by Alan Moore (Author), Kevin O'Neill (Illustrator)
Publisher: Top
Shelf Productions (January 7, 2020)
Hardcover, 224
pages
“Your
Longevity. My drug-assisted abilities - - These things make us exceptional.
Thus humans, envy, worship, and adore us. Live through fantasies of being us.
And that is all they do. They come to think that only impossible beings are
capable of greatness. They cease attempting it for themselves.”
This
volume of stories doesn’t add much more to the League’s world as it does
clarify and fill in the details on many characters and events we have seen in previous
volumes and in the Nemo stories.
Don’t
take this to mean that there aren't an insane amount of references to other
works and other worlds. Nearly every word balloon and panel is jammed with
them. So much so that it takes one a long time to absorb it all. I had to read
each issue three times. Once to absorb the overall plot and also see what was
being hinted at sub-rosa. Twice to go through and note all of the references.
Thrice, with some else’s annotations, to make sure I caught them all.
As
these books continue, I seem to recognize less and less of the references. In the
first two, I caught them all. Now I only manage about half. I don’t feel too
bad as many of the references are from British comics, children’s shows, and
spy shows from the 1940s through the 1960s. Plus the odd reference to some
esoteric work from the 16th century. I won’t bore you with a detailed
panel-by-panel breakdown, but for those who are interested, you might wish to look here. This is the best site on the subject that I’ve found so far.
As
to the story. If you haven’t read any of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen books before then this is NOT the
place to start. The action and characters here expand on nearly every event and
character from the other League books
and the three spin-off Nemo novellas.
A person coming into this story blind will be hopelessly lost.
For
those who are familiar, but haven’t read the other books in a while, I would
suggest actually re-reading the originals first, or at least Century and the Black Dossier - as most of the plot springs from those books. I
won’t say much more about the plot, except to definitively state this is the
end. There cannot be another story in this universe (well, I suppose there could be, but it would have to be very
abstract). It wraps up all major plotlines and deals with each of the
characters who are left. An apocalypse is coming and this time there is no
resisting it.
As
for the unsubtle subtext, this work is to praise comics and condemn them
simultaneously. The writer goes into his a nostalgic look at the past of
British comics- well for the creators of them and their creations. He openly
condemns the publishers as thieves, but that’s nothing new for him. But then he
also sees no future in the comics medium, which is why he’s retiring. He claims
that it was once a medium meant for ten-year-olds and now it’s been ruined by
the very fans who made him rich and famous, who continued to purchase his
products after the ten-year-old mark. Well-known for being a crank, I’m not
sure what the author wants, except that what used to fill him with joy when he
was younger, now is a burden rather than joy. So perhaps retirement is the best
thing for him.
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