League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Classic or Dud?

My Alan Moore obsession has been growing for the last year or so. Having read the first two volumes I was convinced LXG was the best thing since the invention of the flushable toilet, and sparked a massive fixation with Victorian literature.

Not being able to get hold of a proper copy, I managed to download the Black Dossier in digital format, and recently got hold of and read Century: 1910. The latter was okay, but flimsy on stroy and just didn't seem as stylish and well defined as the original books, using the Threepenny Opera as a crutch rather than a reference. The Black Dossier seems almost impenetrable... I'm really not up with half the characters and references and I just couldn't be arsed to read all the Shakespeare bits etc.

Is it worth persevering? I did read nearly all the travelogue in Book 2 and that was pretty tedious in places.

Can't be arsed to repost my thoughts, but there's bunch of LOTG: Century discussion in this thread:

Alan Moore!

LOTG? LOEG, I mean.

First two are good. I advise skipping the text, but then I'm a widely-known philistine. Don't read THE BLACK DOSSIER unless you really like Kevin O'Neill being pushed into various stylistic boxes (though some of the unmarked in-jokes are funny). End of the book made me want to hurl it across the room, though. You've been warned.

Mostly agreed. I couldn't get through more than a page or two of the travelogue, but I liked Black Dossier - definitely an effort though. The ending was a little annoying, but most of the book was worth it, I thought, though I definitely wish there was far more actual comics in it. Only a couple parts really drove me nuts, mostly the long prose parts, like the Kerouac bit. Haven't read Century yet.

I like the Dossier a lot, but I think that's because I didn't try to read it straight-through - I initially skipped a bunch of stuff that didn't immediately appeal to me, and then have dipped back into it periodically, eventually reading the whole thing. I think the problem is I, perhaps like most readers, am usually really not in the mood to be whipped around stylistically like that every few pages. it's impressive from a technical point of view, but I have to be in the proper mood to read a P.G. Wodehouse or Kerouac homage, and I definitely don't want to read both in one sitting. It's too jarring. But there are TONS of jokes and plot points buried in each sequence, and stuff doesn't really make any sense unless you eventually dig through all of it.

there are some serious highpoints too. The SEXCRIME 1984/tijuana bible, the James Bond stuff, etc. I didn't have a problem with the ending, altho it was a bit characteristically soapbox-y. Moore likes to pontificate every now and again (a la the ending of Promethea)

Jimmy Bond is easily the highlight of Black Dossier. Cool that Harry Lime pops up too.

got the new 1969 issue.

who the fuck are all these people (besides Haddo and the various Moorcock characters)

oh duh Michael Caine's character from Get Carter

do you actually want answers itt or

As usual, Jess Nevins has done a sterling job.

http://jessnevins.com/annotations/1969annotations.html

I had a couple of catches that weren't in the last update that I think I need to submit.

yes actual answers appreciated! thx for the link

the most significant one (in that he's v v likely to recur in "2009" is the helpful molester at the Hyde Park concert being Voldemort from the Harry Potter books

beyond that it's mainly Get Carter and Performance intertwined with IRL Stones, plus every single fake Ronnie Kray ever. But I'm really looking forward to reading the Mindless Ones' annocommentations when I've read the comic once or twice more and learning the huge vast amounts that I've missed!

also lol at Munch and Rawls in the text sci-fi story

(all linked from here: http://mindlessones.com/2011/08/07/the-league-of-extraordinary-gentlemen-century-1969-the-annocommentations-part-iii/ )

I didn't really feel this one, even less so than the last issue. And for the first time the art seemed a little rushed/poor. Shame.

(Or perhaps I mean "moreso", duh.)

I enjoyed this one a lot. Maybe less so after reading Moore's Wired interview, dude's unrelenting negativity becomes tiresome and does not make me look forward to the 2009 issue, tbh

Haven't read that interview, but Moore always seems super-positive and enthusiastic about his current projects to me these days - American interviewers tend to love running three pars of him mocking Hollywood or DC and not printing the other hour of him burbling away tho

he's plenty positive about himself, it's everybody else he has problems with

for example: In keeping with our well-spun political landscape, I think a lot of contemporary art, if it has a concept it is a concept in the advertising sense. It’s a little mental pun, something that you can use to sell cars or burgers. But in terms of art, once you’ve got the idea of joke, if you like, there is absolutely no need to ever look at those works again.

