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mabusecast's review against another edition
4.0
Honestly this might be the first Alan Moore work that is a bit too galaxy brained for me! Mostly a fun ride even if I can’t 100 percent tell what the fuck is going on towards the end of this, I still oddly respect it for going absolutely buck wild with the comics medium!
colindalaska's review against another edition
2.0
Like a lot of Alan Moore's work, for me, this was incomprehensible nonsense.
Fair play to anyone who understood and enjoyed any of this, you're far cleverer than me.
Fair play to anyone who understood and enjoyed any of this, you're far cleverer than me.
cameronkobesauthor's review against another edition
4.0
As someone who's pretty well-read and interested in being even better-read, I've so far found all of 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' graphic novels to be wildly entertaining. As demented as a bag of LSD-fed cats perhaps, but wildly entertaining. Reading them is like a game for me, in which I can gleefully point here and there and shriek: "I get that reference! I get that reference!" I have fun with that.
Still, there were bits of the book that bothered me, the foremost being the pastiche of Jack Kerouac (Crazy Wide Forever by Sal Paradyse) which wasn't anything like Jack Kerouac's style. Still, for me the book was very enjoyable.
Still, there were bits of the book that bothered me, the foremost being the pastiche of Jack Kerouac (Crazy Wide Forever by Sal Paradyse) which wasn't anything like Jack Kerouac's style. Still, for me the book was very enjoyable.
ericfheiman's review against another edition
1.0
I'm all for boundary pushing work, but I think Alan Moore was given a bit too much creative freedom here. I enjoyed "From Hell" greatly, but this was just too much. Never mind the the text sections, with their 200-word line lengths, were pure torture to try and read. The original idea of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is very fun as it lends itself to a lot of opportunities for clever literary references, but this is just a muddled, overwritten mess. Maybe I'm just not enough of a comic book geek to really appreciate this.
stevenyenzer's review against another edition
3.0
Much higher concept than the other LoEGs, and definitely much weirder.
stm314's review against another edition
3.0
Well, that was interesting/different. This series has certainly veered from its start as a fun, meta-literary, team-up romp through an alternate Victorian England and now I’m not entirely sure how to describe what it is.
So at the end of volume 2 there was the New Traveller’s Almanac which, despite my best efforts, I could not get through. In my review for that volume I mentioned how I wish that the almanac had been expanded into a collection of short stories instead of just a list. Well, ask and you shall receive. This book mostly consists of stories and ephemera concerning the Murray group from the time between the Martian invasion of 1898 and the 1950’s in which this is set. There are also some stories from previous incarnations of this group, including Duke Prospero’s and Gullivar’s groups. These stories are contained in the titular Black Dossier, which Mina and Alan are reading after having acquired it in an old Big Brother department building through duping and beating up James Bond. Yep, that’s as much as I can condense the general conceit.
The frame story of post-Big Brother/1984 England with James Bond and cameos from people like Harry Lime from The Third Man, initially is a clever change. It also serves up a hilarious parody of the ridicoulsness and misogyny of James Bond and the women in his life (Mina pretends that her name is “Oodles” and he doesn’t miss a beat, which they joke about later). Then, the frame story gets more and more vague and difficult to follow who’s doing what and why. Also, the clues to these questions are from tiny footnotes in the margins of the stories in the dossier which doesn’t make it any easier to piece together. Frankly, the frame story becomes perfunctory and as a reader you give up on knowing exactly what’s going on or care as to what’s going on. Probably, this is because the frame story is sparingly interspersed in the book and so you don’t keep up with this narrative the whole time and probably because it was only meant as a device to tie all these disparate stories together. Not to mention the ending is absolutely bonkers, though I suppose venturing to this final place had been hinted at in the Almanac and throughout a number of stories within this work. The Blazing World is very reminiscent of the Immateria from Moore’s other work, Promethea, and I think he’s playing with similar ideas here.
Besides the frame story, the contents of the Black Dossier are actually mostly interesting and help to flesh out this world (pun intended on “flesh” because there is a lot of sex within it). Not every entry is a winner, but some of my favorites include The Life of Orlando (possibly the most interesting character in this universe now), Mina’s initial meeting with Captain Nemo (these first 2 on my list are my favorites), the life of Fanny Hill, the description of the French and German versions of the League and their encounter with Les Hommes Mysterieux in the sewers under the Paris Opera, as well as Oliver Haddo/Aleister Crowley’s description of the occult world and the Lovecraft horror story meets P.G. Wodehouse/Jeeves. However, others were forgettable and his take on Kerouac with the Crazy Wide Forever was unreadable. Kerouac is one of my favorite writers, but I know that his writing style is not for everyone and is subject to parody. Moore’s take however is (perhaps purposely) horrible.
