In the (fictional) prose section at the end of the volume, Moore describes journeys made by the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (and those made by previous and later incarnations of it, including parties led by Prospero, Lemuel Gulliver and the gender-changing protagonist of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando) and sets his fiction within an ambitious and highly literary world that seems to contain every supernatural fiction ever invented – both folklore and science fiction, even Twin Peaks. They encounter Mycroft Holmes, Ishmael from Moby Dick, the Artful Dodger and a huge amount of other recognisable characters wherever they go.
The second volume sees the same gang – The Invisible Man, Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde, and the less household-name protagonists from King Solomon’s Mines and 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea – fighting off a Martian invasion. The first volume sees a group of fictional misfits drawn together by Mina Murray, heroine of Dracula, in order to thwart a plan to destroy London. There are 12 issues of a monthly magazine included here, with each issue including a combination of prose and standard comic book presentation to evoke a complex, entertaining and richly meta fictional world.Īlan Moore and his artist, Kevin O’Neill, have created a steampunk Victorian England peopled by thousands of characters from the fiction of the period. The one I chose was The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a series he’s been intermittently adding to since the late 90s, with the first two “volumes” collected in this omnibus edition. I hadn’t read a graphic novel/comic book in a while, so thought I’d have a go with one of the many Alan Moore (whose work I really like) projects that I’ve never read.
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