For me, art is more about something that could be revisited, something that was ageless at its best, something that would offer another layer of meaning every time you looked at it. But that oceanic depth of art and culture has dried up, where even the youthful and productive creators are very often left flopping around like dying fish.

or:
Everything has its season, and I think the season of superheroes has probably endured a lot longer, at least in its current form, than it should have. Yes, if superheroes could somehow return to that incredible rush of invention that once existed when they were originally created, then yeah I’m sure the world would delight in the concept. But in its current form, I think it’s a disgrace on all sorts of levels.

And some of the people producing superhero adventure should probably ask themselves whether they have some kind of responsibility to be as morally virtuous as the characters they are talking about. I’m not they do, I think that just something that they should ask themselves. But it might be a question the comics industry should ask itself. I hope that’s not too downbeat of an answer, Scott.

I preferred the 1977 League at the end of the comic to be honest. Moore's references have started to get waaaay too esoteric and entrenched in real life figures (Crowley, the Stones etc) to work as well as the first two volumes, where the characters were well known even to people who'd never read the books they were taken from.

it strikes me as sort of weird that he wanted to carry this concept through the 20th century, cuz I've always thought part of the appeal of doing this for him was being able to work with characters in the public domain/who aren't copyrighted and the further he goes into the 20th century, the more ubiquitous and archetypal fictional characters are all copyright-controlled

like, he basically can't use anyone from huge films/comics/TV shows cuz he'll get sued, right?

hence using such a little-known, never-adapted-to-film literary series as Harry Potter, yeah

well that seems to be an exception and I'm not sure how he's working around that one.

otoh a comic book about the real world's fictional continuum set in 1969 that doesn't feature, say, Superman or Spiderman is a little o_0, no? I mean, if his focus has been narrowed as the century moves on, it's not because the culture is "starved" or whatever he thinks it is, it's cuz he's hemmed in by legalities.

he worked around Fu Manchu just fine in the first one, and has always said that part of the fun of doing one in 2009 is working around not being able to use the names

apart from that you're right, it's ludicrous to do a story about the occult and gangsters set in one week in London in 1969 and not include Spider-Man

I still have to read the whole of that exhaustive travel guide at the back of League 2. Unfortunately it's boring as hell.

hence using such a little-known, never-adapted-to-film literary series as Harry Potter, yeah

well in that case the character was completely unidentifiable to anyone who had not read those books or seen the films they were based on. I had to look him up on Wikipedia to find out who he is. So I think the character is sufficiently disguised to 1) escape legal action and 2) generate a "huh?" response from anyone who has not read those stupid books.

I feel really that LOEG peaked with the one about the Martian invasion... the ones since then have been Alan Moore chortling away at how much more trash literature he has read than everyone else.

the character was completely unidentifiable to anyone who had not read those books or seen the films they were based on.

unlike every other character in this issue

So I think the character is sufficiently disguised to

has always said that part of the fun of doing one in 2009 is working around not being able to use the names

I feel really that LOEG peaked with the one about the Martian invasion... the ones since then have been Alan Moore chortling away at how much more trash literature he has read than everyone else.

there has not even been "one" since then - there have been two issues of the next one, the second of which came out a week ago. Moore was very explicit beforehand that Black Dossier was a fun trainspotting sideproject and should not be considered an actual League 'story'

(and given DC fucking it so badly, it probably shouldn't even be bought)



(I read a friend's)

I think the same sort of over-referentiality was creeping into the last Top 10s too, but there it was just in the background (literally), at least.

I guess I just don't the new ones cause they're less FUN and more DO YOU SEE?!?

The quote about the concept-iness of a lot of (popular) contemporary art strikes me as fairly OTM, though...

