Satisfying Romp For The Justice League of Britannia

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	• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 1 Alan Moore America's Best Comics, 1999 - 176 pages average customer review:based on 117 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Satisfying Romp For The Justice League of Britannia

Great literary characters have a tendency to outlive their mortal creators, by finding second and third lives in cultures far removed from those which created them. Here, in the first volume of a collection of graphic novels, a quintet of Victorian-era protagonists are enjoyably thrust into the late-20th-century medium of the comic book.

It is 1898. Mina Murray, heroine of "Dracula" with her maiden name reassumed, is charged to assemble a team of social miscreants whose skills are badly needed by the British Empire, confronting a mysterious menace from within. Captain Nemo (Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea") brings his submarine "Nautilus", while Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Henry Jekyll contributes his unrestrained alter-ego Mr. Hyde. H.G. Wells' "Invisible Man" is somewhere on hand, too, and then there's Allan Quatermain, legendary African explorer from the H. Rider Haggard stories.

One of the most notable aspects of this book, a collection of six sequentially-issued comic books published in 2000, is its treatment of Quatermain, least notable of the main characters, as its central figure. Aged, strung out from drugs, somewhat blinkered in his attitudes, he represents the guiding spirit of the era in all its good and bad ways and something of a pin cushion for writer Alan Moore's modernist barbs. At the same time, underneath the action and bloodshed, it is Quatermain's redemption as a full-blooded hero that propels this story out from the chapbook and comics milieu it cheerfully inhabits.

Between the chapter sections lie warnings of what lies ahead: "Mothers of sensitive or neurasthenic children may wish to examine the contents before passing it on to their little one, removing those pages which they consider to be unsuitable." Moore is described in a brief bio, written in the same tone, as the author of such prior works as "A Child's Garden of Venereal Horrors" and "Cocaine and Rowing: The Sure Way to Health."

There is some truth to the warning regarding sensitive offspring. Though it plays with the idea of being a Boy's Own Adventure, it in fact is a graphic novel in more ways than one. The first two chapters alone contain three rape attempts, and the one that may have been successful (as well as statutory) is played for a devilish laugh. People don't just die in "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", they are ripped limb from limb, or have their brains bashed out.

Icky, yes, but Moore and artist Kevin O'Neill earn your indulgence for the intelligent way such R-rated liberties expand and intensify an immersive storyline. More problematic for me was the central conflict, which seems to serve no purpose except to facilitate some corker artwork of London's East End under airship attack.

Still, it is a visual treat, here, there, and everywhere, using the England of 100 years before as a kind of launching pad for trippy phantasmagorias. Moore plays with the conventions of the Victorian era, but he also respects them in a curious way. His combination of historical attentiveness, wit, and (especially in the chapbook supplement "Allan and the Sundered Evil") facility with period language makes for a splendid tale well told. Wells and Stevenson would be impressed.

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A Jolly Good Show

I very rarely give the first volume of anything a perfect rating, but to give the works of Alan Moore anything less seems more likely of readers who are simply turned off by his dark, grisly style. And my "creased and dog-eared copy" of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" (illustrated by Kevin O'Neill) tells such a tale, which isn't any less fascinating. Five of the most legendary figures in Victorian literature are assembled to save 1890's England from both external and internal threats. Suffice to say that Moore favors less than reputable characters in his work. From the drug-addicted Allan Quatermain to the anti-social Invisible Man to Dr. Jekyll's murderous alter ego Mr. Hyde, don't expect to find a favorite among these not-so-fab five. What you should expect, however, is an intriguing action story that will put you on an emotional rollercoaster. Moore also throws in the written six-chapter prologue "Allan and the Sundered Veil" while O'Neil adds a gallery of covers from the original graphic novels among other features.

This comic is unrated: Graphic Violence, Nudity, Adult Language, Adult Situations.

