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WEIGHTY_CONCEIT

                                             July 25, 2007


                                    NAUGHT_SEVEN

    Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill  --
    "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", Vol 1. (1999-2000)
     (graphic novel)

         My first exposure to this
         as a comic didn't leave                    The drive of the story
         me very impressed, but                     derives from a slightly
         seeing it as a graphic                     silly mechanism: the
         novel gives a more                         reader is constantly
         positive impression.                       made to wonder about the
                                                    "identity" of various
             I don't usually have a                 characters, i.e.  what's
             problem coming into a                  their equivalency to the
             story in the middle, but               figures of late 19th
             maybe that's not                       century fiction.
             adviseable with Moore.
                                                        In the case with
                  The O'Neill artwork is                the female lead,
                  full of interesting                   we're told
                  crazed futuristic                     immediately that
                  anarchronisms ala                     she's using her
                  "steam-punk" (not to                  maiden name, so
                  mention "Brazil",                     we know she has
                  "Wild, Wild West"...)                 some other name
                                                        we're more
                                                        familiar with.
                                                        She refuses to
                                                        remove a scarf,
                                                        suggesting neck
                                                        wounds, and
                                                        perhaps vampire
                                                        tales...

                                                        SPOILERS

                                                          It's at least mildly
                                                          clever that Moore
                                                          selected once of the
   And it took me long enough, but                        neglected female
   I think I understand where                             characters from a
   Moore was coming from on this,                         familiar story,
   the central notion is one I've                         where even the
   had in other contexts because                          secondary male names
   of the music sampling                                  are rather familiar
   controversies.                                         to the comics nerd.

   The point is: if the monster corporations
   are going to get so fussy about "protecting
   intellectual property", maybe it's time to
   steer the cool in a retro direction, and
   work exclusively with sources from the
   pre-Mouse era.
                                               RETROROCKET
      Alan Moore is someone who's made his
      name (to a large extent) with doing
      intelligent re-workings of characters
      invented much earlier, re-treads of
      fading "has-been" properties.

      The trouble with this is two-fold:
      (1) you're often not much rewarded
      when you succeed, e.g. post Frank
      Miller, Batman is still "created
      by Bob Kane"

      (2) your creations get hung up in
      tedious legal shake-downs,
      e.g. Moore's "Miracle Man" (aka
      "Marvel Man") which is truly
      excellent and out-of-print for
      decades.



          Moore's solution is to go more heavily
          into pastiche than Phil Jose Farmer
          himself, and work up a comic book
          "universe" full of cross-overs from
          19th Century literature, which not
          incidentally is the original source
          material that's mutated into
          superheroes and science fiction.

             Captain Nemo, Mr. Hyde,
             "the Invisible Man",
             and Alan Quartermain,
             along with the aforementioned
             Mina Murray, effectively the
             leader of the group.

          There's the suggestion that this
          pastiche-o-verse is something more
          significant than an uncreative
          forced recombination of existing
          elements, it is something like
          literature itself...

                   "The Blazing World".










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