Moore was very explicit beforehand that Black Dossier was a fun trainspotting sideproject and should not be considered an actual League 'story'

(and given DC fucking it so badly, it probably shouldn't even be bought)

this seems like a distinction without a difference to me, given the density of the book

I'm unaware of what DC did to it

apart from that you're right, it's ludicrous to do a story about the occult and gangsters set in one week in London in 1969 and not include Spider-Man

this wasn't really my point but thx for being bitchy about it

if you can't see the difference in scale between the cultural impact/popularity of figures like Sherlock Holmes/Dracula/Capt Nemo and Jack Carter and Mick Jagger's character in Performance I dunno what to tell you. Someone like Spiderman is more in the league of those earlier figures in terms of broad-based recognition and ubiquity (even if no, he isn't British)

Who, then, would we have liked to have seen in a 1969 edition? Preferably British and universally recognised. Late-Victorian literature is so rich with these characters, it feels like it was the last time people could tell such outlandish tales that were set in their actual times and still were widely read. By the 20th century this kind of stuff had been categorised into fantasy or horror and therefore lost a lot of cultural cache. Also - comic books, TV, cinema replacing literature kind of kills the fun. I don't want to see LOEG turn into a Spiderman comic -what's the point??

Were Steed and Peel in this?

^^^Peel is in the Black Dossier

obvious ommission in 1969 is fucking Patrick MacGoohan duh

which is weird cuz Moore professes his deep love for the Prisoner in that Wired interview

There's Danger Man refs in this one.

never seen it, so those all went past me I guess

Still would like to have seen Tom Ripley.

Also - comic books, TV, cinema replacing literature kind of kills the fun. I don't want to see LOEG turn into a Spiderman comic -what's the point??

I don't disagree with this - in fact it reflects precisely what I was getting at about Moore hamstringing himself by bringing the series further into the 20th century. literature contracted in terms of its cultural cachet the later you get in the century because yr right everything got parcelled out into little genres (there's no character in ANY novel set in contemporary times that captured the popular imagination with the archetypal power of Holmes or Nemo or the Invisible Man or whatever, at least not until Harry Potter lol). Cuz yeah duh there's no point in making a giant superhero crossover book at this juncture. Comic books, TV and cinema replacing literature may kill the fun in terms of the LOEG arc, but THAT'S WHAT HAPPENED to popular culture. To structure the book around popular culture and then force yrself to pretend that that other stuff doesn't exist is just... waht? it's weird is all I'm saying.

he's a pretty weird dude, to be fair.

i don't even mean that as simple snark, either. moore's blind spots to his own philosophical contradictions are pretty wide and glaring.

I just don’t get the objections on a basic level, I guess – the point has never been to fit EVERY MAJOR CHARACTER OF THE TIME into the narrative, so that seems a furphy – especially when people are also complaining about LOEG books that are more cram-in references and less adventure-story focussed than this!

And even if that were the point at the start, this is now the longest-running work that Moore has ever done, by far – even From Hell only took 8 years, whereas we’re twelve years in and running on this!* It should only be expected that his approach and interests might change over the course of that time.

*Lost Girls took 12 years or so to get drawn, and more to get printed, but was written in much less time.

I agree! I just preferred the old approach/interests. I have no problem with Moore raising the difficulty level (which seems to fit in with the Harry Potter model), but that the past two issues -- loved Black Dossier! -- were just bad comics.

I think I agree - if the storylines were stronger, I think I'd care more. The Black Dossier was pretty good actually - at least it kept me reading - but Century... I dunno, it's all very random and disjointed. I don't seem to care enough about the plot at all, and certain characters seem to pop up and disappear for no reason at all.

there has not even been "one" since then - there have been two issues of the next one, the second of which came out a week ago.

I see the 1910 and 1969 LOEG books as self-contained but linked. So each is a one. A right one.

I don't think we can get away with not counting the Black Dossier either... it's like when some band tries to claim that a duff album was just a contractual obligation or something.

It strikes me that one odd narrative thing about LOEG is the way a key narrative point - Mina and Quartermain becoming immortal - happens offscreen and is just referred to in passing in the later books as something that has already happened. Or maybe it is in one of the boring text bits that no one reads.

I can't remember if it is or not. I think it's mentioned in Orlando's story. The huge travelogue at the back of Vol.2 probably mentions it. I now feel a need to go back and read that travelogue properly but it's fucking boring. Might just read the Toytown bit.

The 2009 one is going to have references to Armando Ianucci's Time Trumpet FFS! No one has seen this show! (Okay, I have, but still..)

One other problem I have with Century and Black Dossier LOEG is that Orlando is annoying.

it's not really "grotesque", but have you read metalzoic?

Kev's terrific, but yeah I'd agree the Century books aren't up to his usual standard. The lettering too.

