Reviews

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. IV: The Tempest by Alan Moore, Kevin O'Neill

jammasterjamie's review against another edition

5.0

If you're a fan of the League, this is obviously a must-read. A wild ride, a fitting and wonderfully hilarious ending, incredible art throughout in just about every style imaginable, and more hidden little gems and easter eggs than are possible to pick up in just one or two readings, dropping little bits of love to everything from Tom Robbins novels to South Park. Moore and O'Neill couldn't have done better with this one if they tried.

emelkay24's review against another edition

adventurous challenging tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Pretty okay.

Didn’t really wrap up the Mars/Satin Astro storyline satisfactorily enough. I’m fine if they fail, but you have to give some resolution to the characters at least.

Oddly enough, I kinda liked Mina and Jack getting together, even if that came out of nowhere.

Also, referencing criticisms of your work doesn’t make them untrue. Their adventures DID revolve around a lot of sexual assault, and DID contain a lot of racist and sexist caricatures, even if I personally am not sold that that means the creators are sexist and racist.

haddocks_eyes's review against another edition

adventurous challenging informative reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

ivan_tw's review against another edition

adventurous funny reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Moore and O'Neill's swan song is their best collaboration yet, and probably Moore's best period in decades. The art and format are amazing, showing the history of comics in one volume. I loved all the little references and callbacks - "J-Force Six" made up of all the actors who've played James Bond is an amazing gag. You can tell how much affection Moore and O'Neill have for their creation and how nice it was to give the League a proper send-off.

jcovey's review against another edition

3.0

A madcap finale, slightly hamstrung by involving by far the largest population in the series of characters and stories I know absolutely nothing about and don't care about in the least without the breathing room to make me care (what hell is a pink child?).
Still the delightful anarchic buzz hasn't dissipated, and it is a lovely send off.

cybergoths's review

4.0

A hot mess of a book, written in multiple styles, bringing to a close the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. 3D glasses included.

elliotjames599's review against another edition

3.0

Book 2 was this series peak, since then it's gotten slowly worse, this was a good story but is probably the worst of the series

jaydeereading's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark funny mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

francoisvigneault's review against another edition

4.0

I enjoyed myself. Satisfying and crowd-pleasing in a way that [b:Century|16163087|The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Century|Alan Moore|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1353503660l/16163087._SX50_.jpg|29442116] wasn't, this all-over-the-place tome manages the rather difficult trick of introducing tons of new story elements to the LOEG universe and wrapping things up in a fairly tidy manner. Absurd, virtuosic, and bombastic, "The Tempest" is also somehow rather touching in the end. Moore and O'Neill tie a nice big bow on this series, and, if rumors are to be believed, their respective careers in the funny books. Good job, and thanks for all the fun times, gentlemen!

otterno11's review against another edition

adventurous dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

 “There’s a future, other than just rebooting the 20th century forever? Wonders will never cease.” Kim Brand, aka “Flygirl” The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Volume 4: The Tempest 

--

In this final volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series, Volume 4: The Tempest, Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill wrap up all of the facets of his “rich mosaic” of intertwining nineteenth and twentieth-century fictional universes into a neat, conclusive apocalyptic package. Of course, along the way, they lose the thread of the storyline as well, but it was compelling enough for me to follow to the very end. As a whole, it’s a culmination of the direction the series took since the Black Dossier in terms of a metafictional exploration of comics, as well as an air of bitterness towards the evolution of popular storytelling evident since Century.

All in all, Moore continues to be ingenious in the way he links and intertwines these characters and settings into a whole tapestry and O’Neill can convey even the most absurd situations and combinations with clarity, but the seams are definitely beginning to burst by the Tempest. Continuing with the “blink and you’ll miss it” references and easter eggs, the story feels as crowded and self-indulgent as ever. Throughout the series, Moore has worked with some interesting, compelling questions about the role of fiction in society, raising ideas that I too grapple with. However, whatever interesting points he makes about the declining state of contemporary pop culture with its reboots and lack of imagination, arguments which are telegraphed constantly throughout the volume, I find it all ultimately unconvincing.

