I'd seen the film first, and only because it was on Netflix (if I remember correctly) and I was home sick. Though parts of it were hokey, I generally had a good time watching it.

That said, I understand some people's love of V much more having read the comic series. While the Wachowskis updates to the comic make a certain kind of sense, given the audience for a big budget movie, the original setting of late 80s/early 90s London seems intrinsic to the overall mood of the story, not to mention certain plot developments. Technology is advanced, but there are still loopholes that the average person, given enough time to educate themselves and train, could exploit (enter V).

Most importantly, the film wasn't committed to V's anarchist tendencies, choosing to present him as a progressive, if somewhat radical liberal fighting back an uber-conservative government in an attempt to mobilize the populace (V for Vanguard, perhaps?). In the comic, V's identity and personage are self-acknowledged as more or less unimportant when compared with the ideals his work represents. The baddies have feelings and internal conflicts, V is brutal in the name of complete liberation, and madness seeps into the psyche of nearly every character at one point or another.

To focus on the book itself, as a whole, I was impressed by the high-contrast, dramatic graphics and very impressed with the writing. This is a "smart" comic that doesn't seem pedantic or reek of pseudo-intellectualism. This may be partially a result of Moore and Lloyd abandoning thought bubbles, which often result in exposition that can take a reader out of the story, and sound effects, whose garish exclamations render otherwise dramatic action cartoonish. I'd caution potential readers to attempt to dissociate the collection they are about to read with the movie, or the political factions that have taken up the Guy Fawkes mask in the years since the comic was published and movie was released. It'd be hard, in this decade, not to make such associations, but the story stands on its own.