The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier

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The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen)

by Alan Moore, Kevin O'Neill (Illustrator), Ray Zone (3D)

3.45 of 5 stars 3.45 · rating details · 3,582 ratings · 291 reviews

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 and are in search of some answers. Answe...more

Hardcover, 208 pages

Published November 13th 2007 by WildStorm

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Jun 06, 2013 Anthony Vacca rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: comix

Ah, so there was a reason why I decided to get this English degree after all. I can now read Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier and get about 60-65% of all the literary references he makes. Reading this book I felt hip. I felt like I was in the know. I could laugh at one of Mr. Moore’s snide remarks and feel just as clever for kind of knowing what he’s talking about. And then I set my comic book aside, went out into the world, and tried to tell others about how coo...more

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Jul 17, 2012 Brooke rated it 2 of 5 stars

From glancing over the other reviews for this book, I'm sure that someone is going to say that I am dense and dull for not enjoying it. That's okay, I suspect that it's true.

I adored the first two volumes of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. They were my first introduction to Alan Moore during the very early days of my comic fandom, and I was delighted with how they were darkly funny and smart and full of literary references.

The Black Dossier, however, tries too hard too be all of those th...more

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Nov 29, 2007 Corey rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: hardcore fans of Alan Moore or classic literature

I have never been made to feel stupid by a book, except maybe a few math textbooks, but this book came very, very close. I got the very real impression that I should read it again in a few years when I've accrued more knowledge and experience, and maybe even read more books. It's still a spectacular book, but it can get a little self-indulgent at times (you can tell Moore wasn't writing this for anyone but himself) but it almost always errs on the side of entertainment. From a "lost" Shakespeare...more

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Feb 05, 2008 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphic-novels, reviewed

There's two major strikes against The Black Dossier, and neither of them has anything to do with the contents of the book. The first, of course, is that we've been waiting years for this - five years, for many, just to see any new LoEG work; two years since the Dossier itself was announced. Expectations therefore peaked at a high, and that never bodes well for something as unusual and experimental as this.

The second is that this really should have been the final volume of LoEG. But more on that...more There's two major strikes against The Black Dossier, and neither of them has anything to do with the contents of the book. The first, of course, is that we've been waiting years for this - five years, for many, just to see any new LoEG work; two years since the Dossier itself was announced. Expectations therefore peaked at a high, and that never bodes well for something as unusual and experimental as this.

The second is that this really should have been the final volume of LoEG. But more on that in a minute.

Basically, the book has a very thin plot, something any decent reader will notice after just a cursory flip through the pages. It's the almanac section from Volume II writ large - documents, postcards, letters, "extracts" and other errata chronicling the centuries-spanning LoEG's history, built to engage you more as a puzzle than a narrative, with the occasional bone thrown out in the comics framing story. Fortunately, the Almanac was probably my favorite part of Volume II, so I enjoyed the game - although I was aware that, in simply telling us so much about his creation, Moore is basically robbing us of the potential for those stories in the future. We will never see the battle of Mina Murray's League against their French counterparts, nor the failed replacement League of the post-WWII years, nor the formation of Prospero's Men. It's all here - in prose form. Moore is both flexing the comics medium to its full potential and withholding its more traditional use. Fascinating, but ever so slightly disappointing.

That's why this really should have been the last story of the LoEG to be published (as I expect it still will be, 'chronologically'). With the foreknowledge that Volume III arrives from Top Shelf in a year, this is less a goodbye to the League and more just a goodbye to the League...at DC Comics. Fair enough, but there are some real meditations here on the changing nature of literary heroes - and, later, on fiction itself - which are going to be completely overlooked because a lot of readers, having been surprised and intimidated by the Black Dossier, will simply put it aside and wait for Volume III without ever giving it a second glance.

