The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Nemo: River Of Ghosts (2015)

Author: Alan Moore | Illustrator: Kevin O'Neill | Page Count: 56

"It was the piranhas mostly. They can be spiteful if they're in yer trousers..."

Eighty-year-old Janni gathers together a crew (one of whom would've certainly been worthy of League membership in an earlier time) for one last sailing of the Nautilus into the heart of darkness; i.e. up the Amazon. Her ultimate goal is to put to rest someone who ought to have been dead years before, someone we've met before and for whom death was initially a long time coming.

She’s wizened and determined, with a face that looks like it’s been carved out of wood. Many of the crew think her mad, but she’s knows the truth.

It’s not usually until my second read-through that I'm able to appreciate the intricacies of the League books. I'm too busy trying to spot extraneous references and getting lost in the backgrounds during the first read. But I enjoyed River of Ghosts on the first pass. Either Moore has finally found a suitable level of outside influences being pitched inside, or I simply overlooked a ton of them. Either way, it was a more fluid experience, enabling me to get caught up in the yarn easily.

The aforementioned crew member is Janni’s bodyguard. He's an amalgamation of more than one fictional/legendary character, and more than once he steals the show with his actions; at one point he even does it while having lunch.

The ending is abrupt, but the entire thing had been leading organically up to it, so in the overall scheme it’s simply punctuation that serves a dual purpose. If you've followed the journey up until now then there’s no reason not to step aboard for the conclusion to the trilogy. If you've been hesitant because of how it was split over time, as was the case with Century it'll likely get a collected edition sometime in the future with new O'Neill cover art; an option is to wait for that.

3 broken lady parts out of 5

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Nemo: Roses of Berlin (2014)

Author: Alan Moore | Illustrator: Kevin O'Neill | Page Count: 56

“I think I recognise my conscience on those rare occasions when I meet it.”

Roses of Berlin is set in 1941.  An adversary from Janni‘s past, typically unnamed but recognisable, returns to make life difficult for her and her family.

Moore brings a few things back from past adventures to keep the continuity going, and heaps some new content on top to keep things fresh.  As usual, he fills his narrative with obscure references to people and places that will alienate a great many readers.  To get the most from the story you’ll need some knowledge of WWII politics and silent era cinema, particularly the German Expressionist movement.  I have some of the latter, but not so much of the former.  Realistically, though, I suspect that percentage will be reversed in the majority of cases.

He further alienates readers by having some of the text in German without a footnote translation.  I only know about ten words in German, so I was unable to understand what was going on in those scenes.  There’s also some minor French dialogue.  I could read it but it wasn't at all necessary to understanding the plot.  It merely reinforces what we've already been told, which begs the question of why it was included at all.  I can’t say the same for the German pages, though.  They could be similarly unnecessary, or they could be crucial.  Fuctifino.

Overall, perhaps partly because of what’s mentioned above but not completely, I found this volume lacking.  The cinematic elements were fun and action packed, but the story didn't feel like it warranted its own separate edition.

Nothing to do with the plot but notable nonetheless is the return of the League title on the cover after being absent on Heart of Ice (2013).

2½ propaganda broadcasts out of 5

The Ballad of Halo Jones (2013)

Author: Alan Moore | Illustrator: Ian Gibson | Page Count: 208

“I go out and buy a gun, second-hand.  I tell myself it’s for self-defence, but that’s not true.  It’s because I’m bored. […]  I take the gun and go sit by the window.”

Halo Jones is an average eighteen-year-old.  She likes clothes, shopping and parties.  Halo likes to live.  The problem is that living in the year 4949 isn’t easy, especially in the Hoop, a cramped and dangerous ghetto created to house the unemployed.  Its people have never even seen a tree.  Halo wants to escape, to see the outside.  Quite often when someone experiences those kinds of feelings it’s themselves they’re trying to escape from, but that’s just not possible, is it?

