League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 2009: A Gentlemen's Review

Their expressions pretty much sum it up, yeah.

Pull in close.  Warm your feet by the fire. Fancy a cuppa? We're going to take some time to explore the latest installment of comic book legend Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Century: 2009.  It's penciled by the fantastic Kevin O'Neill (of Marshall Law fame) and co-published by wunderkind publishers Top Shelf Productions and Knockabout Comics.  

The first thing to note before we delve into it is that this is in many ways a more sparse presentation than previous installments, owing in part (no doubt) to the fact that present day copyrights impinge on Moore's possibilities with literary cultural collage, one of his major strengths and a backbone of the series as a whole, since the initial premise is, after all, drawing from stables of established figures in various canons and re-imagining them in a world where they all live side by side.  Moore, of course, is fully aware of this limitation, and plays with it like a pro, but more of that in a moment.  

We arrive in this fictional parallel to our not-too-distant past with none of the orgiastic fanfare of previous explorations.  Orlando, the gender-switching immortal with three millennia under his/her belt, is a traumatized soldier in parallel reality Iraq (Q'Mar), set to receive a medal and a ride home after snapping and slaughtering not just insurgents, but also his fellow soldiers, all nearby civilians, and a dog.  Upon returning to the abandoned hideout of the League, the wizard Prospero orders her (gender-switch in the shower) to find Mina Harker and stop the Antichrist and his forthcoming "traditional Apocalypse", formulated by Crowley manque Oliver Haddo. 

Pause a moment and examine the litany of curse words that the Prime Minister's "Fixer" streams in the background on the telly while Prospero chews Orlando out.  Where is that convolution of Moore wit we've grown accustomed to?  That overwrought double and sometimes triple entendre hidden behind layers of homage and nostalgia?   Hiding under a thin layer of disgust with current trends of banality within the mediasphere, old son.  He makes very little effort to disguise it. 

A throwback to previous installments ties up certain plotlines dedicated readers might have lost track of.  The MI5 propaganda institution gives wry references to the James Bonds of times gone past (can you spot them?) and the Coote Institute (descendant of Volume 1's girl's school, directly referencing randy what-the-butler-saw-and-what-have-you's of Britain's erotic serial The Pearl) dovetailing with the Gallywag-oriented backup story and poor Mina's dementia. 

Grant Morrison's King in Yellow Mobius Strip Tease seems tame by comparison.

Clamor on through the small references to popular culture that manifest as vague asides throughout the streets of London as Orlando and Mina attempt to piece together their team (adventurer Alan Quartermain has degenerated into a heroin-addicted bum and coward) and the location/nature of the Antichrist.

Is that the current incarnation of The Doctor strolling through King's Cross with the first one? Surely not.  Orlando and Mina consult with Norton, the Prisoner of London, who directs them to a hidden train platform, gore-streaked and corpse-filled, hearkening, of course indirectly, to Harry Potter's magical train station leading to Hogwarts.  When Mina and Orlando take the train to the (decimated) "Invisible College"  an interesting point is made.  In the midst of theories about the relation/reflection of this blasted dreamscape to the real world, Orlando relates the magical school massacre they're traipsing through the aftermath of to the school shootings in America.  And suddenly, in a series where only the Prisoner of London got to make cryptic crossword comments relating to the "real world" while everything else related to a literary looking glass, we have a direct reference to our reality.  The parallels to fiction's inter-relatedness to fact has often been a point Moore engaged (notably in the wonderful series Promethea) but here we can feel his point bearing down with a certain bitter gravitas.  Flashbacks from the point of view of the Antichrist have Oliver Haddo look us (him) in the face and call him (us) a banal disappointment.

The AntiChrist has no sense of Feng Shui.

On first assessment, one could call this latest (last?) installment of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen the least fulfilling of the lot, yet Moore's covered even that base with the framework of the storyline as a whole.  Modern society, the banal Antichristing fly-harangued redundancy that it is, has become a dreary mess with little to no sense of purpose. The bustling over-populated chaos bustle of previously explored centuries and their dirty alleyways has been replaced with austere camera-lined bland streets (the spirit of this age embodied early on in the story with a passing glance over an album cover titled "Oh, Who Cares?").  Not even the eternally present black cat of previous League episodes can be found.  The fornicating faeries are all dead. The Blazing World has receded, and our only fully male hero of the series is an opiate addicted sot until the final act.  Even our villain, the petulant Antichrist (scarred, exploited, nameless) is little more than a grubby wanker with an eyeball problem. Yes, he's pretty much Harry Potter, if you want to be puerile about it. And yes, Harry Potter is pretty much Tim Hunter. And Tim Hunter is the oldest son of artist John Bolton, as much as Orlando is Roland. And so on.

There is texture, even in the sparseness allowed in this work.  At the climax we're given a curious confrontation between the Poppinsesque "final goddess" and the Antichrist. We're given a dozen tiny "in-jokes" (as opposed to the hundreds of Volume Two) and we are given a few hints of potential foreshadowing (including a potentially disastrous "Moriarty-sperm-repopulated moonman war" hint hidden at the end).  Is this the final step for the series, or just this volume?  Whatever the case, it's been a hall of floor-to-ceiling looking glasses, and it has reflected the arc of our own world's disintegration with the aplomb we have come to expect from Alan Moore.

