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Title: From Hell
Author: Alan Moore
Illustrator: Eddie Campbell
ISBN: 0958578346
Format: Over Sized Paperback - 560 pages
Rating: Overall Concept - 9/10
Execution - 9/10

I first became aware of this book well AFTER the movie starring Johnnie Depp (of the same name) was released. To find out that this movie I really wanted to see was based on an Alan Moore graphic novel was most revealing and made me want to see the movie all the more.

However, I haven't gotten around to seeing this movie yet as I felt it would be better to read the book first and then determine how the movie was interpreted from the book.

I was quite surprised when began to read the book for two reasons: 1) the movie is "investigated here by a Scotland Yard sleuth (Johnny Depp) who uses opium, laudanum, and absinthe to fuel his semiprescient visions of the slayings." (Amazon.com quote) but the book has no mentioning of such an investigator. and 2) the premise for the story seemed very familiar to me and then I remembered the movie of 1979 called Murder by Decree wherein Sherlock Holmes follows the Whitechapel case to a similar conclusion to the one of this book.

What I learned from the rather well detailed appendix of this volume, is that both the 1979 movie and this book are based upon a theory of the Whitechapel Murders that was written by Stephen Knight (Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution).

This book was EXCELLENT. From the artistry of Eddie Campbell wherein you can almost feel the grit of 1880's London, to the writting of Alan Moore that even made the appendix an entertaining jaunt into history.

Based upon my enjoyment of this book and what I have gleaned from friends about the movie of the same name, it will be some time yet before I watch the movie so as not to overly sully my memories of this book.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who can get over the fact that it is "a comic book". Especially for anyone who is a bit of Ripperologist, who I certainly think could get some deeper meanings from this book that I may have missed.