Appendix I, chapter by chapter notes on sources and inventions; Appendix II, a comic coda in the same hand
Register
From Gull’s periodic lecture to Netley’s cockney, the women’s talk and the policemen’s, with the worst of the book carried in silence
Scale
Five women, a doctor and his coachman, the police and the crown, a city, and the century after
Governing Proposition
A royal physician, Sir William Gull, drives through London with his coachman and kills five poor women of the East End, and the book follows the murders, the police who fail to solve them and the century that makes them its legend. The wager of the book is that the comics page, a field of moments laid side by side, can show time as a solid in which every act remains and is read back by later men, and that a theory known to be false can carry the truth of what the killing of five women was made to mean.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The title comes from a letter. In October 1888 George Lusk, of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, was sent half a human kidney with a letter headed “From hell”. Of all the documents of the case it is the one that names where its writer claims to stand, and the book takes it as the name of the whole. The murders of that autumn in the East End of London were never solved, and the book does not pretend to solve them. It takes a solution known to be false and builds on it.
The solution is Stephen Knight’s, from Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution (1976): that Sir William Gull, the royal physician, was the murderer, that John Netley drove his carriage, and that the cause lay in Walter Sickert, Prince Albert Victor and a secret that touched the crown. In his notes Moore says plainly that he does not hold the theory to be true. He uses it as a frame, and the book’s claim about history rests on that distance: not who did it, but what the century made of it.
The work was written by Alan Moore and drawn by Eddie Campbell, and it is scored here as one text, script, page design, drawing and lettering together. It was serialised from 1989, first in Stephen Bissette’s anthology Taboo and then in separate numbered parts from Tundra and Kitchen Sink, and collected in one volume in 1999 by Eddie Campbell Comics, and by Top Shelf in the United States. The unit is that collected book: a Prologue, fourteen chapters and an Epilogue, in black-and-white pen and ink, built for the most part on a regular grid of small panels, often nine to a page, with two appendices after. The later coloured edition is not the unit.
Movement II
The book reaches back to Gull’s childhood before it reaches his crimes, and when it arrives at him he is a man of eminence: a royal physician, a doctor with a stroke behind him and a wife at home. On Knight’s account, which the book takes as its frame, the origin of the killings lies elsewhere, in Sickert and the Prince, in Annie Crook and her child. What Gull makes of the killings is his own.
His mind is a system. The sun against the moon, reason against unreason, Apollo against Dionysus, the male principle set over the female and bound beneath it; Masonry, with the deity he names Jahbulon; and the city of London read as a machine built by that system to hold its opposite down. It is not offered as the private fancy of a madman. The book sets it among the respectable culture of its day, its lodges, its medicine, its monarchy and its church building, and shows it as a strand of that culture.
The fourth chapter is the book’s first summit. Gull drives Netley across London from church to monument, by Hawksmoor’s churches, by Cleopatra’s Needle, by Bunhill Fields and Blake’s grave, and lectures him as they go on the gods buried under the streets. The route becomes a figure, the city a diagram of power, and the ground of a known place turns to myth. The coachman listens. By the end of the ride the murders to come have been placed on a map, and the reader has been made to walk it.
Movement III
Before the book gives the women their deaths it gives them their days: rents owed, quarrels, drink, the men they live with, the trade of the streets they work. They are named and their lives are costed. The grapes with which they are lured are a gift turned to bait, and the book lets the gift be felt before the bait is known. This is where the book’s first disclosure is made, that the women’s lives were thrown away twice, by the knife and by the legend that followed it.
Around the killings the book admits everything the record holds: the police and their rivalries, the inquests, and a crowd of the period’s public figures passing through. Abberline, the inspector on the case, is the one consciousness the book sets at length beside Gull’s. Here the method costs most. Much of the material is threaded on Gull’s design, but some of it is the historian’s pleasure in a fact found, and in a chapter or two the procedure is permitted rather than compelled.
The tenth chapter is the murder of Mary Kelly in her room. It is a long passage in small panels and near silence. Her room is a person’s room before it is a crime scene, and the book holds there, panel after panel, while Gull works and his work is cut with what he sees of the century to come. The grid slows time to the pace of the act. Campbell’s line keeps it ugly rather than spectacular. It is the book’s darkest passage, and the place where its exaltation and its horror cannot be told apart, as they cannot be told apart in Gull.
