A review by method3000
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 1 by Alan Moore

3.0

Merely entertaining. The big idea is that a bunch of Victorian-era literary figures (Jekyll & Hide, Invisible Man, Captain Nemo, Allan Quatermain) join forces. Part of the fun is supposed to be how it preserves the tone and attitudes of Victorian popular fiction while also satirizing it by adopting a grotesque artwork style and by having the characters act immorally to varying degrees (Invisible Man is a murderous psychopath). The book depicts Arabs and Chinese people ("Mohammedans" and "Chinamen") in a fairly sinister and subhuman light. Presumably this is supposed to be a reflection of the source material and in fairness everyone in the book is a grotesque, but it gets a bit awkward and hard to justify at points. All that said, I'll still read the second volume to see where things go.