In the end, I see why this book is not an official volume and is more a spin-off collection of short stories. I still mostly enjoyed it but some parts were incomprehensible and taxing. After reading this, part of me also wishes that the series stuck to its initial premise as the adventures of a league of Victorian literary figures. Despite all this, I’m still on board for the rest of this series (vol. 3, 4, and the Nemo spin-off, which I look forward to actually) even if the world within it has grown several orders of magnitude bigger and stranger.
So at the end of volume 2 there was the New Traveller’s Almanac which, despite my best efforts, I could not get through. In my review for that volume I mentioned how I wish that the almanac had been expanded into a collection of short stories instead of just a list. Well, ask and you shall receive. This book mostly consists of stories and ephemera concerning the Murray group from the time between the Martian invasion of 1898 and the 1950’s in which this is set. There are also some stories from previous incarnations of this group, including Duke Prospero’s and Gullivar’s groups. These stories are contained in the titular Black Dossier, which Mina and Alan are reading after having acquired it in an old Big Brother department building through duping and beating up James Bond. Yep, that’s as much as I can condense the general conceit.
The frame story of post-Big Brother/1984 England with James Bond and cameos from people like Harry Lime from The Third Man, initially is a clever change. It also serves up a hilarious parody of the ridicoulsness and misogyny of James Bond and the women in his life (Mina pretends that her name is “Oodles” and he doesn’t miss a beat, which they joke about later). Then, the frame story gets more and more vague and difficult to follow who’s doing what and why. Also, the clues to these questions are from tiny footnotes in the margins of the stories in the dossier which doesn’t make it any easier to piece together. Frankly, the frame story becomes perfunctory and as a reader you give up on knowing exactly what’s going on or care as to what’s going on. Probably, this is because the frame story is sparingly interspersed in the book and so you don’t keep up with this narrative the whole time and probably because it was only meant as a device to tie all these disparate stories together. Not to mention the ending is absolutely bonkers, though I suppose venturing to this final place had been hinted at in the Almanac and throughout a number of stories within this work. The Blazing World is very reminiscent of the Immateria from Moore’s other work, Promethea, and I think he’s playing with similar ideas here.
Besides the frame story, the contents of the Black Dossier are actually mostly interesting and help to flesh out this world (pun intended on “flesh” because there is a lot of sex within it). Not every entry is a winner, but some of my favorites include The Life of Orlando (possibly the most interesting character in this universe now), Mina’s initial meeting with Captain Nemo (these first 2 on my list are my favorites), the life of Fanny Hill, the description of the French and German versions of the League and their encounter with Les Hommes Mysterieux in the sewers under the Paris Opera, as well as Oliver Haddo/Aleister Crowley’s description of the occult world and the Lovecraft horror story meets P.G. Wodehouse/Jeeves. However, others were forgettable and his take on Kerouac with the Crazy Wide Forever was unreadable. Kerouac is one of my favorite writers, but I know that his writing style is not for everyone and is subject to parody. Moore’s take however is (perhaps purposely) horrible.
In the end, I see why this book is not an official volume and is more a spin-off collection of short stories. I still mostly enjoyed it but some parts were incomprehensible and taxing. After reading this, part of me also wishes that the series stuck to its initial premise as the adventures of a league of Victorian literary figures. Despite all this, I’m still on board for the rest of this series (vol. 3, 4, and the Nemo spin-off, which I look forward to actually) even if the world within it has grown several orders of magnitude bigger and stranger.
scheu's review against another edition
4.0
I have no idea how to review this book. I enjoyed it and I didn't have the problems that many reviewers had with it. I like the League moving into the modern era, and I like finding out about the interim Leagues. What does it all mean, in the end? I can't say. Maybe once I have the time to analyze the story I'll have a better notion.
jeremygoodjob's review against another edition
3.0
2.5 stars for actual enjoyment; four stars for ambition and pushing the boundaries of what the format is capable of (and some enjoyment). This book is like 50% meta-text with many different sized books—even different types of paper and a pair of 3D glasses—inside. And while having those elements is exciting and cool, they end up being kinda arduous to read. A chapter’s worth of material should not be printed in small font on margin-less pages.
saroz162's review against another edition
4.0
There's two major strikes against The Black Dossier, and neither of them has anything to do with the contents of the book. The first, of course, is that we've been waiting years for this - five years, for many, just to see any new LoEG work; two years since Dossier itself was announced. Expectations therefore peaked at a high, and that never bodes well for something as unusual and experimental as this.
