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The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

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The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Cover of Volume One
Publication information
PublisherWildstorm/DC Comics
Publication date1999 - Present
No. of issues12 (so far)
Main character(s)Mina Murray
Allan Quatermain
Hawley Griffin
Dr. Jekyll/Edward Hyde
Captain Nemo
Creative team
Written byAlan Moore
Artist(s)Kevin O'Neill

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a comic book limited series written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill, published under the America's Best Comics imprint of DC Comics. As of 2007 it comprises two six-issue limited series, each collected in graphic novel format. There is also a prequel short story, "Allan and the Sundered Veil", included in the first series, and an extensive appendix detailing the alternate universe the League is set in, called "The New Traveller's Almanac", in Volume Two. The story takes place in 1898 in a fictional world where all of the characters and events from Victorian literature (and possibly the entirety of fiction) coexist. The world the characters inhabit is one more technologically advanced than our own was in the same era, but also home to the strange and supernatural.

Plot

Volume I

Main article: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume I
Cover of Volume One.

At the behest of Campion Bond, Mina Harker begins recruiting members of the new League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: after recruiting Captain Nemo in circumstances unknown, Mina goes to Cairo to locate Allan Quatermain, then on to Paris in search of Dr. Jekyll; finally in London she contacts the Invisible Man, who completes this incarnation of the League. Volume I deals with a power struggle between Professor Moriarty and Fu Manchu.

Volume II

Main article: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II

Placed during the events of H.G. Wells's "The War of the Worlds", the League split up into two groups; with Mina and Allan sent off to find a reclusive doctor in the woods, Nemo and Hyde remain to fight the first wave of tripods, but what is Griffin up to? Featuring John Carter and Gulliver Jones on Mars and a surprise ending to the invasion.

Cover of Volume Two.

About the series

The Victorian setting allowed Moore and O'Neill to insert "in-jokes" and cameos from many works of Victorian fiction, while also making contemporary references and jibes, and also bear numerous steampunk influences. In the first issue, for example, there is a half-finished bridge to link Britain and France, referencing problems constructing the real-world Channel Tunnel (this is also a possible reference to H. G. Wells's novel The War in the Air, which mentions a cross-channel bridge). The juxtaposition of characters from different sources in the same story is similar to science fiction writer Philip José Farmer's works centering around the Wold Newton family.

Besides the character of Campion Bond, who could not be called the ancestor of James Bond directly due to licensing issues, every character in the series, from the dominatrix schoolmistress Rosa Coote to single-panel throwaway characters like Inspector Dick Donovan, is an established character from a previous work of fiction or an ancestor of a character from modern-day fiction. This has lent the series considerable popularity with fans of esoteric Victoriana, who have delighted in attempting to place every character who makes an appearance.

Sherlock Holmes and Dracula are notably absent from the League's adventures due to their deaths prior to the events of the series, though the former has a brother (Mycroft Holmes) in the League and appears in a flashback sequence, and the latter's connections to Wilhelmina Murray do not go unnoticed. Holmes is still believed by the public to be deceased following the events of The Final Problem. Moore has noted that he felt these two seminal characters would overwhelm the rest of the cast. According to The New Traveler's Almanac Mina meets Sherlock Holmes in 1904 as an elderly beekeeper. She also comments that he is "more likeable and warm than Mycroft".

Second press run on issue 5

Issue #5 of Volume one contained an authentic vintage advertisement for a Marvel-brand douche. Marvel Comics is DC's chief rival within the comics industry and Moore had had a public dispute with Marvel, his former employer. This ad caused DC executive Paul Levitz to order the entire print run destroyed and reprinted with the offending advertisement edited. Some copies of the pulped print run escaped destruction and are the rarest modern comic books in existence. It is estimated that fewer than 100 copies of this book exist, and none were actually circulated.

In a later title, Moore creates a "Miracle Douche Recall" headline on a newspaper, which is not only a reference to the furor, but is also a reference to the Marvelman, when Marvel Comics had previously forced Marvelman, which was written by Alan Moore, to change its name to Miracleman, despite Marvelman having been around for 40 years.