(Obvs he's no slouch even ia bad day, mind)

Ok I agree with Tuomas's statements re: Totleben, Gibbons, and Campbell; they would not have been optimal artists for LOEG. I'd like to know why indeed Moore chose O'Neill... He could just as easily chosen different artists for 1898, 1910, '58, '69, '77, 2009. Imagine the 1969 book in a Ditko or Sal Buscema style, or the 2009 done ironically 'superhero' by some new DC guy.... and I'm sure there's enough old Vertigo artists loafing around to cover the other years...

i love o'neill's art in the first loeg. i've never seen any of his other stuff, has he mostly done british comics?

he literally got banned by the Comics Code Authority because his art made them queasy

the vast majority of Marshall Law was published in America though

He could just as easily chosen different artists for

O'Neill is the co-creator and co-owner and a collaborative partner on LoEG

The final part of this interview has Moore discussing why he chose O'Neill for LOEG.
http://youtu.be/qtDphCDULeQ?t=4m12s
IMO the Hyde he does here is very slapdash and cartoonish, but, OK, I guess this is the style that Moore wanted, Victorian caricature

what's wrong w/ 'cartoonish'?

also, elephant in the room here is that the pool of ppl willing to work w/ alan moore, or who alan is prepared to work w/, has narrowed considerably over time...

is he hard to work with?

that's a difficult question to answer, really. i know some artists don't like or want the incredible level of detail that moore puts into his scripts - but many more would still leap at the chance to work w/ him. and most artists who have worked w/ alan have generally done well career-wise, finance-wise etc.

i think it's more that alan is a man of v strong principles and convictions, which of course don't always accord w/ those of his collaborators. i'm sure i'm not betraying any confidences when i say that the number of artists he has fallen out w/ - dave gibbons, david lloyd, steve bissette, alan davis etc - certainly gives one pause for thought, never mind all the publishers or editors. but again, i'm sure there are plenty of ppl who have worked w/ alan that would do so again, happily.

to be clear, in general i'm on alan moore's side when it comes to his battles w/ DC or Marvel or Hollywood, and think that his principles on the whole are worth defending and supporting.

i feel like i faintly remember an anecdote about the script for v for vendetta, there was a panel in which he describes v or maybe finch with their back to the reader, with a smile on their face - like as an example of how maddening his descriptions could be

yeah but

Despite Moore's detailed scripts, his panel descriptions would often end with the note "If that doesn't work for you, do what works best"

i'm sure i'm not betraying any confidences when i say that the number of artists he has fallen out w/ - dave gibbons, david lloyd, steve bissette, alan davis etc - certainly gives one pause for thought, never mind all the publishers or editors.

I knew about the others, but what's the story with Moore and Lloyd? Did they have a feud over the V for Vendetta movie or something?

something like that:

"I'm not expecting to have very much to do with David Lloyd in the future."

iirc gene colan was going to draw an issue of swamp thing - which would've been a perfect fit - but only wanted to work marvel-style (ie from a brief plot outline), which is obv the antithesis of the moore method, so sadly it never happened.

Oh yeah, I've read that interview, I remembered the bit about Moore and Gibbons falling out, but I didn't remember the same thing had happened with Moore and Lloyd. (Apparently because Lloyd didn't call him and say thanks for the extra money he received from the V for Vendetta movie, due to Moore refusing to accept royalties from it?)

The story about DC and Warner Books using Steve Moore's sick brother as a way of blackmailing Alan Moore is pretty paranoid, especially since the only proof for it is some random comment by Gibbons. I do agree that Moore often has a point in his comments about the comics industry, but stories like this aren't exactly helping him shed the image of Crazy Ol' Man Who Hates Everybody.

Steve Bissette did a massive 6 part dissection on his website of Swamp Thing #20 a few years ago with actual script pages. There was a whole page preamble before two pages to describe a 5 panel sheet then another two pages to describe a splash.

I read one somewhere else for #23 (? Might have been later) that I think GMoz criticised that was about 4 pages describing three panels of a cockroach burrowing toward a coffin.

given that moore collaborates at a distance from his artists - as do most comics writers i guess - i expect his level of detail helps reduce the amount of followup questions that might arise from a simpler script.

well i guess it depends on how you (or the creators) want to define the process - or territory - of the collaboration - ie is the artist there to simply carry out the wishes of the writer, or do you get better comics when some of the storytelling decisions are left to the artist? You might even frame it as a wrinkle on the Barthesian 'readerly' vs 'writerly' text - the 'scripterly' comic vs the 'artisty' comic.

