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adamskiboy528491's review
5.0
"The British Empire has always encountered difficulty in distinguishing between its heroes and its monsters." - Campion Bond.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Jubilee Edition by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill has to be the most ambitious crossover ever made. Imagine in an alternate Victorian era; the British government recruited six literary characters and teamed up to fight other canon characters of great literature. The League was originally envisioned as a Victorian Justice League of America, specifically as a crossover of several iconic characters in Victorian-Era English literature teaming up to combat equally iconic villains from the popular fiction of the same era.
While initially reading like a steampunk high adventure story, the later volumes expanded in scope considerably. As Moore clarified in interviews, the League became less about telling sophisticated adventure stories and more interested in "deconstruction" as a means and an end. The League is set in a parallel universe comprised entirely of characters from different works of fiction, across genres and authors of different styles. It asserts that all fiction is valid from the beginning of human writing to the future visions dreamed up by science fiction visionaries. It applies arc welding to the whole of human literature, theatre, opera, popular music, cinema and television, and some odd mentions to comics for good measure.
Vol. I - The "origins episode" where Campion Bond of MI6 puts together the Team - Mina Murray (formerly Mina Harker from Bram Stoker's Dracula); Allan Quatermain (from H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines); Dr Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, twenty years after the events of Robert Louis Stevenson's book; Hawley Griffin, the title character of H.G. Wells's The Invisible Man; and the only character outside of English literature, Captain Nemo, from Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island to combat "The Doctor" (also known as Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu) of Limehouse and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's criminal mastermind Professor Moriarty. The supplementary story (in the back pages of each issue in the Volume) "Alan and the Sundered Veil" serves as a prequel to the story, following on Quatermain's activities before his encounter with Mina.
Vol. II - The gang is still working and unhappy about working, with MI6 under the new M - Mycroft Holmes. Their new threat is the Martian Invasion from H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. The supplementary story is The New Traveller's Almanac which serves as a sequel and postscript to the story and goes into a pop-cultural reference overload like never before; all of the literature from Goldfinger to Gormenghast is located here.
Black Dossier - This distinctive book is one part comic, another part expanded universe appendix and an "interquel" between Volume 2 and Volume 3. The action shifts from the Victorian Era to the 50s landscape of spy fiction, making references to famous films and TV Shows. The likes of Harry Lime, Emma Peel, Campion Bond's descendant "Jimmy", and other figures from that era make an appearance. The plot concerns an elaborate side-story, which features the titular Dossier as a framing device for the history of all the different iterations of the League, from the one in Shakespeare's time through to World War II and brings the references to a truly ridiculous level. There's plenty of genre-shifting within the volumes, including an excerpt from a Beatnik novel, 18th Century pornography and a finale rendered in 3D. There's also an appearance of a particular racist character, which made me very uncomfortable. Disagreements about the release of this comic led to Moore and O'Neill shifting to Top Shelf.
Knowledge of the period book is beneficial to understanding the subtle goings-on, if not the main plot. Each Volume ends with a text-only supplement that provides clues and an "info dump" on the expanded universe. I wasn't that mad about reading these because they feel very dense. It would've been fun if they were turned into a comic for it to be more engaging because there is A LOT of info in this so-called "manual" - you would practically need an English Literature degree to get all of these references. But I am somewhat thankful that we have some backstory of this universe.
O'Neill's illustrations are beautiful to look at! The series has brilliant line work, including the tricky tactic of showing the appearance of the Invisible Man. The series follows a grid format, but it never feels restrictive. You'll have a dialogue scene with sixteen tiny panels on a page and think that the story might be slowing down…only when you turn the page and see a vast blown up airship. It strikes an outstanding balance between a grand narrative and great visuals. Also referencing TLOEG's sequels, the drawings are widely imaginative and colourful. As the series and timeline progress, the artwork shifts and becomes more surrealistic, even more brilliant to see. I especially love the subtle details that appear in the background, which sometimes always has something relating to the pop-cultural/canon works.