If a forthcoming fourth volume is yet to be had, I'd welcome it.  The territory is still ripe, even if the content has to shift considerably.  The trip has been an interesting one, to say the least, and if it were to crack open a wider portal and bridge that rift between what is real and "not-real" then we would all be well-served.

Good Reviews for recent Comic Book Publications

EARTH 2 #2   - 9/10

You've no doubt heard by now that Green Lantern is gay.  Interestingly, the DC Universe has run just a tad bit behind in the new trend of catering (pandering...?) to the LGBT community, while Marvel has had minor mutant Northstar outed for quite some time, and soon to be married (to a black human!).  The reaction from the Evangelical community to these announcements was almost as predictable as the cascade of reactions from internet trolls.  In all seriousness though, the sudden surge of "newsworthiness" of a comic book character's sexual orientation seems to have come about in the tumult of a cultural zeitgeist where many serious civil rights issues, mostly centered around marriage between homosexuals, are playing themselves out in political arenas.  This trend has come to a dramatic head with the latest issue of Earth 2, where a character (Alan Scott, no longer a World War II relic) proposes to his lover Sam.  James Robinson heads up the script, taking the Alan Scott character he's loved for so long ("old universe" issues of JLA written by Robinson gave ample stage-time to "the original Green Lantern's" convoluted family, including his gay son Obsidian, now clearly null and void), while Nicola and Trevor Scott move the story along at a brisk pace with clean crisp artwork.  Overall, the plot in this parallel universe seems to be portioning  itself out, the previous issue seeing the death of DC's "Big Three", and this issue featuring the dying god Mercury transferring his superspeed to shiftless loser Jay Garrick. The proposal of marriage comes only at the end of this issue, immediately followed by cliffhanger catastrophe.  This revamps the whole idea of "Golden Age" DC heroes as relevant to the standards and practices of a tolerant tomorrow, which is of course today.

RED LANTERNS #10  - 9/10

For whatever reason, the DC New 52 saw fit to give The Red Lanterns and Stormwatch their own series in the universal reboot. This has not been a bad thing, in most aspects.  With Peter Milligan and Miguel Sepulveda (both extremely talented individuals with proven track records) teaming up on scripts and art, respectively, this issue of Red Lanterns crosses over with the previous week's installment of Stormwatch #9 quite nicely.  One part slugfest (Midnighter punches a cat) and one part progressive character development (Atrocitus is not the one note character he once seemed), this expands the scope of these relatively "unknown" titles and gives more depth and dimension to the potential "cosmic" impacts as yet unexplored (outside of Green Lantern titles, gearing up to a major forthcoming showdown with the Guardians of the Universe) within the New 52.  Pacing is solid, and the two part story wraps up neatly, leaving the future wide open for further engagements. As with all titles floating in cosmic flotsam and jetsam, these two are best served when they ground their storylines in concrete character development.  And of course... epic fight scenes.

SWAMP THING #10  - 9/10

The fantastic world developed over the past year within Swamp Thing has expanded rather well from the mythos developed during the legendary Alan Moore years.  To a great extent, we have series writer Scott Snyder to thank for that.  Yanick Paquette's art, a fluid organic complication, lent itself to the progress of the series popularity, but we can see Francesco Francavilla's art has played a crucial part in this issue... adding a texture to a beautifully colored flatness, akin to Darwyn Cooke, with old greenjeans returning from a desert war with the Rot (and Lord of the Rot, Sethe).  This issue features the official return of Anton Arcane, the arch-villain of Alec Holland and friends in times gone past.  The build up for all of this is a matter of course, and the story's pacing matches the ambitions of the creative team.  We almost catch our breaths after the epic arc that brought us to this point, and we can see that the Parliment of Trees, torched and hacked and rotted through at roughly the same time as Alec Holland's brutal chainsaw murder, have been revived as saplings.  Needless to say, Abigail Arcane will be facing off in a Rot-infused family reunion next issue, and further down the line we can expect connections to the Animal Man series finally (after much build up) resolve.

MIGHTY THOR ANNUAL #1  - 8/10

This issue, written by J.M. Dematteis, with art from Richard Elson, deals with troublesome and very abstract cosmic forces set to undo all of creation, plunging Infinity into Oblivion.  Pulling plots from beyond the scope of most fanboy's memories, Thor teams up with The Silver Surfer to curtail an invasion from Outwhere by The Other, playing the long con game-within-a-game devised, potentially, by The Other's counterpart and polar opposition, The Scrier.  Old times with Jim Starlin and the cosmic Marvel pantheon are faintly conjured, and an especially nice spot is where the Scrier calls forth thousands of parallel reality Thors and Surfers to rally against The Other... but the high power levels involved deflate most possibilities for reader relation, and in certain areas the vast scope makes dialogue fall somewhat flat.  Self-contained, as Annuals often are, the story still feels constrained, but for anyone more interested in flash over substance it's a rollicking good time.