the prison scene
Killed me. The back story of the "girl in the next cell" made me cry and cry.
That was one of the most powerful scenes in all of my comics experience.
GC, did you see that I figured out that whole scene was based on a real event during WWII that happened in the Nazi occupied Channel Islands?
Yep. There was a woman named Claude Cahun who was involved with the Surrealists in Paris. And her story is basically the story of Valerie though hers is actually more interesting.
But like Moore's character she was a lesbian who lived with her lover, and was captured by the Nazis and imprisoned and threatened with death many times over and then released suddenly without much reason.
But cooler still is that she and her lover carried out a propaganda war against the Nazis during their occupation (which is why she was arrested). They'd slip their notes into the pockets of German soldiers telling them to reject Fascism and reclaim their humanity.
I'm certain Moore used her as the basis for that story. She wrote her entire story down on a piece of toilet paper when she felt she was going to be executed - exactly as in the comic.
1940-1944 - Invasion of Jersey by the Germans (1 July 1940). From the arrival of the occupation, they opt for a "resistance active". For four years she conducted, without cease, with the complicity of Suzanne, activities of counter-propaganda and of demoralisation towards the occupying troops. Production of tracts, subversion of pro-Nazi magazines, photomontages. In March 1943 she underwent her first interrogation. On 25 July 1944 Claude and Suzanne are arrested by the Gestapo and put in military prison. Attempt at suicide. "La Rocquaise" is largely requisitionned, ransacked (furniture removed, libraries dispersed, archives - notably photographic - partly destroyed). On 16 November 1944 they are condemned to death by the German court martial.
1945 - They benefit, in February 1945, from a stay of execution of the sentence. A transfer to Germany is envisaged... But they must wait for surrender, 8 May 1945, to be freed from the St Helier prison... In July, Claude re-establishes contact with André Breton, who is still in New York. She takes to renewing her friends "d'avant-gueree" [pre-war]. She writes long letters, which are variations on her experience during these four years, to Jean Legrand, André Breton, Gaston Ferdière, Jacques B. Brunius, Henri Michaux... But, very much tried by her imprisonment, her health is profoundly altered.