I especially love the comic's genre shift as time goes on (both in-universe and out-universe)! The Black Dossier brings out the world of Victorian adventure novels into a mid-20th-century spy caper. It also happens internally at least once per Volume, between the main comic narrative and the supplementary materials. These are usually prose of some sort, whether intelligence report, travelogue, or pulp sci-fi, but they can get... bizarre. The Black Dossier, for example, includes sections done in the style of an 18th-century satirical broadsheet, an Elizabethan drama, a beat novel, and a Tijuana bible based on 1984, among others; Volume II even includes a board game!
The various members' vices, flaws, and prejudices can sometimes lead the team to fall apart, but knowing that also makes them extraordinary (which is further elaborated in Volume II). Regarding Campion Bond's quote (above this review), you begin to find that it rings true for almost every single character in the series; every villain is some sort of bastardised hero, and nearly every hero is downright monstrous. From The Black Dossier onwards, Moore started more heavily focusing on deconstructive author tract that if someone isn't familiar with Moore's thoughts, you'd never fully understand why he does what he does on the pages.
Less so in matters of plot and more in terms of the many references to other works in the series. In later volumes, mainly, when Moore is dealing with more modern creations and has to work around copyright, he often cannot outright name the character or story being referred to without getting into potential legal trouble. Moore usually has to resort to rather roundabout ways of making the point. This can, at times, lead to somewhat tortuous and strained examples of the characters essentially telling each other things they should already know or wouldn't bother explaining out loud, to include a reference Moore wants to make.
"I could have just been a traveller. You could have taught music. But no. We always have to be the heroes, don't we?" - Allan Quatermain
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Jubilee Edition by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill has to be the most ambitious crossover ever made. Imagine in an alternate Victorian era; the British government recruited six literary characters and teamed up to fight other canon characters of great literature. The League was originally envisioned as a Victorian Justice League of America, specifically as a crossover of several iconic characters in Victorian-Era English literature teaming up to combat equally iconic villains from the popular fiction of the same era.
While initially reading like a steampunk high adventure story, the later volumes expanded in scope considerably. As Moore clarified in interviews, the League became less about telling sophisticated adventure stories and more interested in "deconstruction" as a means and an end. The League is set in a parallel universe comprised entirely of characters from different works of fiction, across genres and authors of different styles. It asserts that all fiction is valid from the beginning of human writing to the future visions dreamed up by science fiction visionaries. It applies arc welding to the whole of human literature, theatre, opera, popular music, cinema and television, and some odd mentions to comics for good measure.
Vol. I - The "origins episode" where Campion Bond of MI6 puts together the Team - Mina Murray (formerly Mina Harker from Bram Stoker's Dracula); Allan Quatermain (from H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines); Dr Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, twenty years after the events of Robert Louis Stevenson's book; Hawley Griffin, the title character of H.G. Wells's The Invisible Man; and the only character outside of English literature, Captain Nemo, from Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island to combat "The Doctor" (also known as Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu) of Limehouse and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's criminal mastermind Professor Moriarty. The supplementary story (in the back pages of each issue in the Volume) "Alan and the Sundered Veil" serves as a prequel to the story, following on Quatermain's activities before his encounter with Mina.
Vol. II - The gang is still working and unhappy about working, with MI6 under the new M - Mycroft Holmes. Their new threat is the Martian Invasion from H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. The supplementary story is The New Traveller's Almanac which serves as a sequel and postscript to the story and goes into a pop-cultural reference overload like never before; all of the literature from Goldfinger to Gormenghast is located here.
Black Dossier - This distinctive book is one part comic, another part expanded universe appendix and an "interquel" between Volume 2 and Volume 3. The action shifts from the Victorian Era to the 50s landscape of spy fiction, making references to famous films and TV Shows. The likes of Harry Lime, Emma Peel, Campion Bond's descendant "Jimmy", and other figures from that era make an appearance. The plot concerns an elaborate side-story, which features the titular Dossier as a framing device for the history of all the different iterations of the League, from the one in Shakespeare's time through to World War II and brings the references to a truly ridiculous level. There's plenty of genre-shifting within the volumes, including an excerpt from a Beatnik novel, 18th Century pornography and a finale rendered in 3D. There's also an appearance of a particular racist character, which made me very uncomfortable. Disagreements about the release of this comic led to Moore and O'Neill shifting to Top Shelf.
