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The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Cover of Volume One
Publication information
Publisher	Wildstorm/DC Comics Top Shelf Productions
Genre	Alternate History Steampunk
Publication date	1999 - Present
Number of issues	12
Main character(s)	Mina Murray Allan Quatermain Hawley Griffin Henry Jekyll/Edward Hyde Captain Nemo Orlando
Creative team
Writer(s)	Alan Moore
Artist(s)	Kevin O'Neill
Letterer(s)	Bill Oakley

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a comic book series written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill. The series was launched in 1999 as part of the America's Best Comics imprint of Wildstorm Comics. The series spans two six-issue limited series and a hardcover graphic novel, with a third miniseries due to be published by Top Shelf Productions. According to Moore, the initial concept behind the series was initially a "Justice League of Victorian England" but quickly grew into an opportunity to merge all works of fiction into one world. Says Moore: "The planet of the imagination is as old as we are. It has been humanity's constant companion with all of its fictional locations, like Mount Olympus and the gods, and since we first came down from the trees, basically. It seems very important, otherwise, we wouldn't have it."^[1] Moore and O'Neill have revealed that they plan to map out many different eras in the League series with Allan Quatermain and Mina Murray being the two constants.

Contents 1 Plot 1.1 Volume I 1.2 Volume II 1.3 The Black Dossier 2 About the series 3 Issue 5 recall 4 Future works 4.1 Volume III: Century 4.2 Tales of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 5 The world of the League 6 History of the League 7 Reception and influence 8 Appendices 8.1 Collections 8.2 Source works 8.2.1 Principal characters 8.2.2 Secondary characters 8.3 Similar pastiches 8.4 Film 9 Interviews 10 References 10.1 Annotations 11 See also 12 External links

[edit] Plot

[edit] Volume I

In the aftermath of the events of the novel Dracula, a now disgraced and divorced Mina Harker (née Murray), is recruited by Campion Bond on behalf of British Intelligence and tasked to assemble a league of other extraordinary individuals to protect the interests of the Empire. Together with Captain Nemo, Mina travels to Cairo to locate Allan Quatermain, then on to Paris in search of Dr. Jekyll; finally in London she forcibly recruits Hawley Griffin, the Invisible Man, who completes this incarnation of the League. Meeting with Professor Cavor, the League are sent against Fu Manchu in his Limehouse lair, who has stolen the only known example of cavorite and plans to use it to build an offensive airship, against which Britain would have little defence. Having eventually retrieved the cavorite, the League deliver it into the hands of their employer - none other than Professor Moriarty, who plans to use it in an airship of his own, with which he will bomb his adversary's Limehouse lair flat, taking large parts of London and the League themselves with it. An aerial war above London commences, and the League eventually triumphs. Mycroft Holmes replaces Moriarty as the League's employer, and the extraordinary individuals are tasked to remain in service to the Crown, awaiting England's call.

[edit] 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. Featuring John Carter and Gullivar Jones on Mars and a surprise ending to the invasion.

[edit] The Black Dossier

The Black Dossier centers on the eponymous fictional book (that provides a comprehensive review of all of the previous leagues over the centuries) which is stolen by a young man and woman in 1958 in a post-Big Brother England where they are pursued by a trio of ruthless government agents. This release also includes a variety of extras including a 3-D section and glasses.

[edit] About the series

In a 1997 interview with Andy Diggle for the now defunct Comics World website, Alan Moore gave the title of the work as "The League of Extraordinary Gentlefolk". Moore changed the name to Gentlemen to better reflect the inherently sexist attitudes of the Victorian era.

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. 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 or Kim Newman's Anno Dracula series.

Every character in the series, from the dominatrix schoolmistress Rosa Coote to even more minor characters like Inspector Dick Donovan, is either an established character from an existing work of fiction or an ancestor of the same, to the extent that individuals depicted in crowd scenes in Volume 1 have been said (by Moore, in annotations by Jess Nevins) to be visually designed as the ancestors of the cast of Eastenders. 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 assumed deaths prior to the events of the series, though the former appears in a flashback sequence, and the latter has connections to Wilhelmina Murray. Moore has noted that he felt these two seminal characters would overwhelm the rest of the cast. Holmes is still believed by the public to be deceased following the events of The Final Problem, although it is revealed in the second volume that Mina later meets with him.

