'V for Vendetta' illustrator David Lloyd: The artist and the anarchist

Have you encountered Guy Fawkes? If you have, chances are you have David Lloyd to thank for it. Originally a figure associated with England’s failed gunpowder plot of 1605, the face leapt out of provincial history and into global pop culture glory after the British graphic novel V for Vendetta hit the stands in 1988. The novel, written by Alan Moore, received the part poker-part sinister visage of its masked protagonist V based on the illustrator’s rendition of Guy Fawkes. With the patronage of DC Comics and super success of its cinematic version, the last three decades have seen Lloyd’s creation — the Guy Fawkes mask — assume a cult status in media and political movements.

Ask Lloyd, in town for Comic Con Mumbai, if he saw this coming, and the 67-year-old will tell you he hadn’t a clue. “We had set out to tell a story that went beyond a good adventure strip, and spoke to the political situation of the time, but had no idea how far the influence would reach,” admits Lloyd. True to their agenda of creating a socially impactful narrative, Llyod envisioned and executed the illustrations, especially V’s, with meticulous care. “The challenge was in finding a look, a deeper motivation, and a colourful personality for a character that we initially saw as a basic urban guerrilla with a grudge. After some floundering, I came up with the idea of having him adopt the persona, the appearance and the mission of a failed revolutionary — to have him as a kind of resurrection of Guy Fawkes, who this time would be a successful revolutionary,” he recalls. Then what about that mysterious ghost of a smile on V’s face? Llyod insists that the smile was an accident suggested by his memory of Guy Fawkes masks as seen in the past. Lucky for us all, it went on to symbolise the chaos-and-calm duality that gives the character much of its fire and depth. “The smile is one on the face of a tiger, a smile while the heart is breaking,” the Aces Weekly (digital comics magazine) publisher eggs on.

Perhaps it’s this human quality of the otherwise larger-than-life character that has since drawn protesters worldwide to use the V mask as a weapon of political resistance. Fitting, since the context of V’s dystopia was also inspired by the real-and-some-more depictions of society in Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury), and The Guardians, a British television series from the 1970s. Somewhere along the way, Lloyd’s attempt to create a convincing social justice warrior on print ended up giving a face to the very real human outcry against a variety of modern crises. 

But does the man himself believe in the necessarily evil of anarchy in the face of socio-political oppression? “I don’t believe there is a perfect way of governing, or a perfect way of opposing injustice. We have to first deal with our own tendency of corruption — the problem is also us,” he suggests, adding that there still are better candidates to vote for (over others) in most democratic systems, “where we can put the crosses in the box that we know represent the most good for society as a whole, rather than our own pockets”.

As active an artist as a thinking citizen, Llyod’s body of work would hardly lose sheen if you cast aside the success of V. His art is associated with brand names such as Doctor Who, Night Raven House of Cards, James Bond, Wasteland (graphic horror anthology), Lloyd is personally proud of his crime thriller Kickback, also a graphic novel dealing with corruption, created in 2006 for French publisher Editions Carabas. 

At this point, my curiosity rejects any moderation. I have to know — what book does a man of Llyod’s consciousness and imagination have in his travel bag? “The New Testament, but not because I’m religious. It is a unique and interesting thing to explore,” he says simply.