Movement IV
Gull’s teaching, taken from Hinton’s speculation on a fourth dimension, is that time is a solid in which every moment exists together, so that nothing done is ever over. The book does not only report this belief. It is built on it. A page of comics is a field of moments laid side by side and read in order, past and future present on the same sheet; and in the tenth and fourteenth chapters the panels set 1888 and the century after it on one page. The claim is demonstrated in the form that carries it.
The fourteenth chapter is Gull’s death and what follows it. He passes out of his own time, through other men’s minds and other decades, and is seen; he arrives in the late twentieth century, among its offices, and finds there the world his act was meant to make, rationalised and violent. The man who set out to bind the female principle under London has produced the century he foresaw. The myth he built is turned against him, and the turn is the book’s.
So the Ripper becomes what he has been since: the archetype of the modern murderer, the man of method whose crimes are rites and whose legend outlives every fact. The book makes that figure in front of the reader and shows how it is made. Part of the making is lecture, given in Gull’s own voice, more than enacted; but the death and the visions are enacted, and in them the book’s theory of time and its theory of the century become one.
Movement V
The Prologue and the Epilogue are set decades after the murders, on the south coast, where the aged Abberline and Lees walk by the sea and talk of the case. Together they frame the book as what history made of a lie, and of what the lie was worth. The Prologue’s two old men read differently after the Epilogue’s, and the book is built to be returned to from its end.
Then come the two appendices. The first is Moore’s chapter by chapter account of his sources and of his inventions: which panels follow the record and which do not, and why. It is the first commentary on the work, and it is part of the work, because the book’s argument about history depends on the seam between record and invention being visible. The second, “The Dance of the Gull-Catchers”, written by Moore and drawn by Campbell, is a comic coda on the history of theorising about the murders. It ends the argument in comedy: the history of the case is a coastline that grows longer the more closely it is measured, and every theorist, the authors among them, finds in it what he brings.
The book has stayed in print in one volume since 1999, in English and in translation, and it is taught and argued over as one of the major works of its form, in the criticism of comics, in the study of the Victorian city and in debate on the representation of violence against women. It was loosely filmed in 2001. With Maus and with Moore’s own Watchmen, it made the term graphic novel mean something more than a label, and it gave the comic a documentary and speculative mode it had not had at this length: a history with its sources open, drawn in a line that looks like the engravings of the year it tells.
Act III · The Twelve
The test is what could go, and the answer is divided. The murder chapters cannot go, nor the carriage ride of the fourth chapter, nor Gull’s death in the fourteenth, nor the frame of the two old men on the shore, which sets the whole as what history made of a lie. The notes cannot go either: they show which panels are record and which invention, and the book’s claim about history depends on that seam being visible. The cost is in the middle. Moore’s method is to admit everything the record holds, and most of it is threaded on Gull’s design; but some is the historian’s pleasure in a fact found, a chapter or two of procedure reads as permitted rather than compelled, and a handful of historical figures appear as visits rather than as workings. That accretion holds the axis lowest of the twelve.
Score: 8.2 / 10
What the book brings into the open can be stated, and it holds. First, that the murders of five poor women were made into the founding legend of a century, by men, about women whose lives were thrown away twice, by the knife and by the myth. The book gives the women days, rents, quarrels and drink before it gives them deaths, and Mary Kelly’s room is a person’s room before it is a crime scene. Second, that Gull’s system, solar reason and the male principle set against the lunar and the female, with London built as a machine to bind it, is not a madman’s private fancy but a strand of the respectable culture, its Masonry, medicine, monarchy and church building. Third, that the history of the case is a coastline that lengthens the closer it is measured. Held below the top because the second disclosure is argued through a theory its authors disown.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Elevation here is dread, and it recurs. The fourth chapter is the summit of the first half: Gull drives Netley across London from church to monument, by Hawksmoor’s churches, Cleopatra’s Needle and Blake’s grave in Bunhill Fields, and lectures him on the gods buried under the streets until a known city turns into a diagram of power. The tenth chapter, the murder of Mary Kelly, is a long passage in small panels of near silence, in which Gull’s work is cut with his visions of the century to come; it is terrible and exalted at once, as Gull himself is exalted. The fourteenth rises again with Gull’s death and his passage through other decades. Between the summits lie flat stretches of procedure, and Campbell’s line refuses grandeur to the ordinary chapters by design. The height is high and frequent, not constant.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Myth here is built, not evoked. Gull’s mythology, the sun against the moon, reason against unreason, Apollo against Dionysus, and the Masonic deity he names Jahbulon, is the engine of the plot: the murders are rites performed on a map he has drawn, and the book makes its reader walk the map. Then it turns the myth. The man who means to bind the female principle under London produces, by his act, the twentieth century he sees in his visions, with its rationalised violence and its offices. The particular stays particular: the murderer is a doctor with a stroke behind him and a wife at home, and the women are named and their lives costed. The Ripper as the archetype of the modern murderer is made in front of the reader, and the book shows the making. Held a few tenths from the top because part of the mythology is lecture, given in Gull’s voice, more than enacted.
