Comic Art

Man, if you don’t know Alan Moore, you’re reading the wrong stuff here. One of the greatest ever in the business Moore created some of the best comics ever published, V for Vendetta, The Watchmen, Batman – The Killing Joke, Swamp Thing, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, From Hell and so, so many more, most of his stories made it to the big screen with usually catastrophic results. This one and the next blog will be dedicated to him and two of his upcoming pieces of work, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier and Wild Worlds.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was a landmark in the comics community, a story so retro yet so close, borrowing elements from most of our favorite works of literature in a way so complex and elaborating and crafty you needed hours to find every hint and clue in every page. The League is a group of special people (in ways a lot different than the X-Men I assure you) recruited by the British secret service, responsible for the most peculiar matters. It includes Miss Wilhelmina Murray (from Bram Stoker’s Dracula), Captain Nemo (from Jule Verne’s 20.000 Leagues Under the Sea), Allan Quatermain, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the Invisible Man and many more characters appearing in the story, all of them previously created by other authors in famous books, all settled in a Victorian set (although there are rumors that there will be more Leagues in the future in other time settings).

In this new 208 page hard-cover book the story moves to the 1950’s, Mina Murray and the rejuvenated Allan Quatermain along with the new members of the League search for the , a file containing all the secrets of the League’s history, in an attempt to save it from utter destruction. New era, new characters, some of the old favorite ones, a worthy Alan Moore title, I’m thrilled! Oh yeah, there’s also a bummer in this, it won’t be available till October, patience my friends, patience…