The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a comic book series written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill, published beginning in 1999. The series spans two six-issue limited series and a graphic novel from the America's Best Comics imprint of Wildstorm/DC, and a third miniseries published by Top Shelf and Knockabout Comics. According to Moore, the concept behind the series was initially a "Justice League of Victorian England" but quickly grew into an opportunity to merge all works of fiction into one world. Says Moore: "The planet of the imagination is as old as we are. It has been humanity's constant companion with all of its fictional locations, like Mount Olympus and the gods, and since we first came down from the trees, basically. It seems very important, otherwise, we wouldn't have it."[1] Moore and O'Neill have revealed that they plan to map out many different eras in the League series with Allan Quatermain and Mina Murray being the two constants.
Plot
Volume I
In the aftermath of the events of the novel Dracula, a now disgraced and divorced Mina Harker (née Murray), is recruited by Campion Bond on behalf of British Intelligence and tasked to assemble a league of other extraordinary individuals to protect the interests of the Empire. Together with Captain Nemo, Mina travels to Cairo to locate Allan Quatermain, then on to Paris in search of Dr. Jekyll; finally in London she forcibly recruits Hawley Griffin, The Invisible Man, who completes this incarnation of the League. Meeting with Professor Cavor, the League are sent against Fu Manchu in his Limehouse lair, who has stolen the only known example of cavorite and plans to use it to build an offensive airship, against which Britain would have little defence. Having eventually retrieved the cavorite, the League deliver it into the hands of their employer — none other than Professor Moriarty, who plans to use it in an airship of his own, with which he will bomb his adversary's Limehouse lair flat, taking large parts of London and the League themselves with it. An aerial war above London commences, and the League eventually triumphs. Mycroft Holmes replaces Moriarty as the League's employer, and the extraordinary individuals are tasked to remain in service to the Crown, awaiting England's call.
Issue 5 recall
Issue #5 of Volume One contained an authentic vintage advertisement for a Marvel-brand douche. Marvel Comics is DC Comics's chief rival within the comics industry and Moore had a public dispute with Marvel, his former employer. This ad caused DC executive Paul Levitz to order the entire print run destroyed and reprinted with the offending advertisement edited. None were ever distributed in the US; however, a small batch had been shipped to the UK and escaped the destruction. With only 100 thought to exist this makes it more than 10-20 times rarer than the Elseworlds 80-Page Giant that Paul Levitz also recalled, hence is probably the rarest modern comic book in existence.[2].
In Top 10, Moore creates a "Miracle Douche Recall" headline on a newspaper, which is not only a reference to the furor, but is also a reference to when Marvel Comics had previously forced Marvelman, which was written by Alan Moore, to change its name to Miracleman.
Volume II
Placed during the events of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, Volume two opens on Mars, where John Carter and Lt. Gullivar Jones (of Edwin Lester Linden Arnold's Gulliver of Mars) have assembled an alliance to fight against Martian invaders. When the invaders are forced off Mars and land on Earth, they begin to build their tripods. Griffin under cover of invisibility leaves the League to form an alliance with the invaders. Mycroft Holmes deploys Nemo and Hyde to defend the capital by patrolling London's rivers in the Nautilus. Meanwhile Murray and Quatermain meet up with Dr. Moreau in his secret hideout in the forest, and tell him that MI5 has asked for something known as H-142. Hyde returns to the British Museum and murders Griffin. Hyde dies fighting a tripod, while MI5 launch H-142: a hybrid bacterium, made up of anthrax and streptococcus. Nemo is infuriated, and Bond coolly replies that they will claim that, officially, the Martians died of the common cold, whilst any humans found dead will have been killed by Martians. Angered by the British government's heartless use of biological weaponry, Nemo leaves in the Nautilus and tells Quatermain and Murray to "never seek [him] again", mistakenly believing that they knew the details of the British plan.
The Black Dossier
Promotional image from
The Black Dossier.
