Monday, September 01, 2003

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 1 by Moore and O'Neill

I heard the movie was a turkey, but the "graphic novels" it was based on were supposed to be pretty good. The premise sounded amusing: collect a disparate crew of heroes from popular novels of the nineteenth century and give them some common task.

It took a while for the library copy to get around to me, hence the lateness of this review. (Yes, I'm a cheapskate.)

In brief: lots of detail (good), lots of attention to detail (very good), lots of references to literature (amusing), lots of plot twists, and only about half of the characters are satisfactorily rendered (the Invisible Man, for one). I suppose some of the failures in rendering are inevitable--some of the characterizations in the books rely on the texture of the original author's prose. But I'm afraid I just don't believe their Nemo.

The (text) back story at the end, apparently intended to explain how Quartermain wound up an addict, is unreadable. While not the worst fan fiction I've ever run across ... well, I couldn't finish it. I skimmed a passage here and there. Why Lovecraft?

I'll only recommend this for fans of the genre. The rest of us can continue to live joyful and contented lives without reading it. (No, it is not for kids.)

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