I definitely enjoyed The Black Dossier. It wasn't quite what I expected when it was first announced two years ago, but by the time descriptions started to leak online, I suspected something less about one narrative story and more about the act of storytelling. That's pretty much what I got. It's not a total home run - I'll have trouble recommending it to friends, and Moore's casual sexualizing of characters still (and always has) makes me vaguely uncomfortable - but it's overall good stuff, and I'll be holding on to my copy for sure.(less)

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Feb 27, 2008 Darren rated it 5 of 5 stars

"The Black Dossier" is not nearly as fun as the earlier editions of "The League." As it begins to dawn on you that a considerable stretch of the book is dominated by text-only pages, you may begin to worry that Moore has become yet another Dave Sim - who, as the years passed on his 6000 page "Cerebus" saga, began to sprinkle in ever-more turgid parodies of great authors, longwinded self-serving rants against feminism and Marxism, and over a hundred pages of theory on the Torah, written in small...more "The Black Dossier" is not nearly as fun as the earlier editions of "The League." As it begins to dawn on you that a considerable stretch of the book is dominated by text-only pages, you may begin to worry that Moore has become yet another Dave Sim - who, as the years passed on his 6000 page "Cerebus" saga, began to sprinkle in ever-more turgid parodies of great authors, longwinded self-serving rants against feminism and Marxism, and over a hundred pages of theory on the Torah, written in small type, in the voice of a stammering drunken Aardvark, narrated to a fictionalized Woody Allen. With the exception of a beautiful homage to Oscar Wilde, Sim's prose is as uniformly awful as his graphic storytelling is transcendent.

But Moore's "Black Dossier" has several things going for it that Sim didn't. Moore is not a paranoid ideologue who believes women's existence contributes to a breakdown of humanity on every social, political, economic, and cultural level. Moore is less interested in religion than in fiction. Moore has a profound sense of humor.

Although there is a plot to "The Black Dossier," the better part of the book is essentially an appendix to the first two volumes, exploring the world which used to appear steampunk and now stands revealed as the predominant work of metafiction of the early 21st century. How much you enjoy "Black Dossier" may depend on which you liked more - "The Lord of the Rings" or "The Silmarillion." A chapter imitates the style of PG Wodehouse's "Jeeves and Wooster" stories with the substance of HP Lovecraft - importantly, the chapter is funny even if you have no idea who either of those men are. The same holds true for the imitation of primitive erotica, in which sex goddess Fanny Hill fuckscrews her way through several fantasy worlds, and "Faerie's Fortune Founded," a lost fragment of a fictional Shakespeare play, which is as readable as any of Shakespeare's plays - that is, for some people it will be amazing, and for some people it will be unreadable. (The same may be true for "The Crazy Wide Forever" by Sal Paradyse, imitation-Kerouac with no punctuation and random strings of words. It is possible that, if you like Kerouac, you will like this - to me, it is Moore's one real failure in the book, a waxwork homage that sacrifices entertainment for verisimilitude, like Gus Van Sant's "Psycho.")

I don't quite think "Black Dossier" is as complete a work as "Watchmen" or "From Hell" - both of those series took elaborate flights of fancy and tangent, but both also never lost track of the say-it-again-STORY. The narrative in "Black Dossier" is a chase with the bare minimum of tension, with plenty of time for sightseeing along the way (it is telling that the people who are being chased have plenty of time to read the titular Dossier, taking time out from their own book to read another one). It ends with an elaborate scene set in the Blazing World - one of the first imaginary worlds created for literature, making it Moore's alpha and omega, a paradise for fictional creations of all sorts (in the background, you will see copyright-baiting variations on Charlie Brown and Captain Marvel, and you will also see fairies fucking in midair). This scene is essentially an elaborate party to rival Trimalchio; it requires 3-D glasses; it lacks any real sense of climax. Prospero, from Shakespeare's "The Tempest," leads us away with a soliloquy about nothing less than the existence of fiction. Just as Raging Bull ends with de Niro doing la Motta doing Brando doing Terry Malloy, so "Black Dossier" ends with Moore doing Prospero doing Shakespeare doing Prospero. Round and round.