Written as a standalone sourcebook, rather than the third volume, the framing sequence for the Black Dossier is not set in the Victorian era, but in 1958. Events take place after the fall of the Big Brother government from Nineteen Eighty Four (the in-story explanation for this apparent date-shift is that Orwell's book was published in 1948; indeed Orwell originally intended to call his novel "1948," but his publisher advised otherwise). The story itself sees Mina Harker and Allan Quatermain - now immortal after bathing in the fire of youth from She - on their quest to recover the Black Dossier itself (a self-confessed macguffin), in a metafictional unravelling of the secret history of the now-disbanded League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
Out to stop them is a trio of secret agents: inept, brutally womanizing young spy Jimmy (a thinly-veiled James Bond), a young agent named Emma Night (maiden name of Mrs. Emma Peel from The Avengers), and Hugo "Bulldog" Drummond. The pursuit takes Mina and Allan from London to Scotland and eventually to the magical Blazing World, overseen by Shakespeare's Prospero.
Initially intended to be accompanied by a 45-rpm record featuring songs referenced in the plot, this addition was shelved ostensibly to be included as an incentive with the 'Absolute Edition', and ultimately dropped entirely — to the chagrin of the author/singer. Due to eleventh-hour copyright concerns, the book was also not published outside of the United States, and was not put on (official) sale in Canada or the UK.
Volume III: Century
Promotional image from
Century.
The third volume is a 216-page epic spanning almost a hundred years and entitled Century. Divided into three 72-page chapters, each a self-contained narrative. The volumes are tentatively scheduled to be released annually with Part 1 already released on May 13, 2009; Part 2 scheduled for April / May 2010; and Part 3 scheduled for April / May 2011.[3]
Chapter one is set against a backdrop of London, 1910, with Halley's Comet passing overhead, the nation prepares for the coronation of King George V, and far away on his South Atlantic island, the science-pirate Captain Nemo is dying. In the bowels of the British Museum, Carnacki the ghost-finder is plagued by visions of a shadowy occult order who are attempting to create something called a Moonchild, while on London's dockside the most notorious serial murderer of the previous century has returned to carry on his grisly trade. Chapter two takes place almost sixty years later in the psychedelic daze of Swinging London during 1968, a place where Tadukic Acid Diethylamide 26 is the drug of choice, and where different underworlds are starting to overlap dangerously to an accompaniment of sit-ins and sitars. A thoroughly modern Mina Murray and her dwindling league of comrades attempt to navigate the perilous rapids of London's hippy and criminal subculture, as well as the twilight world of its occultists. Starting to buckle from the pressures of the twentieth century and the weight of their own endless lives, Mina and her companions must nevertheless prevent the making of a Moonchild that might well turn out to be the Antichrist. In chapter three, the narrative draws to its cataclysmic close in London 2008. The magical child whose ominous coming has been foretold for the past hundred years has now been born and has grown up to claim his dreadful heritage. His promised eon of unending terror can commence, the world can now be ended starting with North London.[4]
Overview of the series
In a 1997 interview with Andy Diggle for the now defunct Comics World website, Alan Moore gave the title of the work as "The League of Extraordinary Gentlefolk". Moore changed the name to Gentlemen to better reflect the inherently sexist attitudes of the Victorian era.
The Victorian setting allowed Moore and O'Neill to insert "in-jokes" and cameos from many works of Victorian fiction, while also making contemporary references and jibes, and also bear numerous steampunk influences. In the first issue, for example, there is a half-finished bridge to link Britain and France, referencing problems constructing the real-world Channel Tunnel. The juxtaposition of characters from different sources in the same story is similar to science fiction writer Philip José Farmer's works centering around the Wold Newton family or Kim Newman's Anno Dracula series.
Most characters in the series, from the dominatrix schoolmistress Rosa Coote to even more minor characters like Inspector Dick Donovan, is either an established character from an existing work of fiction or an ancestor of the same, to the extent that individuals depicted in crowd scenes in Volume 1 have been said (both by Moore, and in annotations by Jess Nevins) to be visually designed as the ancestors of the cast of EastEnders. This has lent the series considerable popularity with fans of esoteric Victoriana, who have delighted in attempting to place every character who makes an appearance.