The Ballad is split over three Books separated by time and degrees of depth and poignancy. Without having an insight into Moore’s mind I can only guess at the pitch he gave to the comic’s publishers, and his reasoning for structuring the three parts like he did.  Whatever it was, I'm sure glad they fell for it.

Book I is a safe entry point.  Whilst reading you’ll maybe wonder why Halo is so well loved.  The drama revolves around a shopping trip.  Huh?  It feels like a soap opera taking place inside the mind of a fickle and diaphanous head, but that easy-life conceit was necessary to establish a parallel with the organic structure that follows.  After repeated readings you’ll get the answer to your question.

Book II ups the game, the danger level and the emotional content.  Bridging narratives are traditionally difficult, but Moore overcomes the difficulties.

By the time you get to Book III you’ll be fully invested in Halo’s story, feeling the pinch and pains of her situation.  It delivers the kind of experience Moore's famous for.  The journey to and through that third and final part is the reason HJ has endured for so long, and will continue to do so for years to come.

Ian Gibson's art is a perfect fit to Halo’s personality and world.  The flamboyant costume designs are like fashion sketches, constructed from graceful curves and angles.  As the story deepens his clean lines follow suit, becoming gritty and less airy, but even when forceful they're never ugly.

The new edition has a page size taller than the original 2000AD format, but there’s no distortion of the image.  That means there’s a large empty space top and bottom.  It also retains the beautiful black and white art.  The reprint by Quality Comics that coloured and skewed the perspective to fit the more traditional American-size comic book format is now just a bad, bad memory.

4 Hoop-life Heroines out of 5

Nemo: Heart of Ice (2013)

Author: Alan Moore | Illustrator: Kevin O'Neill | Page Count: 56

“Frankly, I like the odds better if I'm in a tank.”

Heart of Ice is a standalone work that’s nevertheless a part of Moore and O’Neill’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series.  You’ll need to have knowledge of the previous books, particularly the Century trilogy, if you want to know how the main protagonist got to be how she is.

It merges the traditional pirate adventure story with the world of one of America’s most celebrated horror writers (circa 1930).

Like before, some character names are changed or purposefully omitted to avoid legal action.  My knowledge of penny dreadfuls is almost zero, so I wasn't familiar with over half of them.  I'd to go to Wikipedia just to find out who the hell the main antagonists were.  The ones I did recognise (an African queen and a notorious 1920’s publishing tycoon) had very little to do with anything once the story got under way.  The fast pace leaves little time for any of the secondary characters to make an impact.

For me, Moore’s repeated use of violence in his portrayal of women isn't a negative thing.  I think the opposite is true: the women hold their own in a world of vile masculinity.  That strength and power of the female is again to the fore.
Janni (Nemo) is a worthy substitute for Mina.  She’s equally as driven and equally as determined to shake off the shackles of her male forbearers.  If the story had the same depth as her then it’d have been much more entertaining.

The swift move from place to place required artist O’Neill to jump from a world of steampunk contraptions to a world of tentacled horror.  Somehow he made it work like he always does.  The League world is as much his as Moore's.

3 giant penguins out of 5

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century (2009 / 2011 / 2012)

Author: Alan Moore | Illustrator: Kevin O'Neill | Page Count: 240

“Then maybe this magical landscape mirrors the real world.”
“Perhaps that’s why it’s so awful.”

Century is split into three distinct parts, each 80 pages in length.  Whilst each book attempts a self-contained narrative, it makes sense to group them together for review because they’re really three parts of the same story.  It's only a matter of time before they get collected together in a single trade and sold as such.*

The majority of the original League members have been killed off by the ravages of time.  The few that remain have assembled a new collective to tackle new threats, one of which involves sleuthing up a magical cult on the basis of a premonitory dream.  You’ll need to have read The Black Dossier to get the back-story of the new members.  They aren't as alluring or as charismatic as the old team, but each brings something new to the table.

