V (comics)

V is the title character of the comic book series V for Vendetta, created by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. He is a mysterious anarchist, vigilante, and freedom fighter who is easily recognizable by his Guy Fawkes mask, long hair and dark clothing. According to Moore, he was designed to be morally ambiguous, so that readers could decide for themselves whether he was a hero fighting for a cause or simply insane.

Fictional character biography

Origin

V's background and identity is largely unknown. He is at one point an inmate at "Larkhill Resettlement Camp"—one of many concentration camps where political prisoners, homosexuals, black people, Jews and Muslims are exterminated by Norsefire, a fascist dictatorship that rules Britain. While there, he is part of a group of prisoners who are subjected to horrific medical experimentation, conducted by Dr. Delia Surridge, involving artificially designed hormone injection. Lewis Prothero is the camp's commandant, and a paedophile vicar, Father Lilliman, is at the camp to lend "spiritual support". All prisoners so injected soon die under gruesome circumstances, with the sole exception of "the man in room five" ("V" in Roman numerals). During that time, the man had some level of communication with Valerie Page, a former actress imprisoned for being a lesbian, kept in "room four", who wrote her autobiography on toilet paper and then pushed it through a hole in the wall.