Book 33: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill

I'm cheating again and still haven't finished Pasternak in Russian.  However, in order to try to keep up with the project I'm reading another book over the weekend.  This time it's a graphic novel, actually a collection of graphic novels consisting of the first two volumes of the comic with 6 issues in each volume.  Since so many films, etc. are based on comics and graphic novels these days I thought I would try to work in a few to round out my reading.  There are no page numbers in this book, but it looks to be about 250-270 pages and I should be able to finish within 2-3 days.

REVIEW:  I really wanted the movie version of this to be good but it really just wasn’t.  I figured that, maybe, the source material would be better and there I wasn’t disappointed.  This omnibus version of the material contains the first two volumes along with a couple of prose stories in between them.  Each volume contains six of the original issues. 

The story revolves around a group of literary “superheroes” for lack of a better word.  The League consists of 5 characters, Mina Harker from Dracula, Allan Quatermain from King Solomon’s Mines, Dr. Jeckyll and his alter-ego, Hawley Griffin a.k.a. the Invisible Man and Captain Nemo (do I really need to tell you what where he’s from?).  The five “superheroes” band together to help the government of England defeat some of the biggest challenges facing it.

It’s an interesting concept, and the main characters are not the only ones from fictional sources to be included.  There are characters galore from Edgar Rice Burroughs, Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, H.P. Lovecraft and many, many others both famous and obscure.  In fact, it was sort of a side-game for me to try to identify even minor characters and their sources. 

I did have a couple of problems with the book.  The ending of the second volume is a little unsatisfying, but that’s not really a big deal.  My main problem is with the two main protagonists, Mina Murray (Harker) and Allan Quatermain.  It seemed to me that neither one of them really did much of anything.  Quatermain was aghast at just about everything that happens and behaves rather cowardly most of the time.  Mina tries to keep the group focused and is, supposedly the brains of the operation, but she doesn’t really do anything either.  Quatermain is supposed to be a great hunter but doesn’t shoot anything and Mina is, supposedly, a vampire but never even defends herself when attacked.  All the real action is left to the other three members of the League.

Overall, the story moves at a good pace, the art is good and the plot is interesting.  It was definitely much better than the film.  Of the two prose sections, the first is a prologue about Allan Quatermain and was relatively interesting, but the second is a sort of travelogue of the world showing how full of random literary places and people it is.  Somehow that failed to be interesting and came across as kind of dry. 

7 out of 10.