The number of literary references Moore slips into the first two parts threaten to overwhelm the plot.  It was at an acceptable level in Volumes One and Two, and it felt at home as part of the Black Dossier's expositional text sections and documents of people the League were involved with, but he’s arguably gone overboard this time.  If you’re not familiar with the characters he’s referring to, many of whom aren't in the public domain—forcing names to be modified, then  you’ll be wondering who the hell that guy was and why was he there?

Book One takes place in the year 1910.  It sets up the relationships of the new members, explores their validity and questions their necessity in an ever-changing world.  Moore again uses the work to comment on the monstrous deeds that some humans thrive on.  The violence, sexual and otherwise, is something he's explored before.  Expect big ripples in the League’s little pond.  As a standalone it’s less successful than the two that follow.

Book Two skips forward to 1969.  London has embraced psychedelic drugs, and the music culture that sprang up around it.  It's the perfect climate for a magical cult to exist in.  Kevin O'Neill appears to having a blast on art duties.  It takes twice as long to read a League book as any other because your attention is constantly drawn to background information and parodic in-jokes.

Book Three closes the story in 2009.  It was my favourite.  Moore streamlined it beautifully.  Perhaps he'd exhausted his stock of extraneous allusions.  I won't say anything more, but I don’t think any readers that have followed the League's adventures from the outset will be disappointed with the direction taken.

3½ eyeballs in your ankle out of 5

*EDIT: The three parts were collected in 2014 as one edition titled The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 3: Century with new cover art.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier (2007)

Author: Alan Moore  |  Illustrator: Kevin O'Neill  |  Page Count: 200

"Um... B-Bread and tits to you, flashing Monsignor.”

The Black Dossier fits chronologically between Volumes Two and Three of the long-running series.  It takes place sixty years after the events of the previous volumes.  If you didn't read the New Traveller's Almanac section at the end of Volume Two you’ll be confused.  I'd recommend doing so before dipping into TBD.

It differs from previous books.  Whereas they were traditional comics, the Dossier, as the title suggests, is a collection of documents relating to the League.  It’s a largely text-based sourcebook with some comic panels throughout.  The comic part tells the story of how certain characters acquire the Dossier, and the text is the actual Dossier that they have in their possession.
The text sections can be further broken down into prose works, letters, magazine articles and even a tiny Tijuana Bible insert.  There's a LOT of reading and not all of it is fun.  There's also a map, a cross section and a guidebook.  A 7” vinyl record of Moore singing was planned but sadly held back from the standard edition.

As usual it squeezes in a plethora of literary references, even more than before: George Orwell, Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Jonathan Swift, Shakespeare, Homer, Virgil, John Wyndham, Kurt Vonnegut, John Cleland, Ian Fleming, Orson Wellles, John Buchan, Margaret Cavendish, Aleister Crowley, John Dee and many, many more.  I could go on for the entire length of this Nut.  It ceases throwing influences and allusions at the reader just long enough to get some plot in.

O'Neill's art is the best the series has had to date.  It's vibrant and filled with the same level of background details as the prose.

A small part of the book is in 3D.  It includes a pair of 3D glasses for you to pop-out and assemble.  It’s a gimmick that I think is supposed to parody such gimmicks, but it’s asinine and really fucking irritating.  What next?  Scratch and sniff?  I imagine Alan Moore smells of ashtray, cabbage and marmalade.  Perhaps Kevin O'Neill smells of school erasers, Tharg’s sweaty leather and censor’s anger.

3 rocket-ships to another dimension out of 5

Captain Britain (2002)

Author: Alan Moore | Illustrator: Alan Davis | Page Count: 208

“I hit one of you and ten of you get nose-bleeds!  What are you people?”

Alan Moore’s only work for Marvel was for the Marvel UK imprint.  For too short a time he took over author duties of the unimaginatively named Capt. Britain.

The bearded-one plays it safe for the first few issues, but Moore being Moore means he can’t contain himself for very long.  Early in his run he chucked the manual out the window, rewrote the character’s origin story in a convincing manner, making the manipulative Merlyn and his daughter Roma much more instrumental in decision making, and turned the Captain into a fully fledged Moore-esque character.  It was exactly what was needed to revive the series.  At times it feels like an episode of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.  He even slips in a quick vision of a dystopian England, much like his V for Vendetta.