Future works

File:Allan Quatermain Jr. and Wilhelmina Murray.jpg
Promotional illustration of Allan Quatermain, Jr. and Miss Wilhelmina Murray from The Black Dossier.

Alan Moore has announced his intentions to write the adventures of other leagues in different historical eras. One group of the heroes is seen in a portrait dated 1787 in the League's headquarters in the first volume of the comic. The group includes an elderly Lemuel Gulliver, dark-caped Doctor Syn, the Scarlet Pimpernel and his wife (Sir Percival and Lady Margeurite Blakeny), Fanny Hill, and Natty Bumppo.

Another "Alternative League" is shown in the form of a sketch drawn by O'Neill titled "Les Hommes Mystérieux", showing an ensemble of French heroes and anti-heroes like the Vernian Robur, the Master of the World, Fantômas, Arsène Lupin, and the lesser-known Nyctalope. It is mentioned in the back-up Almanac that both groups will eventually fight each other.

Moore departed from Warner Bros., including its subsidiaries DC Comics and Wildstorm Comics, as a result of a dispute with the filmmaker over an incorrect allegation that Moore had approved of the film version of another of his comic book works, V for Vendetta, and failed to retract the comment or apologize. As a result, Moore has confirmed that any future installments of League stories will be published by Top Shelf Productions and Knockabout Comics.

The Black Dossier

File:Black Dossier promo.jpg
Promotional image from "The Black Dossier".
Main article: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier

The next published installment of the story will be called "The Black Dossier" (referred to as "The Dark Dossier" during early announcements of its existence), named for a fictional book the plot revolves around.

England in the mid-1950s is not the same as it was. The Powers That Be have instituted some changes. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen have been disbanded and disavowed, and the country is under the control of an iron-fisted regime. Now, after many years, the still youthful Mina Murray and a rejuvenated Allan Quatermain return in search of some answers — answers that can only be found in a book buried deep in the vaults of their old headquarters — a book that holds the key to the hidden history of the League throughout the ages: The Black Dossier. As Allan and Mina delve into the details of their precursors, some dating back centuries, they must elude their dangerous pursuers who are hell-bent on retrieving the lost manuscript... and ending the League once and for all.

Volume III: Century

File:League3.jpg
Promotional image from "Century".
Main article: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume III: Century

The third volume will be a 216-page epic spanning almost a hundred years and entitled Century. Divided into three 72-page chapters, each a self-contained narrative to avoid frustrating cliff-hanger delays between episodes, it will take place in three distinct eras, building to an apocalyptic conclusion occurring in the current twenty-first century.

Chapter one is set against a backdrop of London, 1910, twelve years after the failed Martian invasion and nine years since England put a man upon the moon. With Halley's Comet passing overhead, the nation prepares for the coronation of King George V, and far away on his South Atlantic Island, the science-pirate Captain Nemo is dying. In the bowels of the British Museum, Carnacki the ghost-finder is plagued by visions of a shadowy occult order who are attempting to create something called a Moonchild, while on London's dockside the most notorious serial murderer of the previous century has returned to carry on his grisly trade. Working for Mycroft Holmes' British Intelligence alongside a rejuvenated Allan Quartermain, the reformed thief Anthony Raffles and the eternal warrior Orlando, Miss Murray is drawn into a brutal opera acted out upon the waterfront by players that include the furiously angry Pirate Jenny and the charismatic butcher known as Mack the Knife. In actual fact Chapter One revolves around the song Pirate Jenny (Seeräuberjenny) from Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera. Characters in this chapter will burst into song at various points in the narrative. Moore has written new lyrics for Mack the Knife, Pirate Jenny, What Keeps Mankind Alive and Mack's Plea From The Gallows.