[edit] Issue 5 recall

Issue #5 of Volume One contained an authentic vintage advertisement for a Marvel-brand douche. Marvel Comics is DC Comics's chief rival within the comics industry and Moore had a public dispute with DC, his former employer. This ad caused DC executive Paul Levitz to order the entire print run destroyed and reprinted with the offending advertisement edited. None were ever distributed in the US; however, a small batch had been shipped to the UK and escaped the destruction. With only 100-200 thought to exist this makes it more than 10 times rarer than the Elseworlds 80-Page Giant that Paul Levitz also recalled, hence is probably the rarest modern comic book in existence.^[2].

In Top 10, 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 when Marvel Comics had previously forced Marvelman, which was written by Alan Moore, to change its name to Miracleman.

[edit] Future works

Alan 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.

[edit] 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 Quatermain, the reformed thief A. J. 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. Actually 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.^[3]

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 eon 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. The first two installments of this volume are set to be released in April & October 2009, the third following in 2010.^[4]

[edit] 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." ^[5] 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.^[3]

[edit] The world of the League

Volume Two has an extensive appendix, most of which is filled with an imaginary travelers' account of the alternate universe the League is set in, called The New Traveler's Almanac. This Almanac is noteworthy in that it provides a huge amount (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 fully 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.

[edit] History of the League

Moore's work includes references to previous leagues and suggests there will be others subsequently. In much the same way that the New Traveller's Almanac, an appendix to the trade paperback collection of The League Vol. 2, detailed much of the geography of the League's world, the third volume, The Black Dossier, set out an extensive history of the world of the League and each of its various incarnations, threading together hundreds of disparate works of fiction into a cohesive timeline.

[edit] Reception and influence

In an interview with Andy Diggle in 1997, Alan Moore first gave a synopsis of the series which then had the working title of The League of Extraordinary Gentlefolk. Simon Bisley was originally going to be the artist for the series.

Volume I won the 2000 Bram Stoker Award for Best Illustrated Narrative. Volume II was nominated for the 2003 award, but lost to The Sandman: Endless Nights. Volume II received the 2003 Eisner Award for Best Finite Series/Limited Series. Time Magazine listed Volume II as the 9th best comic of 2003. ^[6] It was included in the 2005 edition of The Year's Best Graphic Novels, Comics, & Manga. Time also listed Black Dossier as the second best comic of 2007.^[7]

UK Hip Hop artist CASS also assumes the identity of Hawley Griffin, going as far as to cover his face for promotional and public appearances when performing. CASS/Hawley Griffin's lyrics often contain references to themes and plot issues within Alan Moore's and H.G.Wells' works, including but not restricted to The League of Extraordinary Gentleman series or The Invisible Man.

A chapter in the 2005 nonfiction work The Cult of Alien Gods: H. P. Lovecraft and Extraterrestrial Pop Culture is titled "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen".

In his 2005 book The Areas of My Expertise, John Hodgman refers to Nemo as "the Sikh" and "the Science-Pirate", as Nemo was referred to in the League comics.

Warren Ellis has cited The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as an inspiration for his comic Ignition City.^[8]

[edit] Appendices

[edit] 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 (November 2007)
  • paperback: ISBN 978-1-4012-0307-8
  • Absolute edition (deluxe hardcover): ISBN 1-4012-0751-0 (June, 2008), with no additional bonus content

[edit] Source works

[edit] Principal characters

• Dracula by Bram Stoker
• King Solomon's Mines and sequels, by H. Rider Haggard
• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Insidious Dr Fu Manchu and sequels, by Sax Rohmer
• Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne
• The Invisible Man and The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
• The Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle
• Moonchild by Aleister Crowley

[edit] Secondary characters

• The First Men in the Moon, The Time Machine, War of the Worlds and The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells
• A Princess of Mars and its sequels in the Martian novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs
• Lieutenant Gullivar Jones: His Vacation by Edwin Lester Linden Arnold
• The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H. P. Lovecraft
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
• Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
• The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe
• The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
• Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

