The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Alan Moore is a grumpy man. A very grumpy man with a very bitter (and probably permanent) grudge against Hollywood. The film version of his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was so spectacularly awful that it caused Sean Connery to quit acting, and that's saying something, as Sean Connery had prior experience with some truly shameful productions. I was unfamiliar with any of Moore's work at the time LXG was released in theatres, so I figured it was just a plain old unbelievably bad movie. Then I read Watchmen for the first time, and shortly thereafter learned that LXG was a Moore book, and got very, very interested.

Penned by Moore and extended with lush, living, period-inspired illustrations by Kevin O'Neill, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a first rate comic-turned-graphic novel meant for people who read. The premise is that the works of Verne, Wells, Conan Doyle, Stoker, Stevenson, and others of the sort, are true accounts of events, and that England has responded by forming MI-5. MI-5, in turn, has sought to recruit those it feels are able and qualified to serve as agents of the Crown by responding to the more, er, unusual threats to national security. Consisting of legendary adventurer Allan Quartermain, Captain Nemo, Hawley Griffin the Invisible Man, and Dr. Jekyll (but mostly Mr. Hyde), and led by Dracula's Mina Murray (formerly Harker), the League's first mission (Vol. I) is wonderfully old-fashionned. The anti-gravity matter from The First Men in the Moon (a Wells book filmed by Ray Harryhausen) has been stolen by that omnipresent villain of yore, a Chinese criminal mastermind (basically, Dr. Fu Manchu) who seeks to use it to rain down aerial bombardment on Britain, and it is this crisis that has led directly to the formation of the League. In and of itself, it's a basic and familiar story, and much adventuring - and literary referencing - ensues.

What makes League such a strong, interesting, and all-around great book is Moore's love of, interest in, and commitment to the old stories. This could also be a hinderance to many readers, and is probably why the film producers had no interest in it - I have at least a passing familiarity with 99% of the literary references made, and there were times when I felt like an outsider. However, this has only served to pique my interest in further reading - probably one of Moore's goals. Everyone wants to share the stories they love, and this is as effective a way as any. Moore incorporates them is a point of brilliance - volume II melds HowThe War of the Worlds with in a genius and delightfully (horribly) morbid way. Let's just say that, even though it freaked me out before, I'll never look at The Island of Dr. MoreauThe Wind in the Willows the same way again. As well, he isn't choosy or snobby with what he uses. Early on in volume II, a battle on the surface of Mars sees the Sorns from C.S. Lewis' space trilogy saving the day for the human settlers - an inclusion from a story that isn't too widely known (and, where known, frequently disregarded), but the non-snobs in the know consider it one of the greatest of its genre. Interestingly enough, as Corey pointed out, Lewis may have been the first person to go hard-core on mixing mythologies - a primary source of influence for Moore, perhaps? The old stories also influence the style of the work, from the fact that the characters use period phrases like "chinaman", to the illustrations, to the fun tongue-in-cheek add-ins on the book jacket and as epilogues. Volume I is a good ol' adventure; volume II is a horror story.

As with any Moore work, there is plenty to discourage the more delicate reader - in this case, his unflinching (and visual) look at the nature of sin, evil, and violence. Mr. Hyde is the physical embodiment of Dr. Jekyll's sin; in effect, the physical embodiment of sin itself, and Moore treats him as such. He's very big, very strong, and wholly savage, feral, and evil, and his method of choice for killing - even sanctioned killing - involves biting and ripping off heads and limbs. The Invisible Man is the true Invisible Man, not the impish, powers-for-good champion so often seen in other incarnations. Hawley Griffin is a man whose morality has eroded to nothing because he has become nothing - no one will ever find his sins out, thus infusing him with the most evil of freedoms. He has become drunk on the fact that there is nothing he can't get away with, to the point where he sees no more point to not doing evil. When Mina and Quartermain first track him down, it's because he's become a serial rapist at a girls boarding school. In a later scene, he beats a policeman to death with a brick and shovel so that he can steal his clothes. Griffin is an extreme, but the same day I read vol. I, I was enjoying some fresh air on my lunch break and asked someone what time it was. When I learned it was the end of my break, and went to go back inside, the person said, "oh, stay a few minutes more, no one will notice" - and though I told her it was important to me that I not do that, the assertion that the majority of self-discipline and morality is based on whether or not we'll get caught sprang off the page and hit me hard with how frighteningly innocuous and pervasive it is. Griffin is not Moore's character, but he's a brilliant, striking character, essential in his repulsiveness. So many adhere to the teachings of the Invisible Man; Moore and O'Neill remind us just how horrific, and how wrong, those teachings are.

