Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Rich Johnston returned from his maternity leave to Lying in the Gutters today and had a very interesting article about Alan Moore calling it quits with DC.

He has disassociated himself with the upcoming film version of V for Vendetta and said that any future tales of the League of Ordinary Gentlemen will be published through Top Shelf and Knockabout.

Read the full details in LitG .

Good for Moore

Do it for yourself and do it for Jack too, Alan.

I'm just glad he finished PROMETHEA before DC went and pissed him off...

Yeah, good for him, but i gotta tell ya, he seems to have more and more of a prima donna complex.

I know, I know, creators have been screwed over before in the business, and i have no reason to think he hasn't been, or, honestly, any reason to think he has. But every time you turn around its some thing from him about how he has been dunn wrong. At some point it becomes background noise and you start forgetting why he was so sought after in the first place.

At least it seems that way to me.

A Black Dossier preview (4 pages) from Entertainment Weekly .

I'm not crazy about the artwork, but, as with LoEG, I get used to it as the story progresses.

The latest LoEG graphic novel, "LoEG Century: 1910" came out this week, and I still haven't found words to describe it (I just deleted what would have been a long post) beyond "mixed emotions."

Maybe my lack of familiarity with "The Threepenny Opera" has something to do with it?

Could someone who is familiar with "The Threepenny Opera" please enlighten me?

Yeah, I was afraid of this one. I'm not that up on Early 20th Century literature, particularly "genre" literature, so I'm quite sure I'll be very lost when I pick this up later this week (delayed here at my shop).

It's been a few years since I saw it, but I do remember there was a character named Jenny Diver, and her big song was "Pirate Jenny", her fantasy of becoming Queen of the Pirates. And of course there's MacHeath; the song he sings in his first scene is written to the tune of "Mack the Knife", and the mention of his ancestor is a reference to "The Beggars' Opera", on which "Threepenny Opera" is loosely based.

I thought the main story was decent, but I was really more intrigued by the text story. The first scene references a particularly famous piece of 20th century fantastic literature <span class="spoiler_containter"><span class="spoiler_wording">Click Here For A Spoiler</span><span class="spoiler_text">Orlando visits the site of the First Monolith from "2001: A Space Odyssey", and her guide seems to be aware of the existence of the Second Monolith on the Moon.</span></span> I'm looking forward to seeing where Moore goes with *that*; I'm assuming he is going *somewhere* with it because <span class="spoiler_containter"><span class="spoiler_wording">Click Here For A Spoiler</span><span class="spoiler_text">if Century begins in 1910, it could end in 2010, and that was the year of the first sequel to "2001".</span></span>

Yeah I liked the "Moon" Text piece probably batter than the main feature. Following up on your observations, the whole reason that Prospero's sending them to the Moon is to prevent mankind from finding the other monolith until 2001, so there's definitely some play going on with them. The Golliwog is also apparently sitting on a fallen monolith during the briefing.

Thank you, Bicycle Repair Man.

I agree with BRM and Rouge that the text piece was better, but the lead story improved on second reading, much as LoEG: Black Dossier did (but the second LoEG arc didn't, IMO.)

Raffles was a nice addition, being a particular favourite of mine. This latest volume was an easier read than The Black Dossier, which I still haven't finished.

On first reading, a lot of it was just the two songs; there didn't seem to be that much going on, and a fairly small cast of characters. As usual with this series, I have to consult Nevins' annotations, then reread the book to get the most out of it. (Having just gone through the annotations, I can see there's a lot of detail I missed.) I wonder if the succeeding volumes set in more contemporary times will be an less obscure.

My guess is 'probably not'.
From what I've seen of his work, he likes things soupy.

I think with less and less in the public domain as he goes further on we'll be seeing a lot of creative dancing around characters identities like we did with "Jimmie" Bond and the future Mrs. Peel. Also, with so much Sci-Fi invading the middle part of the 20th Century, I imagine this things are going to get pretty wild.

