By Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill (Americas Best Comics)
ISBN: 1-4012-0117-2
The Victorian era saw the birth of both popular and populist publishing, particularly the genres of fantasy and adventure fiction. Writers of varying skill but with unbounded imaginations expounded personal concepts of honour and heroism, wedded unflinchingly to the innate belief in English Superiority. In all worlds and even beyond them the British gentleman took on all comers for Right and Decency, viewing danger as a game and showing “Johnny Foreigner” just how that game should be played.
For all the problems this raises with our modern sensibilities many of the stories remain uncontested classics of literature and form the roadmap for all modern fictional heroes. Open as they are to charges of Racism, Sexism (even misogyny), Class Bias and Cultural Imperialism the best of them remain the greatest of all yarns.
An august selection of just such heroic prototypes were seconded by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill for a miniseries in 1999 that managed to say as much about our world as that long gone one, and incidentally tell a captivating tale as compelling as any of its antecedents.
In short succession there was an inevitable sequel, once more pressing into service vampire-tainted Wilhelmina Murray, aged Great White Hunter Allan Quatermain, Invisible Man Hawley Griffin, the charismatic genius Captain Nemo and both cultured Dr. Henry Jekyll and his bombastic alter-ego Mister Hyde, and including cameos from the almost English Edwin Lester Arnolds’ Gullivar Jones and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars and even creatures from C.S. Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet.
As London rebuilds after the cataclysmic denouement of the first volume a savage planetary conflict on the fourth planet ends with the firing of gigantic projectiles at our fragile, unsuspecting world…
This startlingly impressive and effective interleaving of HG Wells’ landmark fantasy classic with the skewed but so-very plausible conceit that all the great adventurers of literature hung out together captures perfectly the feeling of a world and era ending, as internal conflicts pull apart the champions – at no time do they ever even slightly resemble a team – and Moore’s irrepressible imagination and vast cultural reservoir dredges up a further elite selection of literary touchstones to enhance the proceedings.
Dark and genuinely terrifying the tale unfolds largely unchanged from the original War of the Worlds plot, but the parallel side-stories are utterly gripping and unpredictable, whilst the inclusion of such famed and/or lost characters as Bill Samson, Doctor Moreau, Tiger Tim and even Rupert Bear among others sweetens the pot for those in the know (and for those who aren’t you could always consult the official companion A Blazing World.
The idea of combining shared cultural brands is not new: Philip Jose Farmer in particular has spun many a yarn teaming such icons as Sherlock Holmes, Doc Savage, Tarzan and such like, Warren Ellis has succumbed to similar temptation in Planetary and Jasper Fforde has worked wonders with the device in his Thursday Next novels, but the sheer impetus of Moore and O’Neill’s steampunk revisionism and the rush of ideas and startling visuals that carry them make this book an irresistible experience and an absolute necessity for any fiction fan let alone comic collector.
This book is an incredible work of scholarship and artistry recast into a fabulous pastiche of an entire literary movement. It’s also a brilliant piece of comics wizardry of a sort no other art form can touch, but as with many Moore craftings there is a substantial text feature at the back, and it is quite wordy.
Read it anyway: it’s there for a reason and is more than worth the effort as it outlines the antecedents of the League in a fabulously stylish and absorbing manner. It might also induce you to read a few other very interesting and rewarding books…
© 1999, 2000 Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill. All Rights Reserved.