I’d like to invite you all to join Mr. Peabody and me as we hop into the Wayback machine and go all the way back to 2006. It’s January, and I keep hearing about this upcoming film from the Wachowski brothers, directed by their former A.D. (assistant director) and now-puppet James McTeigue. I had been crushed by the Matrix sequels, but still remembered the first installment with devout love, and the news that Hugo Weaving and Natalie Portman were the leads only made me want to see it more. However, I don’t like seeing adapted films without reading the book it’s based on (unless it’s just a comic film in general in which case there’s no definitive novel anyway), so I bummed a copy from a friend. So, in 2006, I, for the first time, sat down and read a graphic novel.

V For Vendetta was a deep, complex, question-raising novel that shattered my preconceived notions of comic books and was the first concrete step in getting me into comics. Even to someone who A) had never read more than a few single issues in grocery store newsstands and B) has never understood art and how to interpret paintings/sculptures/etc., I knew that David Lloyd’s art was beautiful and telling, capable of conveying emotions even on a guy who is always wearing a fucking mask. I realized for the first time that comic books–always derided for being for dumb kids who need pictures to read–could tell a story in a way that no novel ever could. It doesn’t make one type of literature superior or inferior to another; it simply means that the method in which comics are moved forward is entirely unique to that medium.

**an outpouring of spoilery venom after the jump**

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