Thursday, July 10, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Books: The league of public domain characters

By F. Andrew Taylor

Over the past two decades Alan Moore has created some of the most thought-provoking and challenging works in the field of comics, from his deconstructionist superhero title The Watchmen to his intensely researched exploration of the Jack the Ripper story in From Hell. In between, he's done lesser works, which are just flat-out well-written good reads. For the most part, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen falls into the latter category. The book bears scant resemblance to the movie adaptation reviewed on Page 48 of this newspaper. In fact, all that survives is the TV guide description: "A group of heroes drawn from Victorian-era literature joins forces to thwart a brilliant and formidable foe."

The conceit of the story is that much of the literature of the latter half of the 19th century actually happened in the same universe and all those characters can interact. Thus Wilhemina (Mina) Harker survives Dracula, only to be divorced within the year and recruited by agents of the mysterious "M" to lead the League. The first third of the story details the gathering of the team, a hitherto unknown branch of the British Secret Service. It eventually consists of Mina, Captain Nemo (from Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea), Allan Quatermain (from several books by H. Rider Haggard, most notably King Solomon's Mines) Dr. Jekyl/Mr. Hyde and Hawley Griffin, the Invisible Man. This unlikely assortment of victims, villains and washed-up adventurers spends the next third of the book working uncomfortably together thwarting a crime lord and recovering a stolen piece of technology. Hail Britannia. Of course, this being an Alan Moore book, the final third is spent with the principals uncovering a vast conspiracy and duplicitous government agents.

There are some nice bits here. The characters are hopelessly mired in Victorian mores and racism. The monsters they are and work with suitably horrify them. The men chafe at taking orders from a woman despite the fact that she is easily the strongest and most capable character in the book. But when all is said and done, the book is mostly a clever parlor trick. How many characters from how many sources can Moore cram in and how many can we readers spot? And don't we all feel clever when we spot that obscure character lurking in the periphery? All too clever, I'm afraid.

Originally published as a six-issue mini-series with an annoyingly erratic publishing schedule, League has benefited greatly from its collection into a single volume. All the original covers are printed in the back, and there's an entirely separate adventure written as illustrated prose to resemble a Penny Dreadful. Kevin O'Neill's art evokes the era's newspaper illustrations without being slavishly old-fashioned. More literary nods are hidden in the dense art as well.

This is not a book to buy for your 10-year-old who loved the movie. It's deeper, darker and bloodier than the film. When we first meet the Invisible Man he's living in a girls school, happily raping with impunity as a perceived spirit. Mr. Hyde crushes and dismembers people in lurid detail. Quatermain's a junkie. This is not your great-great-grandfather's Victorian literature, but it is a ripping good yarn.