N for Needed

V for Vendetta opens on Friday. The right is going nuts because the hero is a terrorist, and some on the left are praying that maybe a B-movie based on a mid-80's graphic novel can do what their party can't...galvanize some disaffected youth into, uhhh, something.

I think V is bigger than that. I read it for the first time last year, having known about it a lot longer. Comics have few masterpieces, and even fewer geniuses. V is one such masterpiece, and it's author is Alan Moore. On the list of brilliant minds in comic books, his name is at the top. It's a short, but meaningful, list.

V was written as a response to the Thatcher administration. Not as it was...but as it could be. Some fools will say it parallels us now, but that is a hollow, facile comment. We are not a fascist country, but some of what drives our beloved country now are the seeds of V's future. What it does preach is discourse. Communication of ideas, the importance of the individual. It is more timeless than a simple screed of anger.

Please give it a chance. Ignore the commercials. V is not an action movie, but an idea movie.