BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Comic Books >

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier

  
  

Page: 1 ... 45678(9)1011

 
 
PatrickMM
16:29 / 04.12.07
a huge byzantine cathedral to the art of reference dropping, with no real meat there: this criticism confused me at the time, to be honest - essentially moore and o'neill are being accused of being too geeky... by people who have comic blogs. oh the irony.

I think the criticism isn't so much that they're being too geeky, it's more that in dropping so many references, they're obscuring the emotional clarity of the narrative. It killed the moment for me when at the end Alan and Mina are saved by the guy with the flying ship because I have no clue who that guy is, even though I'm clearly supposed to. It plays like a deus ex machina because some character I've never seen before, but is briefly alluded to, shows up with a flying ship and saves the day.

Now, you could say hop on Google or check out the annotations if you really want to understand the story, but for a book that's all about getting caught up in the magic of storytelling, it's ironic that you should need so much stuff from outside the fictional world to appreciate it. I think there are moments of brilliance in the work, and it's still better than the vast, vast majority of comics out there, but it's frustrating to not be able to respond to a lot of what's going on because I have no clue who these people are.

That's the difference between this and the first two volumes for me. Previously, knowledge of where the characters come from is a bonus. If you know the Doctor in Volume I is Fu Manchu, that's a plus, but the character still works without that knowledge. Here, only Bond and Emma Peel get that same kind of development, the vast majority of the cameos are just sort of there. One of the best characters is Orlando, because we're actually given the back story of the character and made to understand him/her. I didn't know he/she came from a Virginia Woolf story, but it doesn't matter because Moore made me care.

What I do love is this notion of synthesizing the entirety of fiction into a parallel history of the universe. That's a fantastic idea, and even when I don't respond to a segment on an emotional level, I can respect what Moore is doing with it. But, I think Promethea did a better job treating these same themes in a more dynamic and exciting way, as well as one that used the medium better. For all the praise O'Neil has gotten, I don't think Moore let his artist tell the story as much as he should have. Other than the 3-D section, most of the show offy stuff is more about Moore's prose than O'Neil's art. It makes for a stronger work when the two are equally weighted, as in Promethea's best section.
 
 
Spaniel
17:03 / 04.12.07
...they're obscuring the emotional clarity of the narrative. It killed the moment for me when at the end Alan and Mina are saved by the guy with the flying ship because I have no clue who that guy is, even though I'm clearly supposed to. It plays like a deus ex machina because some character I've never seen before, but is briefly alluded to, shows up with a flying ship and saves the day.

And so we're back with the issue of exclusivity. It's come as no surprise to me that all the posters professing unreserved love for this are British (Pigs, Gumbitch, Sleaze, Quantum, Iron Man, Me) - because, you see, all of us knew exactly who the Gally Wag was, and Moore knew that we, his British readership, would know, so he was never worried about the scene's impact.

There really is a savage irony at work here.

As to whether that scene is a deus ex machina, nnnn, maybe sorta, but for me effect was ameliorated by the realization that I was watching a plan unfold, that the cathedral was the extraction point. True deus ex machina endings remove all power from the protagonist, which patently wasn't the case here: Alan and Mina had made their way to the Cathedral on purpose, with the intention of being rescued, and that's exactly what happened - their agency remained intact.
 
 
Spaniel
17:05 / 04.12.07
(Oh, great articulation of your problems with the book, by the way, Pat)
 
 
The Natural Way
17:20 / 04.12.07
But it's also the balls out wonderfulness of the flying ship and it's zany crew, in stark contrast to the drab fifties back-drop, that really sells the moment. The fact that we are reminded, in the case of Mina and Allan, just who we're really dealing with. And, as I said before, by that point aren't we just waiting for the magic behind the scenes to reveal itself?
 
 
Spaniel
17:27 / 04.12.07
Indeed
 
 
Haus of Mystery
17:50 / 04.12.07
I love the fact that there are so many League adventures in this volume - each one could occupy it's own series (in particular the battle against the French League), but instead we have them battling Lovecraftian nightmares in a Wodehouse pastiche or an overheated beat novel, having entire stories related in a postcard, or a footnote... It breathlessly covered so much ground, that I was thankful for the slightly stately pace of some of the prose passages. I found Moore's giddy playfulness as he linked Gerry Anderson, the Beano, and William Burroughs an absolute joy. As the backstory increased the League's history, the 'current' story expanded it's world into new forms, like TV, Radio and Comics, until it all came together with the joyous expansive splurge of the Blazing World.