Yep, to re-iterate the point I was trying to make: Moore and O'Neill take violence seriously by showing it as something horrific. Read League and you will see fairly realistic depections of people being rent from limb to limb, run through with swords, being beaten to death, getting parts of their skulls sheared off by impact, and in vol. II, though it is interestingly the one act of violence that is not graphic (and is, in the end, largely implicit), Hyde sodomizes a man to death as slowly as possible. But let me make one thing clear: none of this, as far as the book is concerned, is cool. Moore doesn't think it's cool. It's not depicted as cool. It's meant to offend and repulse and horrify, for the best of reasons. I suspect a part of it may be due to the fact of how often Dr. Hyde and the Invisible Man have been tamed into creations that aren't so bad or too dangerous, despite the fact that Hyde is sin incarnate and the Invisible Man is the death of morality. I don't believe there is any other way violence should be presented than the way Moore and others like him present it. I would suggest that PG and PG-13 works that show acts of violence in tame and censor-friendly manners do evil and share much responsibility for perpetuating desensitivity by denying the truth of such acts, and ignoring or hiding the consequences thereof. Think of how many villains have been hit in the face by shovels in PG movies. Now think of how many of those same villains were next seen motionless on the ground with broken noses, smashed features, or flattened skulls leaking grey matter. The answer will be none, and yet, this is what happens when people are hit in the face with heavy blunt objects swung with force and intent to harm. I'm not saying you should read your kids League as a bedtime story; I am saying that I far prefer being horrified by seeing the depiction of such an act rather than getting a (literally) harmless chuckle out of it.

Oh yeah, there's also some sex in vol. II, but I don't find I can call it graphic. Not because it isn't plainly depicted, but because it's very realistically depicted. Not sensationalized, or particularly romanticized, it's just two broken people having sex the way people have sex. "Graphic" has come to be used in a negative sense, usually to denote an exploitative depiction of something. I would say there is no content in the book that is, in that sense of the word, graphic. I think I have to be honest, though, that I would have been very uncomfortable if I'd have read this before I was married, and not sexually active.

Another strong point of storytelling in this book is the fact that a woman chosen to lead the league is not some ridiculous, rah-rah, you-go-girl feminist device. Mina Murray, for those of you who haven't read Bram Stoker's fantastic book, is the only person to survive a full encounter with Dracula. Before being captured and assaulted (and bitten) by the Count, she witnessed from a distance her husband's suffering at Dracula's hands, and her best friend's slow death and eventually euthanasia as the result of a bite. She witnessed, and went toe-to-toe with, one of the greatest fictional horrors mankind has known. In other words, she isn't just intelligent, clever, and resourceful, but is also unlikely to encounter anything worse and, as such, has little to be unable to face (this is not to say that she has become immune to fear, or was not scarred by her experience). Though Mr. Hyde doesn't know the fullness of her story, she is the one person he respects, because though she fears him, she has encountered something worse than him and defeated it. Unlike Nemo, she is temperate and takes no thrill from domination or violence. She really is the most logical character, irrespective of gender, to head the League, so kudos to Moore for that.

(For those of you who have read Dracula, you're probably thinking, as I did, that there's no plausible reason why Mina would come to despise Jonathan so much that she would not only divorce him but revert to her maiden name. Moore devised a logical yet tragic one, revealed in vol. II)

If you've seen the film, and are feeling skeptical about the book, then I sure hope you've read Starship Troopers, because that's what we have here. Paul Verhoeven's take on Starship Troopers was not only a drastically awful film, it was also, bizarrely, the ideological antithesis of Heinlein's book. The only things the two had in common were character and place names. Starship Troopers is one of the finest sci-fi (and, in the fiction realm, poli-sci) books ever written. It's the same scenario with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. This is one great book.

If you decide to read this fine tale, I suggest being familiar or somewhat familiar with the following (literary) titles: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The War of the Worlds, Dracula, The Invisible Man, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Mysterious Island (Ray Harryhausen's film would suffice here), and a story or two about Allan Quartermain (there are...several). A key secondary plot point requires knowledge of Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty in order to be at all interesting, and references are strewn throughout the book like sprinkles on a child's sundae and include everything from Moby Dick to Edgar Allen Poe's The Murder in the Rue Morgue and C.S. Lewis' Out of The Silent Planet / Perelandra to a bunch of things I've never heard of, like some Edgar Rice Burroughs yarn called A Princess of Mars. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen may be a comic, but it's not for people who aren't well-read. If all you know of the majority of the above titles are, well, the titles, or perhaps a film version, the chances that you'll be able to appreciate (or understand) this tale are slim at best. Personally, I've found that these are some pretty good books, though the writing styles of some can be a bit difficult to enjoy. But don't let that put you off - it would be a shame, really.


Volume III is due for release sometime next year; as a bound volume or as individual issues, I'm not sure. I await.