THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, VOL. 1

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 1, by Alan Moore, Kevin O’Neill, et al: Not as lovable as Watchmen, but pretty cool, especially for English majors. Supposedly, every single character is either a literary figure or the ancestor of one, though most of them are from precisely the kinds of proto-genre fiction that my Victorian-lit dorkitude does not encompass. I’ve read Dracula and Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock is dead in the comic, but Mycroft and Professor Moriarty are characters), had 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde read to me as a kid, and was able to spot the references to works like “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” Oliver Twist, and (lord help us) Pollyanna, but I had to consult Wikipedia and other fan annotations for info on Allan Quatermain (I’ve heard of King Solomon’s Mines, but had no idea there were 14 other related books), Captain Nemo (did you know Verne wrote a sequel to 20,000 Leagues called The Mysterious Island? Me neither), Fu Manchu, The First Men in the Moon, Miss Flaybum (who is a very disorienting character in the comic if you’re not up on your Victorian erotica, and really, who is these days?), and many more. I have limited patience for its steampunk qualities and the graphic violence, but it’s smart, fun, richly (almost dizzyingly) detailed, and very addictive. And Volume 3 is coming out this year!