Favourite bit - the Old Boy network of the Greyfriars school revealed as the ultimate breeding ground for British Intelligence. The Bunter sequences were both funny and utterly chilling, revelling in the gothic drear of this sideways version of 50's Britain. Only O'neill's art could do a sequence like that justice.

Fucking dinner.
 
 
The Natural Way
20:28 / 04.12.07
And, to be honest, I'm actually kind of shocked that the american contingent have no idea what a...ahem...gally-wag is. I think, perhaps, Moore would be too.
 
 
_Boboss
22:10 / 04.12.07
i think o'neill's showing off a lot with his art too patrick - the way he simultaneously 'does' an old school caption-under-the -panel biog strip from valiant or something (soz, more britishry there*) while also being very true to his own splashy, sexy, bulgy-eyes-and-violence signatures, is quite breathtaking really. thinking about it, in comtradictio to what said earlier, the way he embodies different styles in this book without sacrificing his o'neillness is actually a lot freer and simple-seeming than moore's efforts.

oh yes, did i say how much i love the illustration when fanny's saucy league are hiding inside the giantess?

*yeh i really don't want to be too land of hope and glory about this, but a huge part of the appeal here is that i've not read a comic that felt this mine, this designed for my interests and prejudices, since the first issue of the invisibles dropped. it's nice to connect so wholeheartedly with something, but difficult not to gush.
 
 
lord nuneaton savage
09:01 / 05.12.07
I can't believe that none of you have waited to recieve this for Christmas. I am now having to wait, when all my chums have already got one and I WANT ONE NOW.

Bollocks. Still, reading it 'pon Christmas day, already one-eye-closed pissed will be a seasonal treat.

You're all still gits though.
 
 
Spaniel
09:43 / 05.12.07
Well, three of us (Fraely, me, Pigs) got ours as b-day presents, so we did sorta wait for a celebration.
 
 
lord nuneaton savage
10:16 / 05.12.07
Meh, fair enough. Iron Man and Thor, however, have no excuses for ruining the Magick of Uncle Alan's Christmas.
 
 
Spaniel
10:27 / 05.12.07
THOR! is a pagan god, you know, and Iron Man probably doesn't believe in bank holidays
 
 
This Sunday
10:45 / 05.12.07
I refuse to pay for it. Someone will buy this and give it to me as a present. Even if I have to spend more money on booze getting them drunk enough to persuade them than the actual book costs. Because of principle.

And because I am an American who knows what a Golliwog is, at least in a sense - the doll, at least, and after noticing the thing in a Baraka essay (or interview - it's been a time), some Blyton and re-look at one of Heinlein's last novels, it possibly won't have the same effect, but it will likely be less WTF is this?!? 23 11 ! than it might be otherwise.

If it's not the best thing ever, I expect Moore to come around and apologize to me personally. And refund whomever buys it for me.
 
 
The Natural Way
11:07 / 05.12.07
Well, if you spoil yourself the way you have, it's not going to be as good as it could be, is it? Silly Man.
 
 
This Sunday
11:16 / 05.12.07
Probably true. Let's pretend I was never in this... oh dear, I seem to be lost in a thread without words. I think I'll just move on to the one about how to get Spider-Man single again. Yes.
 
 
Quantum
15:32 / 05.12.07
,b>Kin'ell, Q, that's some mighty praise. Can you elaborate a bit? What exactly rocked your pants off?

I certainly can, but not tonight as I am going to see the Golden Compass. I largely agree with pigs (that sounds weird, change your screen name pigs) and have a bunch of other stuff to say, none of it bad.

One quick point re:britcentric- you never hear people complaining how opaque Friends is because they've never heard of Thanksgiving, the US-centric media is now standardised and that shouldn't be the standard. There's a load of American-friendly material in it anyway, there's a whole chapter of beat wanderings through the US for gods' sake.
 
 
Spaniel
17:34 / 05.12.07
you never hear people complaining how opaque Friends is because they've never heard of Thanksgiving,

I was going to go off on a tangent about just that sort of thing, actually, as it pertains to comics, natch
 
 
CameronStewart
18:13 / 05.12.07
You never hear people complaining how opaque Friends is because they've never heard of Thanksgiving

But in this case it's a book for an American publisher that is being exclusively sold to an American audience (yes, other countries are getting it but it's grey market), so it's understandable that some of that audience is feeling excluded by a story that is so firmly rooted in a foreign culture.