The speech reads like a conclusion - to the series, to Moore's career, to the comic book medium, to human imagination. Intriguingly, this is not the end of the series - Moore has promised a genuine third volume next year, so expect it for Christmas 2012. Still, this is certainly the end of Moore's thesis for the "League" project. What started out as a funny riff on the team comic book has become the ur-story of all fiction. In this, Moore's book stands next to Don Rosa's "The life and Times of Scrooge McDuck," which absorbed hundreds of stories written by Carl Barks about Scrooge McDuck and linked them into a common history, resulting in a work that was both grander (in sweep) and more detailed (in artistic style and comic substance) than Barks was ever allowed. Oddly, this is not the first time a comic book creator has used Prospero as a metaphorical stand-in for all fictional creations - Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman" ended with an issue devoted to Shakespeare's "The Tempest."
(less)

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Feb 01, 2008 Karl Kindt rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2008

As I type this, I am only halfway through this third installment of Alan Moore's LoEG, and I am stunned, amazed, impressed, and entertained, even more than the previously wonderful installaments. He manages to weave Emma Peel (of THE AVENGERS TV show), Mina (from DRACULA), King Arthur, Gulliver, Odysseus, James Bond (known as Jimmy to protect Moore from law-suits, no doubt), and dozens of others into one coherent and entertaining tale. Like WATCHMEN, this is a story that can only be told through...more

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Nov 16, 2007 Tommy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: alan-moore, comics

okay, I'm only about 20 pages in, but just flipping through this thing, drooling over the beautiful art, seeing that Alan Moore is aping the styles of Kerouac and Shakespeare, I already want to give it five stars! Jeez, 3-D glasses and a Tijuana Bible! I have the same feeling right now as I did when I bought KISS ALIVE II as a kid and found the temporary tattoos inside.

Later---> Yep, another five stars for Alan Moore. I must admit, I missed even more of the references then I usually do in a L...more

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Dec 19, 2007 Joseph rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Everyone

Shelves: graphic-novel, fiction

When the release of this book was delayed, I got a little nervous. Alan Moore has done some amazing things, but he seems to be rather easily waylaid by his own obsessions. As good as the first two volumes of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen were, I could easily imagine him losing his way when it came time to write this book, especially considering its ambitious scope.

I'm more than pleased with the outcome, however. Admittedly, the frame story involving Mina and Allan recovering the Dossier and...more

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Dec 30, 2007 Mark rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: comics

Ambitious, beautifully produced and thoughtfully written and assembled. But as with a lot of Moore's recent books, it seems to require buying in wholesale to his vision of the medium. Not a terrible thing in itself, but I liked watching Moore stretch the boundaries of the larger mainstream world of comic books. Now, without a lot to limit him, and without the decades of other writers and artists before him that he's able to build on/explode the characters he tackles, it all seems too insular, ma...more

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Apr 02, 2013 Salvatore Privitera rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: from-anobii, comic-book, dc-comics

Ardendo in eterno in un mondo splendente
Il black dossier �� un'opera difficile da catalogare ed inquadrare anche all'interno di una produzione vasta e variegata come quella di Alan Moore.
Sostanzialmente un interludio all'interno della cronologia della Lega, gli eventi narrati in questo volume avvengono circa sessant'anni dopo la conclusione di quello precedente. La storia ha inizio con i protagonisti che trafugano dagli archivi dell'intelligence britannica l'eponimo volume, una raccolta di testi...more

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Mar 28, 2009 Angel rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: fans of Moore and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Shelves: graphic_novels_and_comics

Compared to the previous League works, this was at times way overdone. While a lot of readers seem to lavish Moore with praise, in a way, this was reminiscent of the creative extension assignment I used to give my high school students when we read 1984 in class; that often had mixed results. It reminded me due to the various pastiches, collages, and various formats Moore employed, and all that had mixed results for my reading experience. Very well developed, yet at times it is clear Moore is goi...more

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Mar 22, 2009 Robert Jazo rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: horror, comics, modern-fantasy, sci-fi

