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Have you ever imagined a world with no hypothetical situations?
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: England
Posts: 7,058
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The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1910
Written by Alan Moore
Art by Kevin O’Neill
Published by Top Shelf/Knockabout Comics
On the last occasion new League material was available, due to some copyright snafu, it wasn’t officially available outside the US. As a result everyone who wanted it (and wasn’t American) had to get it unofficially, which quite frankly wasn’t too hard. Nonetheless it did mean an extra wait on something that fans had already been anticipating for some time.
It’s therefore with a certain amount of glee that I’ve been able to get hold of an advance copy of the latest offering, as a comic shop in London had a batch flown over a couple of weeks ahead of the general release, and even got Messrs Moore and O’Neill to sign them for those that turned up, myself included.
2007’s Black Dossier proved somewhat divisive amongst readers, focusing on League stalwarts Mina Murray and Allan Quartermain in an espionage themed tale set in the 1950’s. The Dossier also featured a lot of prose interwoven with the comic story, giving a history of the League. Part One of Century returns to the slightly more familiar times and narrative structure of the first two volumes.
Twelve years after the failed Martian Invasion, the revised League now consists of Allan and Mina, accompanied by Viginia Woolf’s immortal, gender changing, Orlando, E W Honung’s gentlemen thief A J Raffles and William Hodgson’s occult detective, Thomas Carnacki. At the time of the coronation of the new King, Carnacki has a prophetic dream of a cult seeking to bring about a “Moonchild” and an era of chaos and destruction (thanks for that guys), so the League sets off to investigate. Meanwhile, estranged former League member Captain Nemo argues with his daughter, and she subsequently flees to London. Of course, paths start to cross and those pesky prophecies never quite mean what you think they do …
The return to a more familiar setting and form of storytelling is something that those who didn’t like the Dossier will probably welcome, but don’t get too comfortable as Part Two will leap forward to 1968, and Part Three to contemporary London.
Although it’s been structured in such a way that this is a complete story in itself, we all know that it’s a three-parter, and thus there is a sense at the end of the book that things are really only just beginning. The plot is satisfyingly complicated, more so than Volumes 1 and 2, as a lot of time is devoted to setting up the remaining two issues. Although I read the whole thing in the queue for the signing, it took a second, proper sit down, read at home to grasp fully what was going on.
The curiosity in this issue is that a couple of the characters comment on the action in the form of song, with Moore apparently influenced by “Threepenny Opera”. This isn’t something I’m familiar with, and according to the always reliable Wikipedia, these are re-workings of the lyrics of existing songs. I’ll need to do a bit of research, and being familiar with the rhythms of the songs probably would have made for easier reading.
A criticism many had of the Dossier was the copious amounts of nudity and sexual content, not so much in the comic narrative, rather in the prose and accompanying illustrations. That’s been reigned in considerably for 1910, though the turning point of the issue is a repellant sex act, but we’re spared actually witnessing it, and the consequences are devastating for all concerned.
O’Niell’s style on these books is well established, crammed with detail and littered with bizarre buildings, technology, obscure and not so obscure fictional references. I particularly liked the sequence of the bizarre arrival and departure of “The Prisoner of London”, but I was a bit disappointed that there weren’t any sequences akin to the descent into the Martian valley, or Hyde brooding, both from Volume 2.
As ever the book ends with a narrative section, this time entitled “Minions of the Moon”. From reading in advance, I had thought that this would be similar to Volumes 2’s Traveler’s Almanac (an account of the League’s fictional world) but instead it seems to be both an account of what happens after the end of this book and gets the reader ready for Part Two. I found this to be somewhat more reader friendly than some of the prose in previous Leagues and we even catch up with an old fiend from Volume 1.
All in all, this seemed a logical continuation of the Nineteenth Century League, instantly more enjoyable than the Dossier and, I suspect, will be less divisive amongst readers. Although I’ve drawn a lot of comparisons with previous Leagues, and this part is superficially similar to the first two volumes, I rather suspect that when all three parts are finally in our hands, the whole experience will be very different to what has gone before. I certainly hope so!
Existing League fans won’t need me to tell them to get this, and I do think it represents good value for money in these tight economic times, coming at a nice price and crammed with story, art and in a nice bound format. I do wonder if, unlike Volume 2 and the Dossier if this is something that readers new to the League could use as a “jumping on” point, with no prior knowledge (although you’d get lost reading Minions of the Moon). But frankly, why would you want to do that, as all the other books are ready obtainable at good prices?
Long live the King!
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