Sherlock Holmes and Dracula are notably absent from the League's adventures due to their assumed deaths prior to the events of the series, though the former appears in a flashback sequence, and the latter has connections to Wilhelmina Murray. Moore has noted that he felt these two seminal characters would overwhelm the rest of the cast. Holmes is still believed by the public to be deceased following the events of The Final Problem, although it is revealed in the second volume that Mina later meets with him.
Publisher change
Moore's long-standing outspoken criticism of DC Comics (stemming in large part from his perceived mistreatment at their hands over the rights to Watchmen) made his position with DC-owned subsidiary Wildstorm Comics (of which LoEG publisher America's Best Comics is an imprint) tenuous from the start. Moore's initial agreement was with WildStorm owner Jim Lee, who sold his studio to DC after dealing with Moore, but before any of the ABC projects were published. Moore agreed to honour his contracts with Lee, but made it clear that he wished to continue to have no dealings with DC directly.
After several complaints over DC interference — including most notably the recall and pulping of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 1 #5 - Moore began to wind up his ABC projects, intending to only continue with League (the only title he, with O'Neill, actually owned). He subsequently took offense at inaccurate comments made by the producer of the film version of his V for Vendetta, which stated that the author — who had distanced himself completely from film adaptations of his work, particularly after LXG - had commented favourably on a draft of the script. Moore requested that someone involved with the film's production company — and DC Comics parent company - Warner Bros. officially retract the comments and/or apologise.
When no such apology was forthcoming, Moore (and O'Neill) decided to withdraw future volumes of the League from DC in protest. Since the duo were still working on The Black Dossier at the time, it was agreed that it would become the last League project published by DC/WildStorm, with subsequent projects published jointly by Top Shelf Productions and Knockabout Comics in the US and UK respectively.
Future works
After volume three Alan Moore said that he would like to write some special, one shot stories that focus upon the personal adventures of the characters. "...me and Kevin would probably like to get on with some individual stories, some Tales of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen that could focus upon, say, one character. Orlando is a very tempting character to do a one-off special based upon, especially after you see the way that we've treated him/her in The Dossier." [5] It will have three separate stories in it, the first two will focus on a single character, whereas the third will detail something that Mina did in the 1960s.[6]
The world of the League
Volume Two has an extensive appendix, most of which is filled with an imaginary travelers' account of the alternate universe the League is set in, called The New Traveler's Almanac. This Almanac is noteworthy in that it provides a huge amount (46 pages) of background information — all of which is taken from pre-existing literary works or mythology, a large majority of which is difficult to fully appreciate without an esoteric knowledge of literature. It shows the plot of the comic to be just a small section of a world inhabited by what appears to be the entirety of fiction.
Many of the places described in the appendices seem to be drawn from Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi's The Dictionary of Imaginary Places (1980), though Moore adds numerous places not covered there.
History of the League
Moore's work includes references to previous leagues and suggests there will be others subsequently. In much the same way that the New Traveller's Almanac, an appendix to the trade paperback collection of The League Vol. 2, detailed much of the geography of the League's world, the third volume, The Black Dossier, set out an extensive history of the world of the League and each of its various incarnations, threading together hundreds of disparate works of fiction into a cohesive timeline.
Reception and influence
In an interview with Andy Diggle in 1997, Alan Moore first gave a synopsis of the series which then had the working title of The League of Extraordinary Gentlefolk. Simon Bisley was originally going to be the artist for the series.
Volume I won the 2000 Bram Stoker Award for Best Illustrated Narrative. Volume II was nominated for the 2003 award, but lost to The Sandman: Endless Nights. Volume II received the 2003 Eisner Award for Best Finite Series/Limited Series. Time Magazine listed Volume II as the 9th best comic of 2003.[7] It was included in the 2005 edition of The Year's Best Graphic Novels, Comics, & Manga. Time also listed Black Dossier as the second best comic of 2007.[8]
UK Hip Hop artist CASS also assumes the identity of Hawley Griffin, going as far as to cover his face for promotional and public appearances when performing. CASS/Hawley Griffin's lyrics often contain references to themes and plot issues within Alan Moore's and H.G.Wells' works, including but not restricted to The League of Extraordinary Gentleman series or The Invisible Man.