Chapter two takes place almost sixty years later in the psychedelic daze of Swinging London during 1968, a place where Tadukic Acid Diethylamide 26 is the drug of choice, and where different underworlds are starting to overlap dangerously to an accompaniment of sit-ins and sitars. The vicious gangster bosses of London's East End find themselves brought into contact with a counter-culture underground of mystical and medicated flower-children, or amoral pop-stars on the edge of psychological disintegration and developing a taste for Satanism. Alerted to a threat concerning the same magic order that she and her colleagues were investigating during 1910, a thoroughly modern Mina Murray and her dwindling league of comrades attempt to navigate the perilous rapids of London's hippy and criminal subculture, as well as the twilight world of its occultists. Starting to buckle from the pressures of the twentieth century and the weight of their own endless lives, Mina and her companions must nevertheless prevent the making of a Moonchild that might well turn out to be the antichrist.

In chapter three, the narrative draws to its cataclysmic close in London 2008. The magical child whose ominous coming has been foretold for the past hundred years has now been born and has grown up to claim his dreadful heritage. His promised aeon of unending terror can commence, the world can now be ended starting with North London, and there is no League, extraordinary or otherwise, that now stands in his way. The bitter, intractable war of attrition in Q'umar crawls bloodily to its fifth year, away in Kashmir a Sikh terrorist with a now-nuclear-armed submarine wages a holy war against Islam that might push the whole world into atomic holocaust, and in a London mental institution there's a patient who insists that she has all the answers. This volume is set to be released in 2008.

Tales of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

After volume three Alan Moore said that he would like to write some special, one shot stories that focus upon the personal adventures of the characters. "...me and Kevin would probably like to get on with some individual stories, some Tales of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen that could focus upon, say, one character. Orlando is a very tempting character to do a one-off special based upon, especially after you see the way that we've treated him/her in The Dossier." It will have three separate stories in it, the first two will focus on a single character, whereas the third will detail something that Mina did in the 1960s.

The world of the League

Main article: The world of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Volume two has an extensive appendix, most of which is filled with an imaginary traveller's account of the alternate universe the League is set in, called The New Traveller's Almanac. This Almanac is noteworthy in that it provides a huge amount of information (46 pages) of background information - all of which is taken from pre-existing literary works or mythology, a large majority of which is difficult to read or at least appreciate without an esoteric knowledge of literature. It shows the plot of the comic to be just a small section of a world inhabited by what appears to be the entirety of fiction.

Many of the places described in the appendices seem to be drawn from Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi's The Dictionary of Imaginary Places (1980), though Moore adds numerous places not covered there.

History of the League

Moore's work includes references to previous leagues and suggests there will be others subsequently. According to the New Traveller's Almanac, an appendix to the trade paperback collection of The League Vol. 2, the earliest incarnation of the League was known as "Prospero's Men".

Prospero's Men
  • Prospero, the Duke of Milan, the sorcerer protagonist of Shakespeare's 1611 play The Tempest.
  • Caliban, Prospero's malformed, treacherous servant, also from The Tempest.
  • Ariel, a sprite and air spirit, bound to serve Prospero, also from The Tempest.
  • Christian, a pilgrim Everyman, protagonist of John Bunyan's 1678 novel The Pilgrim's Progress.
  • Captain Robert Owe-Much, a British explorer and discoverer of the Floating Island called Scoti Moria or Summer Island, President of the Council of the Society of Owe-Much, and the central character from Richard Head's 1673 book The Floating Island (published under the pseudonym Frank Careless).

This league collapsed in 1690 when Christian found the "heavenly country" that he was seeking, and thus left this world. Allegedly, Prospero later followed him, as hinted in the Almanac. Alan Moore said in an interview that he will detail the founding of this league in The Black Dossier.

The Pirates' Conference

There was at some point in the 18th century a gathering of pirates. First mentioned in the Almanac, the details of this gathering were never stated. The pirate Captain Clegg, who gathered this group together, was affiliated with the later league assembled by Lemuel Gulliver.