Personally I found the Kerouac segment to be the most difficult, I really struggled to keep myself from skipping it entirely.
 
 
Haus of Mystery
19:17 / 05.12.07
Bit like Kerouac really.
 
 
COBRAnomicon!
20:19 / 05.12.07
Yes and yes. I liked the overall package, but my brain was literally unable to extract meaning from the Beat section. I got through word by word, recognizing a phrase here and there, and couldn't put it together into anything coherent. Then I saw an online plot summary and was shocked- holy shit, all that was in there?

For what it's worth, that section was as much Burroughs as it was Kerouac, and for me it was definitely more Burroughs-problematic than Kerouac-problematic.
 
 
Quantum
07:55 / 06.12.07
some of that audience is feeling excluded by a story that is so firmly rooted in a foreign culture.

A foreign culture? Wow. I'm guessing you don't have Robertson's Jam in the States then. Well as an emissary from that foreign culture with it's weird language and strange habits, I am volunteering to translate for you, Brit to Yank. Here's the story of two Dutch Dolls And A Golliwogg online for you, if there's other weird Britness that's obscure then just ask. Perhaps you can reciprocate and explain Thanksgiving for me? And Fox News?
Seriously though you're right about them releasing it in the US first, that is unfortunately stupid of the publishers.

I did find the beat section heavy going, but I find that style of writing particularly opaque everywhere. I'm revisiting it and reading it like Ulysses or Burroughs, it's like a chewy toffee centre in the middle of the LOEG black dossier confection.

I'll come back to this again, but I don't have very much sympathy with the US difficulty with obscure british references because so much media I encounter assumes you are a yank and immersed in US pop culture. They even americanise foreign produce to make it more palatable to the US consumer, giving Peter Pan an american accent, altering history to make the villains English and show how yanks saved the Enigma machine or invented Fire or won the Trojan war.
The rest of the world has to deduce what US-centric jargon Buffy or Seinfeld or Jack Bauer is using, and we do alright, suck it up USA.
 
 
Spaniel
08:38 / 06.12.07
To be fair though, we do it so well becuase we can't help being immersed in it. We don't - or hardly ever - really have to work to achieve understanding, or conduct an Internet investigation to unearth some arcane data, as an aid to comprehension.

Patrick is critiquing his experience of the work based on him having to do those things. He isn't saying that the Americanisation of western culture is good, and he definitely isn't being a lazy yank, so I'm prepared to give his criticisms the time of day, even if they don't actually have any bearing on my experience of the book.

Worth noting that much of comics storytelling is built on the power inherent in recognising obscure characters, esoteric fictional histories, etc... My wife simply couldn't get what I get from some examples of the medium for that very reason.
 
 
The Natural Way
09:48 / 06.12.07
I don't have a lot of time for the idea that the Beat section is difficult to understand. It's a different shape to most of the prose we read day to day, and therefore it can take a while to get yr head acclimatised to it, but the language isn't really that challenging. Moore's writing's very, umm, precise, even when on the surface of things it appears a little opaque. In fact, if I were to criticise Moore, I'd say he has a habit of spoon-feeding the reader, as though he's afraid his fans won't get it if he doesn't provide the odd sign-post. Unlike, say, Morrison, he's a very unambiguous writer.
 
 
Haus of Mystery
11:22 / 06.12.07
Plus using Dean Moriarty's 'perfect' body as the vessel for the Elder Gods was inspired.
 
 
Quantum
11:26 / 06.12.07
Patrick is critiquing his experience of the work based on him having to do those things.

Oh, certainly- if I was in his position I'd probably feel the same. But as it is, the book played to my background, interests and preferences perfectly, the only thing that could be better for is the 1960s league which we will hopefully encounter next time...

pigs, I found the newspeak stuff to be as contrived as the beat stuff, but much more accessible (and much funnier). I mean, the language throughout the book is used to emphasise the difference in style between periods so it's all different shapes, but some appeal to me and some don't. It's like a great painting in a style I dislike, I can appreciate it but it takes more work than something in my favoured style.
 
