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The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier

posted by Matt Knicl at 1:28 pm.

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A League of Their Own

Media Credit:
Photo Courtesy of
www.dccomics.com

Thank God! Thank the Academy! Thank the Roman snake god Glycon! The third installment of LoEG has arrived!

Originally scheduled for release May 2006, this graphic novel (as it was published straight to hardback) was constantly delayed. Writer Alan Moore’s withdrawal from mainstream comic books (again) due to the butchering of his comic V For Vendetta and the League movie as well. Also, the use of several copyrighted characters, though in passing or with modified names, has led to DC deciding not to publish the work outside of America so as not to violate international copyright law.

The premise for the League is this: bizarre characters are recruited by British Intelligence to fight off threats to the Crown. These groups are composed of famous literary characters.

The main league of the 1890s were:

Media Credit:
Photo Courtesy of
www.dccomics.com

* Mina Murray (Dracula by Bram Stoker)
* Allan Quartermain (King Solomon’s Mines by H. Ridder Haggard)
* Captain Nemo (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne)
* Hawley Griffin (The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells)
* Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (the novel of the same name by Robert Louis Stevenson)

This group fought against Fu Manchu (referred to as The Doctor due to copyright issues) and the Martians from Wells’ War of the Worlds. After the team broke up, Mina and Allan continued to travel the globe, encountering Lovecraftian demons and learning the truth about Alice’s adventure to Wonderland.

This book is meant to bridge the gap between what happened after the last book and what was referenced in the all text almanac at its end.

It is the 1950s and Mina and “Allan Jr.” have returned to London to steal the Black Dossier, a book that details the history of the League, from the 1600s incarnation with Don Quixote and John Bunyan’s Christian to the exploits of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando throughout history. We see James Bond as a dirty rapist and the effects of Britain recovering from its years as the newspeak totalitarian state of Airstrip One (1984). Telling the story in comic strips, erotica novels, Shakespeare’s “lost” play, a Tijuana Bible, and even a beatnik novel featuring Jack Kerouac characters, Alan Moore once again reinvents comics and storytelling.

And the end of the novel, where the 3D glasses that come with the book are needed, allow the characters, such as Shakespeare’s Prospero of The Tempest, to literally jump out of the comic.

This is metafiction at its greatest. Why?

The League projects are what Marvel’s Ultimate Universe is to it’s regular Universe. Moore puts fiction of all nationalities, from fables, comic strips, porn, pulp magazines, theater, classics, and all other genres into a blender. What comes out is the distillation of human art and writing throughout time, from the myths of Greek Gods up to the sci-fi adventures of Dan Dare. This is a clean reality where all the characters we hold dear as a society live and interact together. In short, he treats literature like comic book writers treat comics.

Media Credit:
Photo Courtesy of
www.dccomics.com

Everything matters.

And this is not a Wold Newton gimmick, where the characters are used just to be used. Well, okay, some of the characters are used just for the sake of using them, like background characters such as Captain Marvel and Robin Hood. But others, like James Bond, The 39 Steps‘ Richard Hannay, and all of the main cast, from Quartermain and Mina to Bulldog Drummond are utilized. See, Moore takes these characters and using themes already present in their original works and builds on those tensions to tell something new with these old, dusty fictions.

League annotator and scholar Jess Nevins says that the “Black Dossier is Moore’s commentary on the power of the imagination, the culture of Britain in the 1950s, and the glorious variety of popular culture.”

Prospero sums it up:
Intangible, we are life’s secret soul. Its guiding lantern principle, its best. Untarnished by all subterfuge or spies, unshackled from mundane authorities. Life’s certainties erode, yet we endure. Whilst tyrants topple, Quixote rides with the companions of thy cradle nights in glorious pasture Coleridge never glimpsed.

This is what the League is about: remembering the stories that shaped the world.

The annotations to The Black Dossier can be found on Jess Nevin’s website.

Matt Knicl: My name is Matt Knicl. I'm a U of I alumn and one of those unemployed English majors Garrison Keillor likes to make fun of. I've been reading comics since high school and one day I would like to write them. My goal is to expose readers to what is out there in the world of comics and using my English powers, show what is worth reading or not. I can be reached at buzz.comics@gmail.com.