"A rousing work of adventure!" (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Alan Moore)

Member Name: Mauri

Product:	The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Alan Moore
Date:	04/08/09 (130 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Well written, Well illustrated

Disadvantages: Some original artwork has been omitted from the book version

When most people talk about comics they mean the children's comics of their youth, 'The Dandy' or 'The Beano' or the American superhero publications and are rather dismissive of the literary worth of these. They almost never consider the other major type of the genre the graphic novel or adult comic. In the rest of Europe and the USA this literary form has a long and respected history but in Britain it is only in recent years that this form of literature has a gained some well deserved respect.

One of the most well known of the British graphic novelist is Alan Moore whose collaborations with various comic book artists like Kevin O'Neill, David Lloyd and Dave Gibbons have yielded the graphic novels 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen', 'V For Vendetta' and 'Watchmen' respectively.
Alan Moore is an interesting character. He is a modern English eccentric; he looks like a cross between and ageing member of Hawkwind and a Tolkien like wizard, both descriptions which would undoubtedly please him. He is a student of the weird and wonderful and dabbles in magic and ancient Roman deities. His other interests of Science fiction and Victoriana are combined with great effect in 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen'. In this novel he brings together characters and images from various nineteenth century classics and gives them a 'psychedelic' make over creating an alternative universe resembling our own Victorian England but different in many details and populated by famous fictional literary characters.

THE LEAGUE

The League can be considered as a Victorian version of the A -Team but was first modelled on the 'Justice League' a fictional superhero team that appears in DC Comics which included Superman Batman, Wonder Woman to name but a few. In Moore's League the 'superheroes' have stepped out of the pages of Victorian fiction but nonetheless form formidable adversaries.

Originally the League is set up by Campion Bond a British intelligence officer (any connection to James Bond is entirely intended). Bond is told by his superior 'M' (rumoured to be Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's older brother) to recruit Mina Murray (formerly known as Mina Harker) as the League's leader and she in turns enlists the services of Allan Quartermain, Captain Nemo, Dr Henry Jekyll (and Mr Hyde) and Hawley Griffin. Anyone with any knowledge of nineteenth century fiction will already have noticed that these are all well known characters.

Miss Mina Murray is in fact the former wife of Jonathan Harker from Bram Stoker's Dracula. After that unfortunate period of her life she divorced her husband, her reputation had been damaged by the whole affair. She hides the scars of the vampire's attack by always wearing a long red scarf around her neck.

Captain Nemo and the crew of his futuristic submarine the Nautilus are already working for Bond and become part of the League. Mina travels to Egypt with them to recruit another member to the League. Mina's first recruit is Allan Quartermain the famous explorer and adventurer now an opium addict slumming it in Cairo, previously in another literary lifetime he was known as the hero of H. Rider Haggard's 1885 novel King Solomon's Mines.

Next we go off to Paris where a series of murders have taken place. All the victims are prostitutes and the cases seem to be a repeat of what happened years earlier in the same location, the Rue Morgue. Of course this borrows from the famous story by Edgar Alan Poe 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' and the French detective involved then C. Auguste Dupin comes out of retirement to help.

In the end they find Dr Jekyll or rather his alter ego Edward Hyde is responsible but despite this they recruit him to their group, thus the famous protagonist from Robert Louis Stevenson's story is also used in Moore's inventive tale.

The final member of this motley group they find in girls' private high school run by Miss Rosa Coote whose students are being violated during the night by 'mysterious' means. The culprit of these deeds is a man called Griffin who has been able to sneak into the school and have his wicked way with the young women without being seen...because he is invisible and so H G Wells' famous creation enters the fray.

This is where the story really starts as the League are told of their mission to stop a evil Chinese criminal mastermind, Fu Manchu in all but name, from building a powerful flying machine in the east end of London using the element cavorite which was the same substance described by H G Wells in his novel 'The First Men in the Moon'.

THEMES

Moore's vision of this alternative reality populated by these extraordinary fictional characters is incredibly inventive and shows his love of the fiction he is borrowing from. He hasn't simply used the characters in their original form in a reverential way, he has re-invented them and expanded them to suit his fantastic landscape. He has borrowed the essence of these figures but he has created a new literary reality for them.