 
CameronStewart
11:53 / 06.12.07
A foreign culture? Wow. I'm guessing you don't have Robertson's Jam in the States then. Well as an emissary from that foreign culture with it's weird language and strange habits, I am volunteering to translate for you, Brit to Yank. Here's the story of two Dutch Dolls And A Golliwogg online for you, if there's other weird Britness that's obscure then just ask. Perhaps you can reciprocate and explain Thanksgiving for me? And Fox News?

Wow, how condescending. For your information I'm Canadian, not American, but my entire family is from England and Scotland, I grew up in England, and lived there again as a teenager, so I've eaten plenty of Robertson's jam and even had a Golly doll when I was a kid, so I don't need any explanations of that or anything else in the book, but thank you so very much for offering.

I was merely expressing a bit of sympathy for an American reader of a book, released in the American market by an American publisher, that is quite thoroughly English. I completely agree that the climax of the book would be diminished for someone who has no idea who the Golliwogg is - it's not one of the subtle details tucked away in an 8-panel grid, his appearance is given the splash-page treatment, it's a big dramatic revelatory moment, and for readers outside of England or unfamiliar with English culture (which, yes, despite a shared language is markedly different to US culture and therefore "foreign") it's likely to be meaningless. The Golly is not an international icon like Sherlock Holmes or James Bond, but his reveal in Black Dossier is given as much dramatic clout and I can completely understand how that would fall flat for some readers. Empathy, you know.

The "Thankgsiving in Friends" analogy doesn't work because Friends is an American show on an American television network intended for an American audience, and I don't think that the creators can be at fault for someone in another country viewing the show second-hand after export doesn't get a joke.

I agree with you that American culture is pervasive and almost imperialistic and must be stopped, however.
 
 
CameronStewart
12:03 / 06.12.07
Seriously though you're right about them releasing it in the US first, that is unfortunately stupid of the publishers.


Also, it's not that it's been released "first" in the US, it's only released in the US. All copies outside the US are grey market and not legal. I'm sure Moore didn't anticipate this but that's how it is.
 
 
Quantum
12:34 / 06.12.07
Sorry, defending the black dossier with terminal intensity. That story with the dutch dolls I hadn't read though so it's still a useful link.
 
 
The Natural Way
16:09 / 06.12.07
I wasn't really thinking of you when I composed my post, Quants. It was more what COBRA said about his brain being lliterally unable to extract meaning from the beat section that provoked it. COBRA's never struck me as a particularly dumb poster, so I just find myself feeling a slightly incredulous. I completely understand that the style might be a little alienating, but, with a (tiny) bit of work, it's hardly impossible to penetrate.
 
 
COBRAnomicon!
16:40 / 06.12.07
I'm not exaggerating. I'm not sure what it was, and I do think of myself as a reasonable intelligent reader, but my experience with the beat section was pretty much exactly as I described it. I guess I'm just not wired for Moorean faux-Burroughsian stream-of-consciousness.

Which isn't even to say that that section was objectively bad, just subjectively not very helpful for me.
 
 
Janean Patience
16:53 / 06.12.07
I got it, I read it, it's great, I sent an annotation to Jess Nevins that he'd missed. And I've spent the last two days thinking about it. A wonderful and unique piece of work.

It killed the moment for me when at the end Alan and Mina are saved by the guy with the flying ship because I have no clue who that guy is, even though I'm clearly supposed to. It plays like a deus ex machina because some character I've never seen before, but is briefly alluded to, shows up with a flying ship and saves the day.

I agree with you to a certain extent, because although I knew of the golliwog I'd never encountered him in his original form. And having a long chase scene end with the appearance of three outlandish characters who don't speak the Queen's was initially baffling. On further reflection I'd say this was deliberate; this was very definitely a deus ex machina, it was intended as a moment that would confound, confuse and take the reader out of the story because this is the first moment where we see the bigger picture. 1950s Britain begins as a very mundane, drab little world (the colours at times remind me of Alan Bennett saying that even light seemed to be rationed after the war) and the narrative opens up twice, first with the colour and aspiration and horizons of the Birmingham Space Centre and then at the end, as you realise that Mina and Alan were always several steps ahead of their pursuers, that they know where Faerie Britain and all the other wonders went and they've become agents of that Blazing World. So while it's a difficult narrative trick to get your head around it works perfectly in retrospect.