It’s very British; The Captain gets deeply frustrated when things don't turn out as expected, and characters display the quirks that define the quintessential Englishman.  However, rather than reinforce stereotypes, it succeeds in turning them into comical strengths.  More than once I found myself in hysterics at the behavioural traits of the group.  The villains are equally ridiculous, with names to match: The Omniversal Majestrix Saturnyne; the Special Executive; the Avant Guard; and Jim Jaspers—with a name like that it sounds like he should be teaching high school Chemistry, not destroying entire worlds.

As the scripts got more insane so too did Alan Davis’ panels grow more adventurous.  Some of the expressions he uses are fantastic.  It’s refreshing to see someone break from a regular routine and admirably rise to a challenge.

The book is noteworthy for also featuring the first purple-haired appearance of the Captain’s twin sister, Betsy Braddock, who works for the British version of S.H.I.E.L.D, called S.T.R.I.K.E.  You may know Betsy better as Psylocke of the X-Men.

The book collects together stories from Marvel Super-Heroes (UK) issues 387 - 388, Daredevils issues 1 - 11, and Mighty World of Marvel V2 7 - 13.

4 superhero pip pips out of 5

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Volume 2 (2004)

Author: Alan Moore | Illustrator: Kevin O'Neill | Page Count: 228

"I believe you do not hate me. I believe you have perhaps met someone worse than me. Would that be right?”

Volume 2 of The League is superior in every way to the preceding volume. Again, it’s a traditional boys-own adventure with a literary slant, but this time it’s got more sci-fi elements. The plot is less fantastical, the interpersonal character relationships are better fleshed out, and Kevin O'Neill seems to be having more fun with the art. If you take the time to explore it you'll discover there's a lot of subtle things going on in the background.

You’ll get a deeper appreciation of what Moore was trying to do if you’ve read the source material that he’s used as a weave, or at the very least have an idea of what it’s about from any filmed versions. The biggest influence on this volume is something close to my heart, so I enjoyed it immensely.

The story moves ever further away from the traditional comic format. Nothing is black and white. The 'heroes' are as flawed and as selfish as the villains, and you'll be wondering why you sympathise with them at all at times.

There's a lengthy prose section at the back of the book called 'The New Traveller's Almanac' that expands upon the League and its bizarre world, and introduces elements that will reappear in subsequent volumes.

The book collects together The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume 2 issues 1-6.

4 million to one chances out of 5

V for Vendetta: New Edition (2009)

Author: Alan Moore | Illustrator: David Lloyd | Page Count: 296

"They eradicated some cultures more thoroughly than they did others."

V for Vendetta is set in post-war Britain; while not directly involved in the nuclear bombardment, it did suffer some socio-economic fallout after it was over.  It became a fascist state controlled by a select few, policed by the power-hungry and corrupt, and populated by the frightened.  One man, V, a self-elected revolutionary, attempts to pull away the apathy, to wound the totalitarian regime and incite a passion for change in the populace.  V orchestrates a violent and theatrical campaign against the oppressors.  He’s a wakeup call to the sleeping masses.  Being rudely awakened is unpleasant.  It’s more comfortable to go on sleeping.  But should we hate the alarm, or the reason it was set?

If V is the central protagonist of the work, which is debatable, then the City itself can be viewed as the most obvious antagonist, as V’s nemesis.  The people that sit in positions of power are only there because the City let them get there.