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. The first two volumes of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen had a pretty simple concept: Transplant the concept of a Superhero team to 19th century Britain using a literary pastiche of characters from that era. They were good comics, but not what I would call groundbreaking.
The Black Dossier is a completely different animal. The framing story is moves the League timeline ahead to late 1950s, sometime after the fall of Big Brother's England. Two mysterious figures steal the "Black Dossier" whi...more

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Nov 27, 2008 Leonardo rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Lovers of 19th-century fantasy/sci-fi/adventures books... and walking reference libraries

Shelves: comics-and-graphic-novels, 20th-century, england, cities

By now, I've come to realize I'll never be able to read as much as Alan Moore has read in his life... though I dare to say that he is a massive inspiration to anyone who loves the worlds of imagination that literature has created throughout the ages. This thirds installment in the world of the League (which the dreadful movie got all wrong and didn't get any close to matching) is both a summary of the heroes' past adventures, and a very well researched and thoughtful "what if all those character...more

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Mar 05, 2013 Helmut Barro rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: comics

Ausstattung spitze, Inhalt eher mau

Lange habe ich auf den dritten Teil der LoEG gewartet und darauf gehofft, einen ähnlich spitzenklassigen Titel zu bekommen wie die ersten zwei Teile. Leider wurde diese Hoffnung sehr enttäuscht.
In den ersten beiden Teilen haben Moore und O'Neil toll auf zwei Ebenen gearbeitet - wer wollte, konnte sich extrem tief in die viktorianische Literatur und Zeitgeschichte einarbeiten, sich von einem Geheimnis zum nächsten arbeiten, und die praktisch in jedem Panel verst...more Ausstattung spitze, Inhalt eher mau

Lange habe ich auf den dritten Teil der LoEG gewartet und darauf gehofft, einen ähnlich spitzenklassigen Titel zu bekommen wie die ersten zwei Teile. Leider wurde diese Hoffnung sehr enttäuscht.
In den ersten beiden Teilen haben Moore und O'Neil toll auf zwei Ebenen gearbeitet - wer wollte, konnte sich extrem tief in die viktorianische Literatur und Zeitgeschichte einarbeiten, sich von einem Geheimnis zum nächsten arbeiten, und die praktisch in jedem Panel versteckten Anspielungen verfolgen - so tief, dass ein weiterer Autor (Jess Nevins) Bücher mit Kommentaren zum Comic herausgebracht hatte. ABER - wer das nicht wollte, konnte TROTZDEM eine actionreiche, witzige, verrückte und trotzdem irgendwie klassisch wirkende Geschichte verfolgen. Dieses Spiel auf zwei Ebenen ist für mich ein Exempel literarischer Klasse.

In Black Dossier ist dies absolut nicht der Fall. Hier zwingt Moore den Leser dazu, den ersten Strang, also das sich einarbeiten, zu verfolgen, und lässt den anderen Lesertyp völlig abseits stehen. Hier wird nicht mehr "gezeigt", sondern nur noch "erzählt" - man fühlt sich nicht in eine Story hineinversetzt, sondern liest halt, naja, ein "Dossier". Die langen Textpassagen, die nicht unbedingt als spannend bezeichnet werden können, enthalten meist mäßig interessante Details zu den pseudohistorischen Figuren. In anderen Comicveröffentlichungen wird dieses Stilmittel auch gebraucht, da ist der Text aber in die Geschichte eingebunden und steht nicht separat neben dem Plot wie hier (es erinnert mich teilweise an Wikipedia, was in Black Dossier geboten wird).

Warum trotzdem drei Sterne, wenn der Inhalt doch eigentlich eher maximal, mit viel gutem Willen und dem Moore-Bonus, ein Zweisterner ist?