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Extraordinary

Now I'm loving it, but I don't know if I ever would have gotten into the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen except for the fact that a great friend (thanks Mark!) gave my wife a copy of Volume I which he had bought to some fan book signing, and Kevin O'Neil drew a picture of Mina Murray in the frontispiece and inscribed it to my wife, who has also written a novel about the same character. So I just put it in my bag when we went to Chicago and I figured it was either this book, or giving myself up to the sappy movie on the inflight movie channel which happened in this case to be THE ULTIMATE GIFT. I wonder why Moore and O'Neil are so hellbent on keeping the past of Mina Murray such a dark secret. I mean it takes right up until the middle of volume two until you find out (a little) about why she's always wearing that red scarf draped around her neck.

Until then she's just relentlessly brave and svelte, first braving a Cairo dope den to find the neardead body of arch explorer Allan Quartermain, and then taking him to Paris to investigate the case of putains being hacked to death in the Rue Morgue by a gigantic beast who turns out to be--Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde! After that, the league, supervised by toadlike Campion Bond on behalf of Britich Military Intelligence--journeys to a girl's school in England where a series of young ladies are experiencing the miracle of immaculate conception. It's a wild ride, and it culminates in a long drawn out battle in Limehouse during which Dr. Moriarty of the Sherlock Holmes canon, and a mad doctor I guess is supposed to be Fu Manchu battle it out for possession of stolen cavorite, a lighter than air element that England needs for its own secret space program.

All very well and good, but now that I have progressed as far as THE BLACK DOSSIER I would declare Volume II the winner. In retrospect Volume I suffers from the sort of tedious "cavorite, cavorite, who's got the cavorite" plotting, and also from the romance between Mina and Allan--that is to say, the romance is great but it begins in that "meet cute" way which is so predictable and insufferable. As soon as you have a man and a woman who can't stand each other you just know they're eventually going to get together: Moore could have written this love story in a more sophisticated way. He seems so determined to re-write every narratological convention but this "meet cute" business he just decided to feed us wholesale without even an apology, and it's stale meat from some other lesser writer's bag of tricks. That said, I did enjoy seeing them melt their reserve and that iceberg of mutual dislike, and see Mina come to life again after Jonathan Harker and the divorce, not to mention you know who.

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Don't order this title for your kids

I liked Watchmen, so I ordered TLoEG Vol 1 and 2 for my 10 year old son for Christmas. Thankfully, I started reading it before he did as it is very much an adult themed graphic novel, with a couple of rape scenes in the first half of Vol 1 alone. I haven't finished the book yet - just wanted to give a head's up to other parents out there before they made the same mistake I did. With Captain Nemo, et al. it never occurred to me that it would lean in this direction. Fine for me, just NOT AT ALL APPROPRIATE for preteens.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Proving that mainstream comics could be infused with past literary/cultural ideals and still be bestsellers, the America's Best Comics imprint took the dilapidated superhero genre and created three vastly entertaining hybrids with Tom Strong, Promethea and Top Ten. Now, a stunning coup de grace is delivered with this masterful pairing of Victorian adventure fiction's greatest characters and the old war-horse of the super-group. With the stunning The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, it would be no exaggeration to say that Alan Moore has produced a near-perfect piece of adventure fiction that is clever, literate, rich with excitement and hard to put down.It's 1898 and at the behest of M, the mysterious head of the secret Service, Campion Bond is dispatched to procure the services of Miss Mina Murray (nee Harker), adventurer Allan Quartermain, "Science-Pirate" Captain Nemo, Henry Jekyll (and his monstrous alter ego) and Hawley Griffin (a.k.a. the Invisible Man). Together, they must combat an insidious threat that will decide supremacy of the London skies, but their success may unleash a far greater threat. With no shortage of action, Moore and O' Neill sustain a high level of suspense, intrigue, mystery and terrific wit that all contribute to an indispensable read. O'Neill's art, so memorable in Marshal Law, produces a London filled with vivid, magnificent architecture and a malevolent atmosphere ripe with thrills and danger. An unmitigated triumph--pure and simple. --Danny Graydon

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