I hate it when bloggers explain an absence. “Sorry for not posting,” they may write, “but I had exams.” Or “My cat had tapeworms and was rubbing its ass all over my keyboard.” Or “I don’t do this full-time, and frankly, I had some other shit to do. So I won’t bother to explain to the rest of the planet that Canadians have Thanksgiving too, but it isn’t at the same time as the American one, and it was last week, and my parents have really shitty internet access. And another thing I don’t have an excuse for is not reading The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 1 before now.That’s right, I just admitted it. I saw the abomination that was the League of Etc. movie BEFORE I had read one single page of the Alan Moore / Kevin O’Neill masterpiece. I’m not really sure how that happened, I guess I just had other things on my plate. Or my hemorrhoids were flaring the day I meant to pick it up.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is Moore’s re-telling of the adventure/horror/pulp genre, a sort of “Justice League of Victorian England” in Moore’s own words. Assembled by Campion Bond (presumably an ancestor of James ) and working for the mysterious M (hinted to be Mycroft Holmes), the League comprises several of the pulp world’s famous characters: Mina Murray (formerly Harker), Captain Nemo, Allan Quatermain, Dr. Jekyll (and/or Mr. Hyde) and Hawley Griffin, the Invisible Man. The League has been pressed into service to recover the stolen cavorite, a compound which can be used to power an aeronautical warship and which will be used against London if not recovered.
If you have read my review of Planetary, you know that I love this kind of playing around with the pulps. Having demolished the superhero genre in Watchmen, Moore goes back to the beginning to bring the superhero sensibility to its origin. League remains true to its pulpy genre, but brings in the superhero action and traces of steampunk, gives backstory to the original characters (Nemo under Moore is far more interesting then Verne) and otherwise kicks ass. The visuals by O’Neill are perfectly done. They have a thin line which evokes the turn-of-the-last-century style, and also give the feeling of simplicity, which also gives the feeling of age.
All in all, I am a fool to have missed this. Volume 2 is on my “to be read” list, and hopefully I get to it before we hit the next decade.
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