Knowledge of the period book is beneficial to understanding the subtle goings-on, if not the main plot. Each Volume ends with a text-only supplement that provides clues and an "info dump" on the expanded universe. I wasn't that mad about reading these because they feel very dense. It would've been fun if they were turned into a comic for it to be more engaging because there is A LOT of info in this so-called "manual" - you would practically need an English Literature degree to get all of these references. But I am somewhat thankful that we have some backstory of this universe.
O'Neill's illustrations are beautiful to look at! The series has brilliant line work, including the tricky tactic of showing the appearance of the Invisible Man. The series follows a grid format, but it never feels restrictive. You'll have a dialogue scene with sixteen tiny panels on a page and think that the story might be slowing down…only when you turn the page and see a vast blown up airship. It strikes an outstanding balance between a grand narrative and great visuals. Also referencing TLOEG's sequels, the drawings are widely imaginative and colourful. As the series and timeline progress, the artwork shifts and becomes more surrealistic, even more brilliant to see. I especially love the subtle details that appear in the background, which sometimes always has something relating to the pop-cultural/canon works.
I especially love the comic's genre shift as time goes on (both in-universe and out-universe)! The Black Dossier brings out the world of Victorian adventure novels into a mid-20th-century spy caper. It also happens internally at least once per Volume, between the main comic narrative and the supplementary materials. These are usually prose of some sort, whether intelligence report, travelogue, or pulp sci-fi, but they can get... bizarre. The Black Dossier, for example, includes sections done in the style of an 18th-century satirical broadsheet, an Elizabethan drama, a beat novel, and a Tijuana bible based on 1984, among others; Volume II even includes a board game!
The various members' vices, flaws, and prejudices can sometimes lead the team to fall apart, but knowing that also makes them extraordinary (which is further elaborated in Volume II). Regarding Campion Bond's quote (above this review), you begin to find that it rings true for almost every single character in the series; every villain is some sort of bastardised hero, and nearly every hero is downright monstrous. From The Black Dossier onwards, Moore started more heavily focusing on deconstructive author tract that if someone isn't familiar with Moore's thoughts, you'd never fully understand why he does what he does on the pages.
Less so in matters of plot and more in terms of the many references to other works in the series. In later volumes, mainly, when Moore is dealing with more modern creations and has to work around copyright, he often cannot outright name the character or story being referred to without getting into potential legal trouble. Moore usually has to resort to rather roundabout ways of making the point. This can, at times, lead to somewhat tortuous and strained examples of the characters essentially telling each other things they should already know or wouldn't bother explaining out loud, to include a reference Moore wants to make.
"I could have just been a traveller. You could have taught music. But no. We always have to be the heroes, don't we?" - Allan Quatermain
otterno11's review
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
“Strange. He thought me... an enemy... of the state... never reasoning... that it might suit the state... to create... its own enemy. Shadowboxing, Bond. We're all just... shadowboxing.”
Professor James Moriarty, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume One, 2000
Professor James Moriarty, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume One, 2000
---
A monstrous tome, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Jubilee Edition includes The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (henceforth LoEG) Volumes One, Two, and the Black Dossier, including all of its ephemera, bonus covers, and other extras. As Alan Moore retired from writing comics soon after concluding the LoEG series with Volume Four: The Tempest, I wanted to go back to refresh my knowledge of what all happened in this rather interminable, bizarre series of comics, as it had been some time since I’d last read them. Revisiting these three early volumes, I was reminded of what I found compelling about them, but also noticed some of the issues that grated on me later in the series begin to creep in as well. All in all, this was among Moore’s works I enjoyed the most, as Moore creates with the artistic collaboration of Kevin O’Neill a vibrant and engaging tale that also tries to have something to say about how fiction shapes the world.
Positing a world in which all of our world’s fiction is true and coexists as a chaotic whole, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen starts off on a fascinating note, a dark steampunk crossover extravaganza that pulls together characters from classic late nineteenth-century literature, when the genres we call horror, romance, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and capital L Literature were all muddled up, in the process of forming the origins of today’s popular culture.
Moore makes an interesting choice to set this piece at the time and place he did, a hundred years before its present moment. The parallels between the late ‘90s “end of history” and the twilight years of the British Empire are striking, making for a convenient place to interrogate popular fiction as a lens of societal attitudes.