Beginning where the last volume of LoEG: Century, 2009, left off, with Mina, Orlando, and Emma Peel visiting Kor to regain their youths, The Tempest quickly begins to expand its scope throughout time and space to a distracting degree. As a couple of mid-century British superheroes from a bizarre far future travel through time to undo some catastrophe, an old enemy, the elderly but still very sadistic James Bond bends the entire apparatus of the UK military intelligence against them, willing to stop at nothing to destroy them, up to and including nuclear weapons. When the global catastrophe occurs at the hands of Prospero/Alan Moore stand-in unleashing the Blazing World to tear civilization apart “in a storm of its own grotesque fantasies,” our protagonists retire to space in convenient heteronormative couples.  

All of this is merely set dressing for Moore’s meta-commentary, and it feels that the plot and characters so exciting in previous volumes have taken a back seat to Moore’s increasingly dismissive attitudes toward the current state of popular fiction and his mean-spirited yet out-of-touch ax-grinding against them. Of course, there is a lot of criticism that can be leveled at today’s current escapist zeitgeist, with its reliance on commercialism and reboots, but increasingly, I feel, Moore is not the person to make them. There is so much about contemporary popular media that could be deconstructed, from the prevalence of social media and video games in shaping current pop culture, but Moore has no interest in learning more. It is obvious that Moore has no interest or knowledge of much contemporary storytelling, making his indictment of their vapidity feel unformed. The newest reference I happened to notice was Squidward from Spongebob, after all. 

Part of the issue, for me, could be my general disinterest and ignorance of the superhero genre, which, in Tempest, has become a major element of the story, particularly the mid-century British comic heroes created to compete with and replicate the success of US comics. From his flippant dismissals of those who dislike the turn the series has taken only expecting a “Bloomsbury Justice League” to his stance that such ideas only lead to passivity in their readers, the popularity of superheroes is an easy shorthand to illustrate how far popular culture has declined. At the same time, however, his affection for his characters drawn from classic popular fiction and even the silly British heroes is obvious, leading me to conclude that it is more a complaint that things just aren’t what they used to be, but offers no critiques of how things are different.

Even if we take it for granted that vintage literature was superior in its craftsmanship, it presumes that the endemic racism, xenophobia, and misogyny that Moore has spent the last volumes expressing are of less importance than the derivative lack of imagination in contemporary works. I don’t even buy that either of these problematic aspects are even problems unique to one time period or the other. Such popular storytelling always reflects its own society in its worldviews and some stoop only for the lowest common denominator, only that society has shifted and times have changed. There are so many aspects of modern culture that Moore completely fails to touch upon, making his ending, of the “pitiful human race” drowning “in your own dreams as nightmares drag you down” seem petty. The connotation appears to be that people passively let their entertainment take over their lives, but what if the opposite is true? The very properties Moore rails against spawn reams of new fiction from out of their fandoms. In social media, people become their own fictional characters. Video games allow people to inhabit virtual worlds in ways never seen before. Conspiracy theories have taken over much political belief in the world, as pulpy horror stories are taken as reality for many. 

We’re drowning in fiction, yes, but it feels less foisted on us by a damning lack of imagination than created by us as a result of a world in which we have more choices of fiction than ever. None of this is touched upon, which leads to everything feeling irrelevant. As Kev and Al appear in a fourth wall-breaking appearance at the end of The Tempest, closing out the most fractured and meandering entry in a series beset by convoluted plots and set pieces on a personal note.  

I discuss my feelings on Moore's other works in LoEG and his genre deconstruction in general at https://spoonbridge.medium.com/deconstructing-alan-moores-deconstructions-600c73ffe750, Harris Tome Corner, here.