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bhall237 's review for:
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Omnibus
by Alan Moore
“To be extraordinary, one must first be ordinary.”
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is my first piece of literature by Alan Moore that I have read and wow, what a way to start. The omnibus version includes Volume 1, Allan and the Sundered Veil, Volume 2, The New Traveller's Almanac, plus other extra materials such as issue covers, in-universe advertisements, The Game of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a fun little board game at the back of the book, an in-universe fairytale, a guide to make Nemo’s Nautilus with paper, a saucy art post card, and a Christmas card.
Going into reading this, I had no prior knowledge of who or what the story was about, and I was pleasantly surprised to see public domain characters from books I had read before, such as Wilhelmina Murray from Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Hawley Griffin from The Invisible Man. That’s not all though, the crew is rounded out with Captain Nemo and Allan Quartermain, with additional characters including Campion Bond, Professor James Moriarty, and Doctor Alphonse Morea. All of these characters come from their own worlds and universes of separate stories and outcomes, but they all culminate here to form an incredible team of classic literary characters who shouldn’t work together as well as they do.
I thoroughly enjoyed Volume 1 of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but it felt a bit slow for me. 2 out of the 6 issues in Volume 1 tell the formation of the group, and while backstory and formation are needed to show why they are placed together when compared to Volume 2 where 6 out of the 6 issues are about the group working together and put in incredible peril, you can see how Volume 1 isn’t as strong as the latter. I really enjoyed how everyone came together, but I do have some issues with the characterization of Hawley Griffin here. What makes Volume 1 work so well is the build-up to the last 2 issues of the Volume, where everything hits the fan and an epic air battle commences on a Zeppelin. It was a fun, bloody Volume that worked to set up the group, but didn’t reach the heights that would come later.
Allan and the Sundered Veil is the companion short story to Volume 1 that sets up Volume 2, and honestly, it was a coin toss between whether or not this or Volume 2 was my favorite of the collection. This piece is of epic Lovecraftian proportions without being weighed down by Lovecraft’s heavy use of description. Everything happens so fast and so cosmically, but it never becomes overly confusing or overly long. I love this piece of fiction so much. The story follows four characters that work perfectly together: Allan Quartermain, Randolph Carter from The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, his uncle John Carter from Mars, and H.G. Wells’ The Time Traveler. Every second of this story had my imagination running in full gear, and the visual description of every line that is printed here put a smile on my face. The entire story unfolds after Allan takes a drug called Taduki, and he is transported out of time and space into another world. What I love most about this story is how well written it all is. Everything has a visual description that gives you a mental image of whatever is being told, and everything in the story has a reason and purpose behind its placement, other than “the narrator was unreliable because he was insane.” I really don’t have anything negative to say, and this should be number 1 in the ranking, but...
Volume 2 of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen follows immediately after the end of Volume 1, and we get to see what that pod falling from the sky was. It opens with John Carter and Gullivar Jones on Mars in a great opening scene between the two. This sets up the enemy of Volume 2, the Molluscs, or the aliens from The War of the Worlds. Forced off of their home planet of Mars, they travel to Earth, where they land next to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. This Volume does such a great job at character building, and each action from the members builds up to the final issue of this story that makes you want to know what happens next. I love the growth of character and the relationship between Wilhelmina Murray and Mr. Hyde. There is a very touching and fitting moment right before the final showdown between Murray and Hyde that really hit home with me, and it was so sweet to see such a violent character have a moment to appreciate everything in a few pages. The characters are at their best here, the action is amazing, the writing is superb, everything is on point and immediate in this Volume, something I can’t say the same for with Volume 1 or for the last piece of work in this collection.
The last piece of this collection is The New Traveller's Almanac, and I have mixed feelings about this section. I was able to read Volume 1, Allan and the Sundered Veil, and Volume 2 in roughly 2 days. But, my read time for this Omnibus was 19 days, and that was due solely to The New Traveller's Almanac. These mere 50 pages took me weeks to read just because it took a lot out of me mentally to want to return to an almanac and read it for fun. The single reason for this and my biggest complaint about this entry is the formatting of the pages. Namely, it took me nearly a week to read Chapter One due to my mind getting used to the physical formatting and holding of these final pages of this large book. The text is so small and displayed in the format of a newspaper or a document, and it makes it a slog to read through. Each page contains three tall and thin columns of text, and these are packed with as many words as possible with such a small text. It does not work in formatting or execution, and I would rather have it in the format of a normal story like Allan and the Sundered Veil. I reached a point of frustration with this that I took pictures of the pages and read them off my phone, something that I truly recommend for this chapter as it made the formatting easier to read to me for some reason. Once I figured out this trick, it took me 6 days to read chapters 2-6, and my enjoyment for this story grew exponentially and I found myself wanting to read more oddly enough. It is a true to life Almanac first and a companion piece to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen second, in my opinion. Yes, it gives incredible detail, descriptions, and backstory to the universe, characters, and locations in this world created by Moore, and I did very much enjoy this section of the omnibus. There are great references to many works of other fiction, even giving a shoutout to Twin Peaks in one section. And it gave characters a whole new story that would set up future volumes, those I have yet to read. Even if the literary references were fun, creative, and important to Alan Moore, I didn’t find it to be something I would read again, but I do feel it was necessary and vital to my experience in reading and enjoying The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
My ranking for the material included would go as follows: Volume 2, Allan and the Sundered Veil, Volume 1, and lastly, The New Traveller's Almanac. Overall, a great starting point for anyone getting into Alan Moore, I know I’m going to read his other works after this one, and a fun read for anyone who loves classic British literature characters.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is my first piece of literature by Alan Moore that I have read and wow, what a way to start. The omnibus version includes Volume 1, Allan and the Sundered Veil, Volume 2, The New Traveller's Almanac, plus other extra materials such as issue covers, in-universe advertisements, The Game of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a fun little board game at the back of the book, an in-universe fairytale, a guide to make Nemo’s Nautilus with paper, a saucy art post card, and a Christmas card.