Not getting all the references is part of the fun. I understood about half of Orlando's journey (and today it occurred to me that we've not seen one moment in 1922, when he takes a stroll down the Thames and is embarrassed to see his dear old dad peeping through a typist's window watching her fuck) but enjoyed all of it because you know you'll find out who was who and why later. I had no idea who Miss Knight was but I liked her and the sequences with her in more now I've found out.

My one regret is that there hasn't been more straight LOEG before it goes off into wilder waters with v3. I would've loved to see the putative Allan and Mina in Arkham story as a six-issue series, with all the characters from American fiction of that era turning up there, and the story of the British League vs the French League demands to be expanded on. There was something about the simplicity of the original concept, the Victorian feel and the fact that these were the characters, not imitations, because they were out of copyright that I miss. I didn't feel we'd had as much as we could of them. An extra two volumes and I'd be glad to head into the wilder waters of the 20th and 21st centuries, and I'm a little sad they'll never come. Still, it's Alan Moore. You're lucky if anything gets finished, such are the troubled circumstances of his books.

Now that we know the rules for the 20th century, shall we pick up where that clusterfuck of a thread discussing a possible C20th League left off and pick our dream line-ups? I've got mine worked out, though there are too many Americans.
 
 
Haus of Mystery
17:20 / 06.12.07
Not getting all the references is part of the fun

Absolutely. That's exactly how I feel. I'm British and I haven't got a clue about a good deal of Moore's references, and after reading a few annotations I'm none the wiser, but to me it doesn't matter.
It didn't spoil my enjoyment of what was essentially a thoroughly absorbing and clever romp through the League's history.
 
 
Spaniel
19:20 / 06.12.07
So while it's a difficult narrative trick to get your head around it works perfectly in retrospect.

I thought it worked pretty well in the moment. As Pigs says above, we'd been building to this for yonks, so when it came I knew exactly where we were and where we were going.
 
 
DavidXBrunt
11:17 / 07.12.07
I'll jappily hold my hands up as a particularly thick boarder (I can quote other people if you want proof!) but I had to give up on the beat novel section. That, to me, makes it a perfect pastiche as I just can't get my head around the style of the originals too.

It could also be that it was gone midnight and I was aching - desperately - to read on and get to the tantalising climax and just didn't want to put the effort in. I got the form of the first page but didn't have the self control to force my way through the rest of it.
 
 
A beautiful tunnel of ghosts
12:03 / 07.12.07
Will post more when I've read it again, but in terms of the story's internal continuity what I felt jarred on first reading was the inclusion of the Gerry Anderson and Frank Hampson references.

While Fireball XL5 will presumably be produced in 1962, when the programme was originally transmitted, and Dare has presumably been a national figure for the last eight years, since the Eagle's publication in 1950, neither of these stories were set during this time: FXL5 was set in the mid-21st century and Dan Dare was set in the late 20th*.

Moore explains their inclusion as the logical extension of the Martians' technology, but for me the spaceport sequence seemed such a jarring insertion, lacking any reference to the obvious class implications of such modes of transport, for example, in that sense I felt it was a wasted opportunity.

Moore seems to indicate that, both in the spaceport sequence and elsewhere, the cultural implications of space travel and extraterrestrial contact are the same as they've always been in the League's world: domination, exploitation and expansion, but it didn't feel like anything I hadn't seen before in the previous volumes.

In terms of continuity, I'd much rather Moore had had them meet Bernard Quatermass: a Holmes for the atomic age, who, presumably would have been on the government's side but who would have had the ability to appreciate Alan and Mina's experiences. With a sympathetic antagonist like Quatermass, Moore would have been able to put the cultural and technological implications of extraterrestrial contact and space travel in a contemporary and individual context, and not simply use them as set dressing for another chase sequence.

I suppose that the spaceport foreshadows both the Blazing World in its revelation, and the limitations of space travel when compared with travel to the BW: the Pancake XL4 with its automaton pilot is, for all its technological innovation and its sound and fury, incapable of reaching its destination, whereas the Golliwogg and his flying ship demonstrate the simple power of the imagination, unshackled by form and its ability to reach realms unattainable by even the most technologically advanced means.

* Dare isn't referenced in the dialogue, but is referenced visually.
 
  

Page: 1 ... 45678(9)1011

 
  
Add Your Reply