Scan barcode
A review by stm314
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier by Alan Moore
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.