Going into reading this, I had no prior knowledge of who or what the story was about, and I was pleasantly surprised to see public domain characters from books I had read before, such as Wilhelmina Murray from Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Hawley Griffin from The Invisible Man. That’s not all though, the crew is rounded out with Captain Nemo and Allan Quartermain, with additional characters including Campion Bond, Professor James Moriarty, and Doctor Alphonse Morea. All of these characters come from their own worlds and universes of separate stories and outcomes, but they all culminate here to form an incredible team of classic literary characters who shouldn’t work together as well as they do.
I thoroughly enjoyed Volume 1 of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but it felt a bit slow for me. 2 out of the 6 issues in Volume 1 tell the formation of the group, and while backstory and formation are needed to show why they are placed together when compared to Volume 2 where 6 out of the 6 issues are about the group working together and put in incredible peril, you can see how Volume 1 isn’t as strong as the latter. I really enjoyed how everyone came together, but I do have some issues with the characterization of Hawley Griffin here. What makes Volume 1 work so well is the build-up to the last 2 issues of the Volume, where everything hits the fan and an epic air battle commences on a Zeppelin. It was a fun, bloody Volume that worked to set up the group, but didn’t reach the heights that would come later.
Allan and the Sundered Veil is the companion short story to Volume 1 that sets up Volume 2, and honestly, it was a coin toss between whether or not this or Volume 2 was my favorite of the collection. This piece is of epic Lovecraftian proportions without being weighed down by Lovecraft’s heavy use of description. Everything happens so fast and so cosmically, but it never becomes overly confusing or overly long. I love this piece of fiction so much. The story follows four characters that work perfectly together: Allan Quartermain, Randolph Carter from The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, his uncle John Carter from Mars, and H.G. Wells’ The Time Traveler. Every second of this story had my imagination running in full gear, and the visual description of every line that is printed here put a smile on my face. The entire story unfolds after Allan takes a drug called Taduki, and he is transported out of time and space into another world. What I love most about this story is how well written it all is. Everything has a visual description that gives you a mental image of whatever is being told, and everything in the story has a reason and purpose behind its placement, other than “the narrator was unreliable because he was insane.” I really don’t have anything negative to say, and this should be number 1 in the ranking, but...
Volume 2 of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen follows immediately after the end of Volume 1, and we get to see what that pod falling from the sky was. It opens with John Carter and Gullivar Jones on Mars in a great opening scene between the two. This sets up the enemy of Volume 2, the Molluscs, or the aliens from The War of the Worlds. Forced off of their home planet of Mars, they travel to Earth, where they land next to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. This Volume does such a great job at character building, and each action from the members builds up to the final issue of this story that makes you want to know what happens next. I love the growth of character and the relationship between Wilhelmina Murray and Mr. Hyde. There is a very touching and fitting moment right before the final showdown between Murray and Hyde that really hit home with me, and it was so sweet to see such a violent character have a moment to appreciate everything in a few pages. The characters are at their best here, the action is amazing, the writing is superb, everything is on point and immediate in this Volume, something I can’t say the same for with Volume 1 or for the last piece of work in this collection.
The last piece of this collection is The New Traveller's Almanac, and I have mixed feelings about this section. I was able to read Volume 1, Allan and the Sundered Veil, and Volume 2 in roughly 2 days. But, my read time for this Omnibus was 19 days, and that was due solely to The New Traveller's Almanac. These mere 50 pages took me weeks to read just because it took a lot out of me mentally to want to return to an almanac and read it for fun. The single reason for this and my biggest complaint about this entry is the formatting of the pages. Namely, it took me nearly a week to read Chapter One due to my mind getting used to the physical formatting and holding of these final pages of this large book. The text is so small and displayed in the format of a newspaper or a document, and it makes it a slog to read through. Each page contains three tall and thin columns of text, and these are packed with as many words as possible with such a small text. It does not work in formatting or execution, and I would rather have it in the format of a normal story like Allan and the Sundered Veil. I reached a point of frustration with this that I took pictures of the pages and read them off my phone, something that I truly recommend for this chapter as it made the formatting easier to read to me for some reason. Once I figured out this trick, it took me 6 days to read chapters 2-6, and my enjoyment for this story grew exponentially and I found myself wanting to read more oddly enough. It is a true to life Almanac first and a companion piece to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen second, in my opinion. Yes, it gives incredible detail, descriptions, and backstory to the universe, characters, and locations in this world created by Moore, and I did very much enjoy this section of the omnibus. There are great references to many works of other fiction, even giving a shoutout to Twin Peaks in one section. And it gave characters a whole new story that would set up future volumes, those I have yet to read. Even if the literary references were fun, creative, and important to Alan Moore, I didn’t find it to be something I would read again, but I do feel it was necessary and vital to my experience in reading and enjoying The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
My ranking for the material included would go as follows: Volume 2, Allan and the Sundered Veil, Volume 1, and lastly, The New Traveller's Almanac. Overall, a great starting point for anyone getting into Alan Moore, I know I’m going to read his other works after this one, and a fun read for anyone who loves classic British literature characters.