Score: 9.0 / 10
The inheritance is plain. The frame is Stephen Knight’s royal and Masonic theory of the murders, from Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution (1976); the psychogeography of Hawksmoor’s churches comes from Iain Sinclair’s Lud Heat (1975), which Moore acknowledges; Campbell’s line remembers the engravings of the Victorian penny press; and the apparatus is the historical novel’s. The turn is in the medium and in the stake. After Watchmen, Moore spent some ten years on a black-and-white, unsensational, heavily annotated work of history, serialised in a small-press anthology and by fragile publishers, two of which failed while it ran. The book refused the costume, the colour and the thriller’s pace, and gave the comic an annotated, documentary and speculative mode it had not had at this length. Held below the top because each element is inherited; the swerve is to join them in this medium, and to pay for it.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Change the form and the work stops knowing what it knows. Gull’s teaching, taken from Hinton, is that time is a solid in which every moment coexists. The comics page is exactly that: a field of moments laid side by side and read in sequence. In the tenth and fourteenth chapters the panels hold 1888 and the century after it on one page, so that the claim is demonstrated, not asserted. The regular grid of small panels slows time to the pace of the murder and the inquest. Campbell’s scratched line makes the past look like its own engravings and refuses the killing any glamour. The appendices are form as well: the notes show the seam between record and invention, which is the book’s argument about history, and the comic coda ends that argument in comedy. A prose novel would have to say what these pages show.
Score: 9.0 / 10
The book keeps yielding, and it supplied its own first evidence: the authors’ notes are the first commentary on the work. Since then it has been annotated and argued over for more than a quarter of a century, in the criticism of comics, in the study of the Victorian city, in writing on psychogeography and in debate on the representation of violence against women. On return the rhymes multiply: the grapes with which the women are lured, a gift turned to bait; Gull’s lecture on London read against his visions of offices; the Masonic and the medical rituals laid side by side; the two old men of the Prologue read again after the Epilogue. Held below the top because part of the density is documentary, and some of what returns is fact found rather than meaning made; and twenty-seven years as a whole book is short beside the longest tests on the desk.
Score: 8.7 / 10
The field is the comic in English in the late twentieth century, and beyond it the historical novel and the literature of London. The intrinsic force is real: the book showed that a comic could be a work of historical research and speculation at the length of a novel, with its sources open, and that the medium’s grid could carry a theory of time; it is one of the two or three works that made the term graphic novel mean more than a label for the shelf. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: it is taught and cited as one of the major works of its form; it shaped the documentary and historical graphic novel that followed, and the London writing that took Moore’s and Sinclair’s map of the city as given; it was widely translated and loosely filmed in 2001. Held below the top because its reach lies mostly within comics and London writing, and within comics the redirection of the form is shared with Maus and with Watchmen.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Weighed under the step for modern books. As a collected book it is twenty-seven years old, and its serialisation began thirty-seven years ago; for that span the usual figure is 8.5 to 8.6. The text survives whole and has stayed in print in one volume since 1999, in English and in translation, and its presence in the reading and teaching of comics is continuous. Its surface is not fixed to its moment: its matter is 1888, its drawing is period by design, and nothing in it depends on the 1990s. Two charges stand. Its presence is concentrated in the readership and scholarship of comics and is narrower beyond them; and a later coloured edition shows that even its makers have revised its look, though the original stands. Scored at the usual figure for its span, not raised for fame, and so exactly at the bar.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Craft is read to the same anchors as any book, with script, page design, drawing and lettering as one text. Moore’s script is exact: the voices are kept apart across classes, Gull’s periodic lecture, Netley’s cockney, the women’s talk and the policemen’s, and the pages are composed so that silence carries the worst of the book. Campbell’s drawing is load-bearing. The rough, hatched, sometimes deliberately unfinished line gives the city its fog and its dirt, keeps the violence ugly rather than spectacular, and in the tenth chapter holds a long sequence on small panels with almost no words. The charge is real: in the crowded chapters the figures are hard to tell apart, men of one class in the same coats; some pages are muddy in reproduction; and the lettering is plain to a fault. The craft is high and willed; it is not, page by page, at the summit.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the cold drafting of an inquest and Gull’s vision of a twentieth-century office in the fourteenth chapter; or the tragic book and the comic coda that follows it. One law governs both: time is solid, and what is done in it remains, to be read back by later men, policemen, theorists or authors, who each find in it what they bring. The frame of the two old men on the shore obeys the same law, and so do the notes, which treat the authors’ own book as one more reading of the record. The tone is held from first page to last in Campbell’s single line. Held a tenth below 9.0 because in the middle chapters the speculative law slackens into chronicle, and a few historical figures appear as visits from history rather than as its working.