Black Dossier glänzt auf einen ganz anderen Ebene, und das ist die Ausstattung. Wirklich klasse ist, dass man als Leser auf die unterschiedlichsten Materialien trifft - pseudoklassische Literatur (ein "unbekanntes" Shakespeare-Stück) auf dickem Elefantenhaut-Papier mit Maserung, Pulp-Porno schwarzweiß auf billigem, kleinformatigem Querformat, Comics in für Comics typischem Hochglanzdruck, und ein 3D-Teil mit 3D-Brille. Ein Lesebändchen und stabiler Hardcover-Einband mit Schutzumschlag runden das ganze ab. Da man das in dieser extremen Form nirgendswo sonst bisher gesehen hat, verdient sich "Black Dossier" die Extrasterne durch seine Extravaganz und Üppigkeit in dieser Beziehung.

Für mich das beste an Black Dossier ist eben dieses ungewöhnliche Spiel mit Material und Inhalt. Der Inhalt allein ist dabei sehr vernachlässigenswert und keineswegs mit der Klasse von LoEG 1 und 2 vergleichbar. Insgesamt ein "schade", ich hatte mir mehr erhofft, insbesondere da dieser "Novelty Bonus" nach dem ersten Lesen aufgebraucht ist und dann leider nicht mehr viel übrig bleibt von dem Buch, was den Nochmallesen-Reiz stark einschränkt. (less)

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Oct 22, 2012 Darrell rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphic-novels, reviewed

"Dean runs on an on that way he had back then like evry conversation wuz juss endless white line road he'd gotta burn up on his way t' th' celestial Monet smudge o th' horizun n ole Dr. Sachs sags flags collapses back t' sit on flour bags n ole pasta sacks jaw slack his wicker works hung wiltin fum his wizened wizzerd lizzerd fingertips cain't git a wurd in edgewise an muss wait like evvabody else fer Dean t' lose hiz steam what he's got more uv 'n a reverse Chinese laundry what takes clothes in...more "Dean runs on an on that way he had back then like evry conversation wuz juss endless white line road he'd gotta burn up on his way t' th' celestial Monet smudge o th' horizun n ole Dr. Sachs sags flags collapses back t' sit on flour bags n ole pasta sacks jaw slack his wicker works hung wiltin fum his wizened wizzerd lizzerd fingertips cain't git a wurd in edgewise an muss wait like evvabody else fer Dean t' lose hiz steam what he's got more uv 'n a reverse Chinese laundry what takes clothes in clean n sends 'm back near black"
-Sal Paradyse

As usual, Alan Moore combines several different styles of writing. This volume contains passages in the style of Shakespeare, Jack Kerouac, old fashioned advertisements, an erotic novel, and more. The artwork also comes in many varieties including comic book, comic strip, postcards, woodcuts, and political cartoons. There's even a section designed for 3D glasses. As we've come to expect from the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, there are far too many literary references for any one person to pick up on all of them. Several of the literary characters making appearances this time include Christian from Pilgrim's Progress, Prospero from The Tempest, Dean Moriarty from On the Road, Lemuel Gulliver from Gulliver's Travels, Nyarlathotep from the works of H.P. Lovecraft, and countless others. The main story takes place in 1950s Britain immediately following the downfall of Big Brother as "Jimmy" Bond and his fellow spies attempt to recover the Black Dossier from a couple of thieves who will be familiar to readers of the first two volumes of this series.

"We are the tales that soothed your infant brow,
The roles you wore for childhood's alley-play.
Did not your youth, when lust each notion seized,
See paper paramour took oft to bed?
When grown to grey responsibility,
Its disenchantments and diurnal toils,
Come each day's disappointed end were we
Not all thy consolation, thy escape?
And more, the very personality
That scrys this epilogue was once unformed,
Assembled hastily from borrowed scraps,
From traits admired in others, from ideals.
Did fictional examples not prevail?
Holmes' intellect? The might of Hercules?
Our virtues, our intoxicating vice:
While fashioning thyself, were these not clay?
If we mere insubstantial fancies be,
How more so thee, who from us substance stole?"
-Prospero(less)

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Sep 19, 2012 Andrea rated it 5 of 5 stars

To blaze forever in a blazing world!

Finale travolgente.

