The League of Extraordinary Gentleman:
Alan Moore tells us he has now retired from writing comics. After a career spanning almost fifty years, he deserves credit for that alone. He's reinvented the superhero genre on at least three occasions and spanned a counter-cultural movement with one of those. I would also postulate that he is a key figure in English Literature. The League of Extraordinary Gentleman celebrates British culture: but criticises it equally. It also moulds that and places it against an apocalyptic background.
Our story begins in 1898, with the head of The British Secret Service Campion Bond forming a team to beat Moriarty. Our heroes include Alan Quartermain, Mina Murray, Captain Nemo, Dr Hyde and Hawley Griffin. By now, you will have noticed that this universe is one where fictional characters are real. Over twenty years of publication and a century of story; our heroes face The Martians, an alternative WW2, the fascist Britain from 1984, Nemo's great granddaughter and a massacre at Hogwarts by Voldemort.
I mean, basically that should be enough to get you running to your friendly neighbourhood bookstore. But there is more to all six books that the superficial thrill of pop culture being used as a narrative. And if you’re really sharp, you can spot the references to the Prime Minister's spokesman Malcolm Tucker, the immigrant Treen population or the concentration camp for spies in North Wales.
But I would also say the series is a thought experiment in what it means to be human. Both Murray and Quartermain are eternal for different reasons and struggle with the mere fact of it. Whereas Virginia Woolf's Orlando actually enjoys the fact he/she will never die. In that sense, we can also see it as a meditation on gender and sexuality. That we can survive the worst angels of our nature and find happiness in the merest fact of being alive.
As skilled a writer as Moore is, I should also praise Kevin O'Neill. As much as veteran of the comics scene as he is and just as retired; his work creating a rich, fictional world is an achievement in itself. But the parts where the supernatural roots of The League are explored are mind blowing. You'll need 3D glasses and those volumes provide them. Your head, however may never be the same.
A book of philosophy with wit, style and characters you care about. It's also a summary of every book, TV show, film and comic you've ever read. It's a world where the most famous James Bond is a misogynistic sociopath and the least well-known is an obsessed luvvie. You can be a complete trainspotter and try to spot the page where Thunderbird 2 is flies past the Patrick Troughton Doctor Who. There are enough websites for that.
But it's a rich nourishing series, infuriatingly published across two publishers and a variety of formats. However, I assure you it'll be one of the most vibrant, nourishing expressions of a country and a culture as you'll ever read.