Kieron Gillen talking about this a while back.

moore did some crude storyboards for one of the Spawn miniseries he did, and i remember some of them being published in the back of an issue. i cant remember if it was in lieu of or in addition to his usual descriptions. the finished panels mimicked them pretty closely

Yeah, he didn't do the usual level of description for that stuff, as he doubted the ability of the artists to read it.

haha really?

I may be reading slightly into him saying he didn't think they'd bother

but not unfairly, I dare say

re-reading this most recent volume what irritates me most is the paper-thin plot machinations. why does Janni go to the south pole? bored. oh, okay, great central dramatic conflict there.

Bumped as the final, last ever, definitely no more issue is about to drop.

Tempest has been a fun exercise but little more. Some of the parts almost feel like reprints - there was a Gloriana play in a previous volume, I know - but I suppose the intent (?) of ripping 20c comics apart is pretty much achieved.

was re-reading the Traveller's Almanac from volume 2 and noticed a reference to Mina's visit to a certain beekeeper, which is depicted in the very last issue of the Tempest. The level of detail in the whole series is a big part of the appeal, even if it did feel like it was running on fumes for the last bits.

Diminishing returns after the first one. Still good through Black Dossier.

the only stuff I couldn't be bothered with were the standalone Janni books - the rest is great imo

Volume III is not good.

I like the 1969 volume quite a bit. Art, in general, goes downhill a bit.

the 1969 volume is okay. The last volume though... that's a mess.

def too much Harry Potter

imo Moore should’ve quit after the first two volumes: the first series is a fun ripping yarn; the second series is a creepy undercutting watchmen version of the first, and it all comes together for a rousing anticlimax.

Then all the subsequent volumes take the same “do you see?????” approach as vol 2, except less fun, and Iain fucking Sinclair turns up and it’s all “what if Harry Potter zapped James Bond with his penis in the style of 2000s Eightball” and shut up Alan

Agreed. Some of the post volume II stuff was decent enough, but volume III gradually became like a shallow parody of what was good about the earlier material, so I have no interest to even try volume IV.

What was the last truly great comic Moore wrote, anyway? The finished version of Lost Girls, which came out in 2006? Has he done any good comics since then?

I loved providence. It got wonky at the end (doesn’t he always?) but here’s some good stuff there.

Has he done any good comics since then?

he wrote and drew Astounding Weird Penises

(I thought the latest LOEG was the best use of the comic book format of any of them)

Providence has a rep but I won't give Christensen money, and from what I've seen the cartooning is bad and the lettering inept

I liked the art. The lettering was occasionally hard to read. Don't know who Christensen is. I see he's the publisher. What's the issue?

A bunch of stuff I've forgotten details of, but: once told a contracted artist his work wasn't good enough to pay for but printed it anyway (possibly clumsily photoshopping out big NOT PAID FOR YET or PREVIEW ONLY text the artist had cautiously superimposed?), then ineptly threatened to sue people on the internet who talked about the fact he'd done this. Various staff and freelancers who were able to walked at the time, including the entirety of his all-ages imprint.

yikes

Black Dossier better than first two volumes imo, stronger emotional core, more evocative and if you're gonna do metafiction you might as well have an axe to grind. Also suspicious of how so many ppl got off the LOEG train as soon as it started being critical of fanboy faves.

the first two volumes worked because they had characters that were firmly engrained as part of the national consciousness who could also be defined as latter day super- or science-heroes.

Not really sure how Performance or some random Ian Sinclair novel compares to that

Not really sure how Performance or some random Ian Sinclair novel compares to that

None of these are part of any LOEG team; the first two volumes feature plenty of characters that aren't super or science heroes outside of the team, too.

Fanboy faves ?

Unsurprisingly, Moore doesn't make it through Providence without a rape scene.

(The book itself is fine, the issues are a recasting of various Lovecraft short stories but it falls apart in the end.)

iirc Black Dossier was very badly received at the time it came out. I agree with sic though, that after the first two volumes it only really becomes about metatext and format jokes which Tempest probably does better than the preceding volumes (and I don't think the Janni books are necessarily much worse than those surrounding them).

“Fanboy faves” = James Bond?