Mina e Allan, inseguiti, raggiungono il castello dove li attende il Golliwog, pronto a salpare per il "blazing world". Ma prima abbiamo una conclusione di una potenza drammatica notevole, che riguarda i "cattivi" inseguitori.

Lo "zio" Hugo scopre che Jimmy, il suo collega è un traditore.

Parentesi.
Hugo è un personaggio milleriano, un tipo tutto d'un pezzo, una specie di Marv di Sin city.
Nei fumetti di Miller, gli eroi sono Veri Uomini, i catti...more

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Jul 20, 2012 Ubalstecha rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book is the hidden history of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Gathered as a series of different clippings, such as articles, postcards, and "boys comics", by the government in a Black Dossier to document the actions of the league. These clippings are stolen by Mina Harper and Alan Quartermaine, and it is their story of escaping with the dossier that weaves the book together.

As they read the dossier, so do we, and a very interesting story it presents. We get the altered history of En...more

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Aug 28, 2011 Nicolas Ward rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi, graphicnovel

This is more a multimedia work than a true graphic novel, so while I enjoyed it for both style and substance, it is difficult to read. Suffice it to say I didn't make it through the 6 pages of beatnik text that was one giant sentence. The Tijuana bible and the story of Fanny Hill means it's quite a bit more nudity than previous LXG installments. I did like how it alternated between the story of recovering the Dossier and the found documents contained therein, complete with the characters shown r...more

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Feb 22, 2010 Raj rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy, graphic-novel

In the early 1950s Britain is just throwing off the shackles of the totalitarian Ingsoc Big Brother government and two shadowy figures steal a dossier from Miniluv (formerly the MI5 headquarters at Vauxhall House). The dossier turns out to be regarding the "Murray Group", star of the previous two League books (and the book itself consists of them reading the dossier), filling in background on the world and stories that we didn't see, as well as other incarnations of the League before and after M...more

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Dec 30, 2009 Jake Mix rated it 3 of 5 stars

The Black Dossier provides connective tissue between volume 2 of the series and recently started 1910. It's clear that Moore doesn't consider it a core novel, since he really lets loose, toying with all sorts of strange narrative devices, primarily the found documents in the Black Dossier (itself reproduced in the book). The found documents let Moore drop in and out of different genre traditions, from a Cthulhu/comedy-of-manners hybrid to a Tijuana bible. This is fun when you're up for it and ca...more

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Nov 24, 2009 Terry rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 007

As it develops, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series reads like Alan Moore’s attempt to construct a Unified Theory of British Literature. It’s now 1958 and Mina Murray and Allan Quatermain, Jr. have stolen the Black Dossier, a history of the League in all its previous incarnations. Opposing them are Jimmy Bond, Emma Knight (Peel) and “Bulldog”Drummond.

It’s a chase across post-Big Brother London, but the plot is just a contrivance to allow Mina and Allan (and the reader) access to the Bla...more

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Jun 12, 2009 Thomas rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2009

Tell a f***ing story, dude. Some of the pages are breathtaking, that is the only reason it gets three stars. The 3D section looks incredible, though I had to take lots of drugs and force myself to read each page over and over again to get any freakin' idea what's supposed to be going on. I guess I'm just not as smart as Mr. Moore, a fact I feel is the central theme of this book.

The story, what little there is, is off-the-shelf, and would be fine as a pulp story if I didn't have to work for it so...more

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Nov 20, 2008 Sean rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: adventure, graphic-novels, non-us, historical, sci-fi

Chock-full of derring-do, sexy times, rocket rides and harsh governmental oppression, The Black Dossier reunites several characters from Moore and O'Neill's seminal League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, this time in 1958. The fascist era of Big Brother is winding down, and a secret black dossier on Britain's most famous covert operation is stolen from the former Ministry of Love by a youthful-looking pair of spies. The pair's story in the present intertwines with excerpts from the dossier, which de...more

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Jul 02, 2010 Jonathan rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, graphic-novel