What a marathon. I finally read Black Dossier, cover to cover. It made more sense to me after reading New Century and I actually enjoyed the different eras' accounts - mostly the Bertie Wooster story, although Jeeves was a bit out of character, showing annoyance.

For me, the book's story was sort of weakened by the sex. It wasn't so much a tale of a group of special agents as a series of romps and orgies through time. It's like every Howard Chaykin story has a blowjob, every LoEG story has people getting nekkid and naughty.

The second issue of "LoEG: Century" was on the Diamond shipping list last week, but my shop didn't receive any copies. Has anyone here seen it?

Yes! I just finished it and loved it!!
Century:1969 opens with the "true" cause of Brian Jones death and just gets crazier & more psychedelic from there.
Mina is as fabulous as ever, but I really fell in love with the Orlando character.
Overall, the story seemed a bit rushed & could have been a bit longer, but Alan's great dialogue & Kevin's insanely detailed art made this a joy from start to finish.(although the ending was quite sad for one character)

Didn't like 1969 too much. I missed a lot of the references (as I feared, Moore had to get cute with a lot of the names and leave a lot of contrived clues for other references), but more irksome was that the story was a bit of a snooze. Never was a fan of Alan, but he comes off even more pathetic here, and Mina's issues with immortality would have been better served if Moore didn't hit us over the head with it every second page. I expected more nuance and subtlety, but found this oen a little ham-fisted.

Art was great as usual, but rendering a lot of 20th century characters in O'Neil's style wasn't as seamless as with 19th century characters, and with copyright I don't know how you get around that. For example, take Andy Cap and his wife, how are identifiable by his cap, but aren't even good caricatures of those characters.

Thanks for confirming that the book shipped, guys.
My shop's reorder was filled this week, and I picked up my copy today. I hope to make time to read it soon, but between work and rehearsals I'm currently fairly busy.

I liked it quite a bit, as I've enjoyed seeing Moore move his characters through the decades and seeing them change and adjust. It did feel quite sad at times though which I know Moore intended, reflecting the sadness of 'what could have been?' when the love & peace movement went horribly and permanently off track.

I felt really bad for Alan, knowing it was coming and I felt bad for Mina throughout. Unlike Orlando, they haven't adjusted to being immortal. Can Alan and Mina live happily ever after if ever after literally is forever? It's a question that is rarely dealt with. You can tell by page five or so that they are bored and annoyed with one another. Yet anyone in a relationship 10+ years can relate to that feeling which comes and goes. One can only imagine what 90+ years is like.

There were tons and tons of references I didn't get or missed all together but it will be fun to find them online.

O'Neal's art is spectacular. He really captures the notion of free-spirited sexuality here, which is a sharp contrast to the more subtle and repressed sexuality of the Victorian era.

Just read it. I love Orlando, especially the way he plays off against stuffy (or stuffier) Alan. But it all falls apart without Mina's strength and focus.

Wasn't it a vibrant book? All those colours - what a change after Black Dossier! Then so sad to see the quick flash forward to 2011 and the dark eight-years-later pages. Maybe the Stones really were in league with dark forces and we can blame everything on them.

Lots of missed references here too, but I don't think it disrupted the flow of the story.

Late to the party, but I enjoyed it much more than the previous installment. Being a fan of late-20th Century English culture, I did get a lot of the references.

LOL

Good one, FC.

We can certainly blame them for a lot of horrible pseudo-boogie and pseudo-garage rock.

Good news:

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/06/11/league-of-extraordinary-gentlemen-century-2009-out-in-a-week/

Can't wait! I'm actually pumped to see O'Neal take on modern times!

Now that you mention it, he's spent most of his career drawing either the past or the future, hasn't he?

Got it fresh out of the delivery box today.

Initial thoughts are this one is much better than 1969, which I didn’t enjoy.

Lots of references I need to re-read to work out fully.

<span class="spoiler_containter"><span class="spoiler_wording">Click Here For A Spoiler</span><span class="spoiler_text">Loved the appearance of God as Mary Poppins</span></span>