Score: 8.9 / 10
Many orders, and the murders join them. The state and the crown, in the Queen, the Prince and the police. Class and labour, in the East End, the rents, the women’s trade, the coachman’s servitude and the doctor’s eminence. The family, in Gull’s marriage, in Annie Crook and her child, and in the women’s men. Medicine and science, in Gull’s career and in Hinton’s fourth dimension. The sacred, in Masonry, the churches and the gods Gull names. Art, in Sickert, Blake and the architecture of the city. Sexuality, in the trade of the streets. History itself, from the old men of the Prologue to the century in Gull’s visions, and the history of history in the coda. These are held in one structure, not listed: each is a stake in the same act. Held below the top for the narrowness of its consciousness outside Gull and Abberline.
Score: 8.9 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.7 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Archetypal Deep at 9.0, The Living Form at 9.0, and The Inner Law and The Encompassed at 8.9. A murderer’s mythology built into the plot and then turned against him by the century it makes; a page that is itself the solid of time the book’s theory describes, with notes that keep the seam between record and invention in view; one law of time and its reading that governs inquest and vision, tragedy and comic coda; and the crown, the police, labour, medicine, the sacred and art held as stakes in one act.
Limiting Dimension
The Inevitable at 8.2: the murder chapters, the carriage ride, the death and the frame cannot go, but the middle admits more of the record than the argument compels, a chapter or two of procedure and a handful of historical figures who visit rather than work. Next above it, The Imperishable at 8.5: survival demonstrated over twenty-seven years as a collected book, concentrated in the readership and scholarship of comics.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.2 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 9.0, The Inner Law at 8.9, The Made at 8.7, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is met on all five: The Archetypal Deep at 9.0, The Unconcealment at 8.8, The Swerve at 8.7, Pressure on Tradition at 8.6 and The Imperishable at 8.5 clear the bar of 8.5, the last exactly at the line. The Universal Minimum is met (no axis it counts falls below 8.2, against 7.5), and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 8.9. Every summit condition is met; the work is held below the summit by its aggregate alone, at 8.7.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of From Hell, written by Alan Moore and drawn by Eddie Campbell, scored as the collected book of 1999 (Eddie Campbell Comics; Top Shelf in the United States): a Prologue, fourteen chapters and an Epilogue, with Appendix I, Moore’s chapter by chapter notes on his sources and inventions, and Appendix II, “The Dance of the Gull-Catchers”, drawn by Campbell. Script, page design, drawing and lettering are judged as one text, and the drawing is weighed under The Made. The serialisation from 1989, in Taboo and from Tundra and Kitchen Sink, is the book’s making, not the unit; the later coloured edition is not judged. The work is in copyright and no text was in hand: nothing was measured on the page, and nothing is quoted from the book, since no wording of it is certain enough to quote; the one quotation is the heading of the letter sent to George Lusk in 1888. Particular panels are described only where the passage is known with confidence; the police and inquest chapters of the middle are described in outline. Facts that could not be verified are not given, among them the subtitle on the collected title page, the page count of the collected book and of each appendix, exact panel counts, and which historical figures appear in the middle chapters and where. Citations are by chapter.