Compared to The League of Extraordinary Gentleman vols 1 and 2, The Black Dossier is a wacky ride. Which is saying a lot. In the beginning of the book (set in post-Big Brother England), our heroes get past one Jimmy Bond to capture a black-bound dossier that contains various documents pertaining to the Murray Group's history. These include the comic-book biography of an immortal gender-bending warrior, the first act of an unpublished Shakespeare prequel to The Tempest, and several chapters from...more

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Mar 05, 2012 Jaime Abbess rated it 3 of 5 stars

We open to see a Post Big Brother England and follow two mysterious agents who are in search of the black dossier. They find the dossier at the beginning of the graphic novel and the reader is able to experience the reading of the dossier along with the agents. Moore clearly had fun playing the part of many different author's inside this book. We see him play the part of a comic strip author, of a diarist, of Shakespeare himself and we see him as the author of several military documents.

I would...more

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Apr 20, 2009 Bruce rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: diehard LXG fans only

I have little to add to the extensive coverage this pastiche volume has already received here on Goodreads and on Amazon. This one is a loose parable in which Mina Harker and Allan Quatermain, transported to a post-Orwellian 1950s, are chased by James Bond and Emma Peel to the very gates of The Blazing World, an n-dimensional (3D-rendered in red and green here) space in which all fictional beings live until their reemergence/re-use in the "real" world.

All this is really just a frame, though, as...more

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Jan 06, 2009 Allanna rated it 2 of 5 stars

Meh. Michael summed it up well -- "There's a lot of sex in it."

I was hoping for more back story ... and easier to read formats.

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Apr 17, 2011 Pete rated it 3 of 5 stars

Alan Moore's reach has exceeded his grasp on this one. Still, parts of this volume deserve at least 4 if not 5 stars - particularly the genuinely cool frame story, which brilliantly places Mina Murray and Allan Quartermain in the thickets of a recently disbanded 1984 style English government. The space port is cool too, and I dig that he envisions a distinction between "government heroes" (spies like James Bond and Emma Peel) who ain't really heroes and the monsters and oddballs that those gover...more Alan Moore's reach has exceeded his grasp on this one. Still, parts of this volume deserve at least 4 if not 5 stars - particularly the genuinely cool frame story, which brilliantly places Mina Murray and Allan Quartermain in the thickets of a recently disbanded 1984 style English government. The space port is cool too, and I dig that he envisions a distinction between "government heroes" (spies like James Bond and Emma Peel) who ain't really heroes and the monsters and oddballs that those government handlers corral, employ and often wind up tangling with, i.e. the Leagues themselves... This is a part of Moore's political imagination which I find interesting and it's developed much more here than in the previous volumes.

At issue are the copious nested prose elements of "The Black Dossier," which really make it stand out from previous installments. These are at times quite clever - but usually when Moore gets into that kind of thing I find myself "appreciating" but not "enjoying" his work. (To be fair to the man, he envisioned this one as a sourcebook, not a third volume proper, and so lots of background info in such a form is understandable from that standpoint.) The texty bits were the sticky widget for me review-wise though since I have to say the big reason I'm giving this three stars and not four is his DREADFUL attempt to produce an excerpt of a faux Jack Kerouac novel which turned out as utter gobbledygook. Kerouac's narrative style is broad, rolling and poetic, but never straight-up run-on nonsense the way Moore busts it out here. It bugged me.

Ultimately I find his project noble, interesting and rich, if perhaps a bit...pedantic?, and in this outing, a bit short on the pure enjoyment factor, which is the whole reason I sometimes read comics instead of Dostoevsky or Bernhard anyway. What's been so cool about the League books is they're like reading a version of the Justice League designed for English majors but as he gets more ambitious, the whole point of reading it begins to fade. Nevertheless, Prospero's soliloquy at the end was lovely and perfectly encapsulates what it seems Moore is trying to say about the human imagination, its denizens, their relationship to us, etc. It IS interesting. I just wish it was all a bit more fun. What's most frustrating is so often when I read his prose histories of different moments in League history I just think "dammit I like this!, I want to read an actual comic about this!...", like that bitchen episode he describes in the lead up to WWI where the second Murray group battles the French Mystery Men under the Paris opera house, with the German "Twilight Men" hanging in the background, composed of Drs. Caligari, Mabuse and Rotwang, plus the female automaton from Metropolis!, I mean how cool is that!, that should have been the third volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. That would have been a blast!(less)

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Feb 20, 2010 Christopher rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: alternate-history, fiction, graphic-novel-comic, banned-challenged

I picked this book up for my Masters of Library & Information Science class where we were asked to read and discuss a banned or challenged book.