The steampunk band Unextraordinary Gentlemen took their name from the comic.
A chapter in the 2005 nonfiction work The Cult of Alien Gods: H. P. Lovecraft and Extraterrestrial Pop Culture is titled "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen".
In his 2005 book The Areas of My Expertise, John Hodgman refers to Nemo as "the Sikh" and "the Science-Pirate", as Nemo was referred to in the League comics.
Warren Ellis has cited The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as an inspiration for his comic Ignition City.[9]
Appendices
Collections
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume I, collects vol 1 #1-6
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II, collects vol 2 #1-6
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Black Dossier
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Century 1910
Similar pastiches
- One of the first modern works to combine characters from earlier fictions is the 1949 novel Silverlock, written by John Myers Myers; every character in this novel is lifted from the pages of works dating back to Beowulf and other ancient tales. It is unclear whether Moore drew any inspiration from Myers' book.
- Tarzan Alive, Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, The Other Log of Phileas Fogg, and the rest of the Wold Newton family stories by Philip José Farmer present various heroes and villains of adventure fiction as being part of the same family tree.
- WG Grace's Last Case, the 1984 book by Willie Rushton, combines historical Victorians with their fictional counterparts, including Dr. Watson and HG Wells's Martians.
- Anno Dracula series, by Kim Newman; the original book is set in London at about the same time as The League of Extraordinary Gentleman and features several characters in common.
- The League of Heroes and sequels, by Xavier Mauméjean ISBN 1-932983-44-9
- Tales of the Shadowmen and sequels, edited by Jean-Marc Lofficier ISBN 1-932983-36-8
- A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny depicts several iconic characters coming together in a battle between good and evil. Zelazny's Roadmarks includes guest appearances, although unnamed, of both Doc Savage and his foe John Sunlight.
- The comic novels of Jasper Fforde concern a world inside fiction; and feature fictional characters, e.g. Miss Havisham and Humpty Dumpty as some of the key protagonists.
- Warren Ellis's comic Planetary offers a "secret history" of the 20th century which integrates well known characters from pulp fiction and comics into a cohesive world. Characters in the public domain, such as Sherlock Holmes are present as themselves, while characters still under copyright are represented by close analogues. Ellis' comic Aetheric Mechanics also presents a similar alternate history/steampunk world based on existing works of fiction.
- Pulp Heroes is a self-published trilogy of fiction books by Wayne Reinagel, set in the pulp era of the 1930’s and 1940’s. The titles of the three novels are More Than Mortal, Khan Dynasty and Sanctuary Falls. The story features famous characters from Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Around the World in 80 Days, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Professor Challenger series, Chester Hawks' Captain Hazzard, Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, J. H. Rosny’s Ironcastle, John W. Campbell’s Who Goes There? and The Thing from Another World, H. Rider Haggard's Allan Quatermain series, Philip Wylie's Savage Gentleman and Gladiator, and many more.
- The 2004 film Van Helsing combined elements of Universal Pictures' classic horror films, including Count Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolf Man, as well as including a brief appearance by Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde.
- The OVA series Giant Robo: The Day the Earth Stood Still possesses elements of nearly all of original author Mitsuteru Yokoyama's entire canon of work.
Film
A film adaptation was released in 2003, also by the name The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The film stars Sean Connery, who plays Allan Quatermain, and features Captain Nemo, Mina Harker, Rodney Skinner aka An Invisible Man (the rights could not be secured to The Invisible Man), Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, Dorian Gray, and U.S. Secret Service agent Tom Sawyer (Gray and Sawyer were not in the comics). It is an original story, which is common for comic book adaptations which seldom feature direct translations. The film was intended to begin a franchise but because of its poor reception (a 16% at Rotten Tomatoes), it is unlikely.
Interviews
The DVD of the documentary feature film The Mindscape of Alan Moore contains an exclusive bonus interview with the artist Kevin O'Neill, elaborately detailing the collaboration with Alan Moore. O'Neill talks about League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century, his run-ins with censorship, and the status of the Marshal Law movie.
Annotations
Jess Nevins has produced a series of annotations for each volume which are available online (see links) and have also been expanded into book form:
See also
References
External links
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