Scan barcode
A review by baileeparkes
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier by Alan Moore
3.0
Oops! All worldbuilding!
I’ve been wanting to continue The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen for a while now, and this was certainly that. Flaws and all.
Firstly, the way this was structured made it very easy to read, with vignettes following Mina and Allan in 1958 escaping Mi5 in pursuit broken up with sections of the ‘Black Dossier’ itself. It fills in what the League members had been getting up to in the years following the 1898 Martian invasion. Beyond the overarching general events described in ‘The New Traveller’s Almanac’. I think Alan Moore didn’t think too far after the end of the second volume where the characters would go, writing the almanac as a kind of cute epilogue that gives a peek into the potential of a world where all fiction was real; them becoming immortal being only a footnote between the lines during their trip to Africa. This is when he clearly had made a decision to expand not only on the story but the thematic direction as well, with Prospero making a big speech at the end (in iambic pentameter, of course) about the impact of fiction on real life and how telling stories changes reality. Very Sandman, now I think about it. It all feels very grand compared to the basically self-contained first two volumes.
Some segments are definitely better than others, I can’t help but feel Kevin O’Neill and the other artists might have felt a little cheated at how much of this is just pages of text. My favourite section would have to be ‘What Ho, Gods of the Abyss!’ which is basically Jeeves and Wooster meet Cthulhu worshippers. Which is pretty perfect and hilarious. It ends with Gussie Fink-Nottle having his brain sucked out and being basically the exact same afterward. Jolly good stuff.
I’ve been wanting to continue The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen for a while now, and this was certainly that. Flaws and all.
Firstly, the way this was structured made it very easy to read, with vignettes following Mina and Allan in 1958 escaping Mi5 in pursuit broken up with sections of the ‘Black Dossier’ itself. It fills in what the League members had been getting up to in the years following the 1898 Martian invasion. Beyond the overarching general events described in ‘The New Traveller’s Almanac’. I think Alan Moore didn’t think too far after the end of the second volume where the characters would go, writing the almanac as a kind of cute epilogue that gives a peek into the potential of a world where all fiction was real; them becoming immortal being only a footnote between the lines during their trip to Africa. This is when he clearly had made a decision to expand not only on the story but the thematic direction as well, with Prospero making a big speech at the end (in iambic pentameter, of course) about the impact of fiction on real life and how telling stories changes reality. Very Sandman, now I think about it. It all feels very grand compared to the basically self-contained first two volumes.
Some segments are definitely better than others, I can’t help but feel Kevin O’Neill and the other artists might have felt a little cheated at how much of this is just pages of text. My favourite section would have to be ‘What Ho, Gods of the Abyss!’ which is basically Jeeves and Wooster meet Cthulhu worshippers. Which is pretty perfect and hilarious. It ends with Gussie Fink-Nottle having his brain sucked out and being basically the exact same afterward. Jolly good stuff.