Bonfire Night! Guy Fawkes Day. V for what?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7exoXGUbIA&w=420&h=315]

Yes! It’s Bonfire Night. Or “Guy Fawkes Day”. When we British, traditionally, make hideous effigies of a man long-dead. Then we burn them cruelly, atop large bonfires on local Primary School fields, while we stand around eating toffee apples and burning our mouths on horrible soup. There are fireworks. Ooh, aah! We don’t think about politics (Fawkes was trying to blow up the King and everyone else inside Parliament–) much, or religion (–because he thought that we should all be Catholic, under Catholic rules and a Catholic queen), or about the real living man who was arrested for terrorism and tortured such that his handwriting changed from this (above) to this (below).

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Cheery! Glad that sort of thing is all in the past. Sounds like it could make a great comic. Too bad nobody’s made one yet.

No, bro, V for Vendetta is not about Guy Fawkes or Guy Fawkes day. It’s about a guy–as in “some person”; we say “guy” because of Guy–who also attempts to blow up Parliament (V is a not caught, and succeeds) and who steals Fawkes’ thunder by doing it on November the fifth. He or “he”, if you like, is wearing a “Guy Fawkes mask” which honestly as an Englishwoman I wasn’t aware of as a cultural artefact before V for Vendetta became a film, and the subsequent talk of the town. Maybe I missed it. Guy Fawkes had a general face, sure, a template into which the V/Anonymous/Adult 4chan Man Costume mask fits… but it doesn’t matter. V pinched the rhyme, too, which was far more familiar.

Remember, Remember, the fifth of November. Gunpowder, treason, and plot! I see no reason, why gunpowder treason, should ever be forgot.

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Lets end this bizarrely. Here’s a video from UK Parliament’s youtube channel, telling you, me, and anybody we can make watch with us all about the Gunpowder Plot. It’s got illustrations, juuuust liiiiike a comiiic. And like. Rasputin-Fawkes? Subtle. Let’s go.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YptNONmnXH0&w=560&h=315]

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Claire Napier

Claire Napier

Critic, ex-Editor in Chief at WWAC, independent comics editor; the rock that drops on your head. Find me at clairenapierclairenapier@gmail.com and give me lots of money

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