There is no doubt that 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' is in the tradition of other comic books, action-packed and thrilling but there is more to than that, Alan Moore is primarily a storyteller and all his works examine deeper themes than the narrative at first would suggest. In real life Moore considers himself an anarchist. This philosophy of anti-establishment is clearly seen in all his works. The characters in this comic are not clearly good or evil in fact they include a pirate a murderer, a rapist and a drug addict. They are employed by the British government through Campion Bond but even here there is ambiguity in the nature of their final objective and you get the feeling they that the bosses in Whitehall are not to be fully trusted. This comic has also been criticised for being misogynistic and racist. Certainly the portrayal of the foreigners in the story is clichéd and two dimensional pandering to racial stereotypes of the time it was set. The women characters are invariably sexual clichés, prostitutes, innocent virgins or sexual predators and are treated with some disdain however the central character in the story is a woman and in Mina Murray we do get a strong willed and able heroine. The point is that Moore is reflecting the views of the Victorians to both women and foreigners. The idea was that the world was the plaything white upper class men and that in the natural order of things Britain and its empire should rule over all. The belief that Britain was meant to be a sort of civilised and benign dictator in the world protecting the fairer sex in its own land and educating (where possible) 'Johnny foreigner' converting him to the British idea of civilisation was a myth perpetuated in history book, popular culture and literature. Moore in his own way exposes the hypocrisy of this society and show how beyond the outward piousness and morality there is depravation, exploitation and corruption.

THE ARTWORK

Kevin O'Neill is a British comics artist who started out doing illustrations for 2000 AD in the 70's and 80's. He went on to work on publications such as 'Nemesis the Warlock' and 'Marshal Law' with Pat Mills.

The artwork in 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' is a pure delight featuring exquisite detail and extravagant visual excess. The images of the characters are brilliantly realised and suitably grotesque as is the depiction of visceral violence and sex, this is definitely not for younger readers. The colours are bold and vibrant as you would expect in a graphic novel but many of the sections are dark and shadowy to match the darkness of the story. Having said this there are also a lot of humorous touches included.

OVERALL

This book combines the various editions of the story that were originally published as individual episodes. Included at the end is a short story by Alan Moore entitled 'Allan and the Sundered Veil' with accompanying black and white illustrations by Kevin O'Neill. The story is made up of six short chapters and features Allan Quatermain. It is set before the formation of the League and to some extent explains how the famous adventurer ends up as pityful drug addict in the slums of Cairo, when we first meet him in the main story. The story also features a mysterious 'Time Traveller' that is based on H G Wells character in his novel 'The Time Machine'. I'm not sure if this story was originally serialised in a comic but judging from the format and the chapter layout this would seem to be the case. It is a welcomed addition to the main story and shows off Alan Moore's more eloquent writing style which due to the constraints of the medium is not always fully appreciated in the graphic novels.

The rest of the book is filled with cover art from the original instalments of the story and some mock adverts in the Victorian style for light relief. The book has been compiled with thought and care and shows the sense of humour of the author and collaborators even down to the brief and very funny mock biography of the authors on the back cover. Here Moore is described as an author and "former circus exhibit" and is described as expiring of Scorn in 1904. It is these delightful details that pervade the whole of the edition that make it special.

As you by now realise I loved this. I was very familiar with the works of fiction that are referenced here and I appreciated the cleverness that Moore shows in mixing all these elements together. I don't think you have to be well versed in nineteenth century Sci-Fi or detective fiction to appreciate 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' though. As always a good story and good illustrations are all a comic needs to be successful and appreciated so fans of any of the genre that Moore has 'raided' should like this.

One final word of warning for those like me who had seen the 2003 film of this story before actually reading it, if like me you thought the film was just 'ok' or maybe you didn't like it don't let it put you off this book. The film was a loose adaptation of the story and they have changed many aspects of it. In short while I thought the film was reasonable entertainment it doesn't have any of the verve or intelligence of the book and I'm not surprised that Alan Moore doesn't want to be associated with it. So I would urge anyone who saw the film version not knowing the original but expecting to see something special to give this book a try.

'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' Paperback (192 pages A4 format) published by Titan Books
ISBN-10: 1563898586/ISBN-13: 978-1563898587is available from Amazon.co.uk for £8.39 including postage at the time this review was written.

Highly Recommended.

© Mauri 2009

Summary: A fantastic graphic novel by Alan Moore