The second is that this really should have been the final volume of LoEG. But more on that in a minute.
Basically, the book has a very thin plot, something any decent reader will notice after just a cursory flip through the pages. It's the almanac section from Volume II writ large - documents, postcards, letters, "extracts" and other errata chronicling the centuries-spanning the League's history, built to engage you more as a puzzle than a narrative, with the occasional bone thrown out in the comics framing story. Fortunately, the Almanac was probably my favorite part of Volume II, so I enjoyed the game - although I was aware that, in simply telling us so much about his creation, Moore is basically robbing us of the potential for those stories in the future. We will never see the battle of Mina Murray's League against their French counterparts, nor the failed replacement League of the post-WWII years, nor the formation of Prospero's Men. It's all here - in prose form. Moore is both flexing the comics medium to its full potential and withholding its more traditional use. Fascinating, but ever so slightly disappointing.
That's why this really should have been the last League story to be published (as I expect it still will be, 'chronologically'). With the foreknowledge that Volume III arrives from Top Shelf in a year, this is less a goodbye to the League and more just a goodbye to the League...at DC Comics. Fair enough, but there are some real meditations here on the changing nature of literary heroes - and, later, on fiction itself - which are going to be completely overlooked because a lot of readers, having been surprised and intimidated by the Black Dossier, will simply put it aside and wait for Volume III without ever giving it a second glance.
I definitely enjoyed The Black Dossier. It wasn't quite what I expected when it was first announced two years ago, but by the time descriptions started to leak online, I suspected something less about one narrative story and more about the act of storytelling. That's pretty much what I got. It's not a total home run - I'll have trouble recommending it to friends, and Moore's casual sexualizing of characters still (and always has) makes me vaguely uncomfortable - but it's overall good stuff, and I'll be holding on to my copy for sure.
The second is that this really should have been the final volume of LoEG. But more on that in a minute.
Basically, the book has a very thin plot, something any decent reader will notice after just a cursory flip through the pages. It's the almanac section from Volume II writ large - documents, postcards, letters, "extracts" and other errata chronicling the centuries-spanning the League's history, built to engage you more as a puzzle than a narrative, with the occasional bone thrown out in the comics framing story. Fortunately, the Almanac was probably my favorite part of Volume II, so I enjoyed the game - although I was aware that, in simply telling us so much about his creation, Moore is basically robbing us of the potential for those stories in the future. We will never see the battle of Mina Murray's League against their French counterparts, nor the failed replacement League of the post-WWII years, nor the formation of Prospero's Men. It's all here - in prose form. Moore is both flexing the comics medium to its full potential and withholding its more traditional use. Fascinating, but ever so slightly disappointing.
That's why this really should have been the last League story to be published (as I expect it still will be, 'chronologically'). With the foreknowledge that Volume III arrives from Top Shelf in a year, this is less a goodbye to the League and more just a goodbye to the League...at DC Comics. Fair enough, but there are some real meditations here on the changing nature of literary heroes - and, later, on fiction itself - which are going to be completely overlooked because a lot of readers, having been surprised and intimidated by the Black Dossier, will simply put it aside and wait for Volume III without ever giving it a second glance.
I definitely enjoyed The Black Dossier. It wasn't quite what I expected when it was first announced two years ago, but by the time descriptions started to leak online, I suspected something less about one narrative story and more about the act of storytelling. That's pretty much what I got. It's not a total home run - I'll have trouble recommending it to friends, and Moore's casual sexualizing of characters still (and always has) makes me vaguely uncomfortable - but it's overall good stuff, and I'll be holding on to my copy for sure.
dantastic's review against another edition
3.0
The comic bits were great with Alan and Mina in 1950 after the fall of big brother. I'm going to read the text pieces over my lunch break and give this a proper review. Or not.