I imagine the book is largely misunderstood outside of Britain (as evidenced by the film adaptation), because it mirrors the potential social stratification that could've taken place here, albeit in an extreme scenario.  That kind of fractured class structure isn't distinctly British, but it is a deep rooted part of our culture, a part of our history and very possibly a part of our future.  America wants to expand its hypothetical borders and rule the world.  Britain wants to close its doors and rule its own back yard with an iron hand.  (We don’t vote for who we think is best, we vote for who is the least worst, if we choose to vote at all.)  That's the kind of environment that breeds—and needs—anarchy, and is the very same conditioning that must be overcome to view the work in its proper context.  V isn't a hero.  V is an anarchist.  Can the two co-exist, or are they mutually exclusive?  You'll need to decide that for yourself.

The colouring adds nothing to the work other than distraction.  The panels are well drawn and dramatic so a suitably dramatic palette of black ink on white page would've been preferable.

Textually the book is full of ideas and can be seen as a prototype of what Moore would do with Watchmen (1987).  It’s not quite as good as that seminal work, but it's damn close.  The ‘New Edition’ includes two short interludes originally presented between the three distinct parts.  They aren't part of the main continuity, so can be read or ignored as the reader wishes.

4½ iambic pentameters out of 5

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Volume 1 (2002)

Author: Alan Moore | Illustrator: Kevin O'Neill | Page Count: 192

"God, what a squalid thing humanity can be!  Would that they all might vanish and be made invisible instead of I.”

Alan Moore’s magical beard helps him channel the glittering milk from the bosom of the Muse; it keeps him protected from all the lurky things in dark closets; and it wards off irritating little faeries scouting for motion picture deals (sadly, that last part isn't true).  There are times when he makes mistakes like any normal mortal, but the League isn't one of those times, although you may be forgiven for thinking it is on your first reading.  It’s painfully slow to unfold and doesn't excite in the way normal comics do.  It’s only when you adjust your expectations for the second and third reading that the charms begin to shine through.

With the League, dialogue is key.  It features a group of Victorian era literary characters culled from a number of different sources.  Each character speaks in a manner befitting their locale and time period.  The people were never meant to exist in the same universe, much less in the same book, but it really works, and the resultant clash of egos and identities adds tension.

The identity of the characters isn't explicitly revealed at the beginning.  Part of the fun is figuring out who they are before you’re told.  If you've read some 19th Century literature (it’s set in 1898) you’ll appreciate the work a lot more.

In short, it’s a traditional, fun, boys-own adventure with a literary slant.

The book collects together The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen issues 1 – 6.

3 sleepless nights at the girls' school out of 5

Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? (1997)

Author: Alan Moore | Illustrator: Curt Swan | Page Count: 48

“By the time we heard the screams ... the nightmare was already underway. There must have been hundreds of them and they all wanted the same thing…”

Whatever Happened...? is the final Superman story. The end. It was decided that the entire comic Universe be revamped after the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths, wiping out years of complicated back-story and killing off redundant characters. It’s a move that’s generally regarded to coincide with the ending of the Bronze Age of comics. Moore had a hand in the direction of what followed that era, but it seems he wanted a hand in what had preceded it, too. So he penned a belated, final Silver Age Man of Steel story, giving it another emotional end. We all know Superman continued, but beneath the bright colours was a darker canvas.

It's a love story to that Silver time, filled with weird and wonderful things, including the caped-dog Krypto and Jimmy Olsen's signal-watch. Readers of the modern era may not appreciate the allusions and the changes that it heralded, but older readers, those of us that grew up with comics, that read them under bed covers with a flashlight, will see the real importance and heart of the story. The majority of which is told in flashback. Lois tells the tale of Superman's final days to an aspiring Daily Planet reporter ten years after they happened.

The book is saturated with aspects of finality and loss. It uses the kind of language those old stories used, but it’s more streamlined—there's a weight to them that a lesser writer would need twice as much space to convey. In that way, Moore put a nail in the coffin of not just the character but of a style of writing that had endured for decades. It was the right time to do it. A new breed of storytellers had emerged, influenced by the past but equally ready to sculpt something shiny and new from the ashes of the old. So long, Superman.

The book collects together Superman 423 and Action Comics 583, both originally published in 1986.

3½ (Super)man-sized statues in memoriam out of 5