[edit] 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 series, 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. Zelazny's Roadmarks includes guest appearances, although unnamed, of both Doc Savage and his foe John Sunlight.
• 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. Ellis' comic Aetheric Mechanics also presents a similar alternate history/steampunk world based on existing works of fiction.
• Pulp Heroes is a trilogy of fiction books by Wayne Reinagel, set in the pulp era of the 1930’s and 1940’s. The titles of the three novels are More Than Mortal, Khan Dynasty and Sanctuary Falls. The story features famous characters from Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Around the World in 80 Days, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly's Frankenstein, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Professor Challenger series, Chester Hawks' Captain Hazzard, Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, J.H. Rosny’s Ironcastle, John W. Campbell’s Who Goes There? and The Thing from Another World, H. Rider Haggard's Allan Quatermain series, Philip Wylie's Savage Gentleman and Gladiator, and many more.
• The 2004 film Van Helsing combined elements of Universal Pictures' classic horror films, including Count Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolf Man, as well as including a brief appearance by Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde.

[edit] Film

A film adaptation was released in 2003, also by the name The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The film stars Sean Connery, who plays Allan Quatermain, and features Captain Nemo, Mina Harker, Rodney Skinner aka An Invisible Man (the rights could not be secured to The Invisible Man), Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, Dorian Gray, and U.S. Secret Service agent Tom Sawyer (Gray and Sawyer were not in the comics). It is an original story, which is common for comic book adaptations which seldom feature direct translations. The film was intended to begin a franchise but because of its poor reception (a 16% at Rotten Tomatoes), it is unlikely.

[edit] Interviews

The DVD of the documentary feature film The Mindscape of Alan Moore contains an exclusive bonus interview with the artist Kevin O'Neill, elaborately detailing the collaboration with Alan Moore. O'Neill talks about League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century, his run-ins with the censors and the status of the Marshal Law movie in an interview with The Times.

[edit] References

[edit] Annotations

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

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

[edit] See also

• Steampunk
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (film)
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen timeline
• The world of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

[edit] External links

• Lengthy Times interview with Kevin O'Neill
• Annotations to the League (Notes and annotations collected by Jess Nevins in a page-by-page commentary to the comics.)
  • A mirror site for the Commentary
• Gulliver of Mars (original text)
• Peter Sanderson's in-depth analysis
• The DC Comics Message Board for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
• Review of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 2, and in-depth detail on other War of the Worlds related comics
• The League Foundation
• The League of Leagues website
  • League FAQ
  • League News

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v • d • e The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Creators Alan Moore • Kevin O'Neill • Bill Oakley Volumes Volume I • Volume II • Black Dossier • Volume III: Century • Tales Other Stories Allan and the Sundered Veil • The New Traveller's Almanac • Minions of the Moon League Members Miss Mina Murray • Captain Nemo • Allan Quatermain • Hawley Griffin • Mr. Edward Hyde/Dr. Henry Jekyll Other Leagues Prospero's Men: Prospero • Caliban • Ariel • Christian • Captian Robert Owe-much • Amber St. Clair Gulliver's League: Lemuel Gulliver • Dr. Christopher Syn • Sir Percy and Lady Marguerite Blakeney • Nathanael "Natty" Bumppo • Frances "Fanny" Hill The 20th Century League: Miss Wilhelmina Murray • "Allan Quatermain, Jr." • Orlando/Roland • A. J. Raffles • Thomas Carnacki • Prof. George E Challenger Foreign Leagues Les Hommes Mystérieux: Robur • Arsène Lupin • Le Nyctalope • Fantômas • Monsieur Zenith Die Zwielichthelden: Dr. Mabuse • Dr. Caligari • Dr. Rotwang Associated Individuals Campion Bond • Jimmy Bond • John Carter • Randolph Carter • Mycroft Holmes • Ishmael • Lt. Gullivar Jones • Fu Manchu • Professor James Moriarty • The Time Traveller • The Pirate's Conference Adaptation The Film ("LXG") • The Novelization • The Soundtrack • Stephen Norrington • James Dale Robinson • Kevin J. Anderson Dorian Gray • Tom Sawyer • Rodney Skinner Miscellaneous Jess Nevins • The Timeline • The World • Character List • The History of the League