At first glance, through all this Moore achieves the feat of piecing all of the disparate, contradictory, literary pieces into a cohesive whole, one in which England was invaded by Martians in 1898 and was taken over by the totalitarian IngSoc regime in 1948, among other alternate events. Virtually every panel contains some reference or nod to some work of literature or comic or even TV show or film, whether they be a photo on the wall, a statue, or even a random passerby on the street, and tracking down the reference is definitely part of the fun of the comic. There are numerous fan groups online devoted to tracking it all down.
In Volumes One and Two, we are introduced to the “League” circa 1898, as one Mina Murry is tasked with assembling a covert force for British intelligence, recruiting various individuals with certain talents. Taking such classic characters as Dr. Jekyll, Nemo, and Alan Quartermain, accentuating their flaws as representative of the Victorian ethos, in particular, Mr. Hyde’s bigotry and vengefulness and Hawley Griffin’s extreme misogyny, and making them explicit agents of the crown to use in espionage against its enemies, both earthly and alien, makes literal the role of fiction in shaping the world. As the league members, each in the game for reasons of their own, tangle with government conspiracies, foreign threats, and the Martian invasion alike, they manage to save the Empire in spite of everything.
The Black Dossier fast forwards to 1958, in the aftermath of the Big Brother government that turned the UK into a totalitarian nightmare, as members try to find the Black Dossier, the government’s collection of information on them and all their iterations going back to the time of Prospero. A fitting end, Black Dossier is an esoteric and bombastic work illustrating the transformation between “classic” and more modern literature in a 20th century best by disasters. It is also here that Moore’s love of tedious prose in the form of supplementary materials and pastiches of period literature begin to overtake things a little.
I feel that Moore’s strengths lie in his ability to create a dynamic engrossing detail throughout his work, working with O’Neill to bring an almost cinematic level of dynamic action to the work, Along with the historical records, memoir excerpts, and other primary documents that end each chapter, this composite late 19th-early 20th-century world is brought to life. Moore and O’Neill spare no detail, down to the untranslated Arabic, French, and Mandarin speech bubbles. The Black Dossier in particular devotes much of its page count to detailed pastiches of period art styles, with O’Neill capturing the feel and vibe of everything from Shakespeare to Tijuana Bibles. Moore’s prose, on the other hand, ranges from dry to practically incomprehensible. These pastiches are great illustrations of how all these references can become a little oppressive and the general message of the work as a whole becomes lost.
This is particularly evident in how Moore treats the very elements of period pulp literature that the work is attempting to satirize. In his “deconstruction” of genre lit, Moore ultimately doesn't seem to “subvert” it much. While commenting on the jingoistic racism and sexism endemic in much classic European, particularly English, literature, takes most of the source material at face value, not really critiquing the racist or sexist depictions but replicating them, just perhaps with tongue supposedly in cheek. In particular, Moore’s favorite trope of using sexual assault and rape as shorthand for the cognitive dissonance of period literature.
In spite of working to critique the colonialist attitudes and disturbing gender and sexual attitudes of the turn of the century English fiction, both as products of their times and products actually shaping the attitudes of their times, for the most part, he plays these elements straight, with his rather clumsy attempt to rehabilitate the Gollywog in Black Dossier being particularly egregious.
All in all, these three works are fascinating explorations of period literature and are fun romps through the morally compromised world of vintage English pop culture (at least if you don’t bother to attempt to force your way through the interminable supplementary material that concludes each volume). On that note, I’d recommend not going any further in the series and just leave it here.
I discuss my feelings on Moore's other works in LoEG and his genre deconstruction in general in Harris Tome Corner, here.
I discuss my feelings on Moore's other works in LoEG and his genre deconstruction in general at https://spoonbridge.medium.com/deconstructing-alan-moores-deconstructions-600c73ffe750, Harris Tome Corner, here.
I discuss my feelings on Moore's other works in LoEG and his genre deconstruction in general in Harris Tome Corner, here.
I discuss my feelings on Moore's other works in LoEG and his genre deconstruction in general at https://spoonbridge.medium.com/deconstructing-alan-moores-deconstructions-600c73ffe750, Harris Tome Corner, here.
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