The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen The Black Dossier
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen The Black Dossier
England in the mid 1950s is not the same as it was. The powers that be have instituted…some changes. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen have been disbanded and disavowed, and the country is under the control of an iron-fisted regime. Now, after many years, the still youthful Mina Murray and a rejuvenated Allan Quatermain return and are in search of some answers. Answers that can only be found in a book buried deep in the vaults of their old headquarters, a book that holds the key to the hidden history of the League throughout the ages: The Black Dossier. As Allan and Mina delve into the details of their precursors, some dating back centuries, they must elude their dangerous pursuers who are Hell-bent on retrieving the lost manuscript… and ending the League once and for all.
User Ratings and Reviews
1 Star Horrible
Apparently, the authors decided they wanted to make a bad and tasteless comic, and they succeeded. Lots of gratuitous, bad and tasteless sex. Only half of the book is a readable comic, the rest is either incomprehensible, bad, or pages of unreadable text.
4 Stars Fun, but a little wordy
I love Alan Moore, but he does need to learn that sometimes less is more when it comes to writing prose. He does go on. And on. The more classic graphic novel parts of this collection come as a huge relief after some of the small print endlessly verbose essays, but no matter what, I got hours of enjoyment out of this and would buy it again.
3 Stars Not the Author’s Best Work
This did not live up to the high standard set by the previous 2 volumes in the series. In fact, it doesn’t seem like Alan Moore even tried very hard. This is not so much a story as it is a bunch of loosely connected ephemera that was probably a lot of fun to create.
Don’t get me wrong - there are some real gems in here. Short stories that are more or less self-contained which will delight anyone familiar with literature of the 1920’s and ’30’s (the crossover of P.G. Wodehouse and H.P. Lovecraft was brilliant). It’s not a worthless volume, just not much of a plot overall and it is in no way a satisfying sequel to the second volume.
1 Star worst of the LOEG graphic novels…
I usually don’t write these reviews much, but I had to have my say. I felt bamboozled after reading this graphic novel. The first two had a sense of adventure, imagination and took the reader on a unusual journey that was just plain fun along the way, at least for myself. After reading the Black Dossier I felt that the writers and artists threw this together in a couple of days to receive a hefty paycheck. No imagination or fun, it was like watching a “made for tv” movie. This will probably be my last Alan Moore graphic novel; if the rest of his career he throws up this “dreck” I will wait for more of his stories to be made into movies, at least then I may have only wasted 4 dollars at the video store instead of almost [...] bucks.
3 Stars Goofy Misstep
Major disappointment? Well, minor. For awhile I just got off on the pleasure of seeing Mina and Allan in incredibly sexy and sophisticated 1950s outfits and hairdos. But after a few days or reading I became acutely aware that, no matter what Kevin O’Neill tried to do, it wasn’t going to be enough to counteract Alan Moore’s love of his own self. Mina and Allan need the other League members with them to stay interesting. Escaping from James Bond and British Intelligence makes for an exciting chase story, but asking us to believe that the Black Dossier exists in this, or any form, is too much of a McGuffin. Mina goes through all this chazzerai just to find a book (and to read it to Allan as a prelude to more fabulous love-making) the details of which she already lived through in her earlier incarnations? Come on! The whole thing makes Mina Murray seem impossibly vain, and dumb besides, as though she’s standing on line to get her own autograph.
Filed under: Comic Book Reviews