I'm lazy, so I'm going to cut-and-paste here:

"Did anybody here go see the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie?

The third graphic novel in the series by Alan Moore was formally challenged by a librarian in Jessamine County, Kentucky in 2008. When the library refused to remove the book (it was requested originally by a patron) or at least relocate...more I picked this book up for my Masters of Library & Information Science class where we were asked to read and discuss a banned or challenged book.

I'm lazy, so I'm going to cut-and-paste here:

"Did anybody here go see the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie?

The third graphic novel in the series by Alan Moore was formally challenged by a librarian in Jessamine County, Kentucky in 2008. When the library refused to remove the book (it was requested originally by a patron) or at least relocate it from the graphic novel section which was located near the young adult section of the library. When this appeal failed, she checked the book out to herself to keep it off the shelves. When an 11 year-old patron reserved the book, she and another librarian removed the hold. They were fired the next day.

So what's so bad about this book? Isn't the League series just about literary characters from the Victorian period running around like superheroes?

The author, Alan Moore, is known for stretching genres and challenging readers (he also wrote the graphic novels 'Watchmen' and 'V for Vendetta'). In this book, I think he was in large part looking for a censor to incite.

The main story is set in a 1958 England that has suffered under the rule of Big Brother straight out of Orwell's 1984. Other sections are less comic-based and used varied literary styles to continue the story and setting, including a fictional Shalespearean play, pulp novels, a sequel to Fanny Hill (illustrated in the style of one of the original editions) and most damning, a Tijuana Bible depicting graphic sex between repressed proles of the 1984 setting (supposedly published by Big brother to keep the proles happy).

Is it pornography? The Tijuana Bible section says it's published by the fictional government 'Pornsec', so I'm tempted to take it at it's word.

But the Tijuana Bible section (or the Fanny Hill illustrations) shouldn't be taken alone. The levels of satire are deep and complex. The literary references are enough to keep and English Major on wikipedia for hours. Critically, the book has been acclaimed. Thus the book fails the third prong of the Supreme Court's test for obscenity.

Mr. Moore was looking for people like the county librarian Jessamine County to offend. He was also looking to tell a deep and interesting story. He succeeded at both."(less)

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Apr 12, 2012 Ed rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: cross-over, comic, cthulhu-mythos

It is hard to know what to make of this instalment. Certainly this is not the place for the casual reader to attempt to drop in to the series, as it really seems to be an exercise in filling in the gaps in the overall LOEG mythology whilst maximising the fan service - the story is somewhat secondary to the frantic attempt to jam together as many literary references as possible. Never has a hyper-dense kaleidoscopic meta-text read so much like a D&D sourcebook.

That was the difficulty I had w...more

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About Alan Moore

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Alan Moore is an English writer most famous for his influential work in comics, including the acclaimed graphic novels Watchmen, V for Vendetta and From Hell. He has also written a novel, Voice of the Fire, and performs "workings" (one-off performance art/spoken word pieces)...more

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“Not thou alone, but all humanity doth in its progress fable emulate. Whence came thy rocket-ships and submarine if not from Nautilus, from Cavorite? Your trustiest companions since the cave, we apparitions guided mankind's tread, our planet, unseen counterpart to thine, as permanent, as ven'rable, as true. On dream's foundation matter's mudyards rest. Two sketching hands, each one the other draws: the fantasies thou've fashioned fashion thee.” — 4 people liked it

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