Gulliver's League

The second league was formed by Lemuel Gulliver and secretly gathered in Montague House, London. They are seen in a picture of the group, dated 1787, shown in Vol. I #2.

One of the stories in The Black Dossier involves this league.

Speculative early 19th Century League

The League of Leagues website has speculated that the portraits of the people behind the main 19th Century League on the cover of Volume 1 are an earlier past 19th Century League, made up of characters active in their source material around the 1870s. The picture in which this supposed League is portrayed is inside the League's headquarters in the British Museum. This picture also includes the group portrait of the late 18th Century discovered in the story of Vol. 1. Also in this picture is the actual character Count Allaminstakeo (a mummy), sleeping, as well as a portrait of him.

The late 19th Century League (Wilhelmina's league)

The Victorian League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is led by Miss Wilhelmina Murray (of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula), recruited for Military Intelligence by one Mr. Campion Bond (who is likely an ancestor of Ian Fleming's James Bond). They meet in the museum that was built on the remains of Montague House.

This league collapsed during the closing days of the Martian invasion when Campion Bond cut his losses and abandoned the now fractured League, after Griffin turned traitor, which started a series of events that led to the deaths of Dr. Jekyll and his alter ego Mr. Hyde.

The early 20th Century League (Wilhelmina's 2nd league)

The Almanac hints that another League was led by Miss Wilhelmina Murray, founded after the Victorian league, which she had assembled, collapsed. It was presumably set before the events of The Black Dossier, probably still answering to Campion Bond and meeting in the museum’s secret vault. They still work for Mycroft Holmes' British Intelligence. This League will appear on the third volume.

Professor Challenger, the palaeontologist from The Lost World and its sequels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is mentioned in the almanac as an occasional consultant to Mina's secondly-assembled League. Doctor Dolittle, the great naturalist and veterinarian first appeared in Hugh Lofting's The Story of Doctor Dolittle and its sequels, is described in the almanac as an associate of Challenger.

Other characters who will appear in the third volume include Mack the Knife, charismatic butcher, and Pirate Jenny, furiously angry pirate, both from The Threepenny Opera. It's not known whether they are villains, secondary characters, associates or members of the League.

The 1950s League

By 1958 the League was disbanded by the government and those members who survived broke into British Intelligence, stole the Black Dossier, and then tried to escape the country while being pursued by a trio of deadly British agents, who are trying to get the Dossier back. One is a character named Jimmy, who carries the cigarette case that Campion Bond had. He's actually James Bond, the British spy created by Ian Fleming for the novel Casino Royale and its sequels, but due to copyright issues, his name cannot be directly referenced.

Additionally Mina and A.J. team up with Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, from the novel On the Road, by Jack Kerouac, against the villainous Dr. Sax in America. Alan Moore also stated in an Exit Interview by Bill Baker that the first black character in the League will appear in The Black Dossier. Moore also admits that this character will be a controversial one.

The Failed 1950s League

There is also mention of a failed surrogate 1950s League that will appear in The Black Dossier.

The 1960s League

Volume Three will have a story set in 1968 with a League led by Wilhelmina Murray who are summoned to investigate a strange cult operating in London's East End and prevent them from making a Moonchild that might well turn out to be the Antichrist. The Top Shelf description suggests 'long term effects' relating to the League's disbanding during the 1950s.

The 2008 League

The solicitation for the final issue of Volume Three indicates that, by 2008, the League has gone nearly extinct, except for an apparent member unwillingly trapped in a London mental institution. The Moonchild will have grown to power by this time. Mention has also been made of a Sikh terrorist with a nuclear armed submarine and an ongoing, "intractable" war in Qumar.

Rival leagues

These copycat leagues were apparently set up by foreign governments such as France and Germany as opponents to the true league, due to the rivalry between these countries and Great Britain that had lasted for centuries, as Alan Moore confirmed in an interview with Wizard #181.

Les Hommes Mystérieux (The Mysterious Men)
File:Les Hommes Mysterieux.jpg
Les Hommes Mystérieux

Les Hommes Mystérieux are the french equivalent of the League similarly composed of "questionable" or criminal individuals. This group was active during the time of Mina's second league. The clash between the two groups was mentioned in the "The New Traveller's Almanac".

Die Zwielichthelden (The Twilight Heroes)

Moore has stated that there will be a German version of the League, known as Die Zwielichthelden, or "The Twilight Heroes". Though he has not revealed any other information about this group, there is one German character mentioned in League Vol. 1: Der Luftkapitan Mors, a domino masked air-pirate.

Appendices

Collections

  • The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume I, collects vol 1 #1-6
    • hardcover: ISBN 1-56389-665-6
    • paperback: ISBN 1-56389-858-6
    • Absolute edition (deluxe hardcover): ISBN 1-4012-0052-4, including Moore's original scripts and additional artwork by O'Neill
  • The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II, collects vol 2 #1-6
    • hardcover: ISBN 1-4012-0117-2
    • paperback: ISBN 1-4012-0118-0
    • Absolute edition (deluxe hardcover): ISBN 1-4012-0611-5, including Moore's original scripts and additional artwork by O'Neill
  • The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Black Dossier
    • hardcover: ISBN 1-4012-0306-X (early 2007)
    • Absolute edition (deluxe hardcover): ISBN 1-4012-0751-0 (June, 2007)

Source works

Principal characters

Secondary characters

Similar pastiches

  • One of the first modern works to combine characters from earlier fictions is the 1949 novel Silverlock, written by John Myers Myers; every character in this novel is lifted from the pages of works dating back to Beowulf and other ancient tales. It is unclear whether Moore drew any inspiration from Myers' book.
  • Tarzan Alive, Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, The Other Log of Phileas Fogg, and the rest of the Wold Newton family stories by Philip José Farmer present various heroes and villains of adventure fiction as being part of the same family tree.
  • Anno Dracula and sequels, by Kim Newman; the original book is set in London at about the same time as The League of Extraordinary Gentleman and features several characters in common.
  • The League of Heroes and sequels, by Xavier Mauméjean ISBN 1-932983-44-9
  • Tales of the Shadowmen and sequels, edited by Jean-Marc Lofficier ISBN 1-932983-36-8
  • A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny depicts several iconic characters coming together in a battle between good and evil.
  • The comic novels of Jasper Fforde concern a world inside fiction; and feature fictional characters, e.g Miss Havisham and Humpty Dumpty as some of the key protagonists.
  • Warren Ellis's comic Planetary offers a "secret history" of the 20th century which integrates well known characters from pulp fiction and comics into a cohesive world. Characters in the public domain, such as Sherlock Holmes are present as themselves, while characters still under copyright are represented by close analogues.

Film

References

  1. Comic Book Resources (May, 23, 2005): Lying in the Gutters (column by Rich Johnston): sidebar "Alan's Previous Problems With DC" in column "Moore Slams V for Vendetta Movie, Pulls LoEG from DC Comics"
  2. "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier (solicitation)". Graphic Novels: Wildstorm. Retrieved 2007-03-06.
  3. ^ Winter, Andrew (2007). "Northampton's Finest: Alan Moore Interview". Tripwire Annual 2007. Tripwire Publishing. pp. 12–17. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

Jess Nevins has also produced a series of annotations for each volume which are available online (see the links) and have been expanded into book form:

  • Heroes & Monsters: The Unofficial Companion to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (paperback, 239 pages, MonkeyBrain, 2003, ISBN 193226504X, Titan Books, 2006, ISBN 1845763165)
  • A Blazing World: The Unofficial Companion to the Second League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (paperback, 240 pages, MonkeyBrain, 2004, ISBN 1932265104, Titan Books, 2006, ISBN 1845763173)
  • Impossible Territories: An Unofficial Companion to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen The Black Dossier (paperback, 304 pages, MonkeyBrain, forthcoming August 2007, ISBN 1932265244)

See also

Similar works include:

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