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Underground > Comic Books >

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Part 2

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20:07 / 26.07.02

Invisible Al, I’ve tried a couple of approaches to the Martian script with no luck. It isn’t a simple letter substitution like the Doop code, nor is it a substitution of kanji for English words. My current theory is that it’s phonetic, and like the language of the islanders from Tom Strong, has a decipherable syntax. However, the Martian’s big blocks of text are much harder to decipher by context than the islander’s short reply-and-answer speeches. The task is further complicated by the possibility that there may be multiple languages or dialects, as evidenced by Gullivar speaking Martian at one point but needing translation at another.

Where’s Ransom when you need a good philologist?

21:38 / 26.07.02

Arse, damm and blast Mr Moore for his research and general thoroughness. Has he dropped any hints anywhere on line how it works? Is he doing any question and answer sessions on-line where we coould demand answers

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I think you're right as well on multiple languages check the banners, the ones the Lizards use is one script and the Hithers use a combination of egyption style hiroglyphics and something else.
Looks very nice though doesn't it, perhaps someone will do the script as a font once the series gives us something more to work with.

Btw can I just mention Tripods, that is what a tripod should look like, reminds me of independence day but much much better done.

06:26 / 27.07.02

John Carter, Warlord of Mars - Genghis Khan.
Gullivar - Lawrence of Arabia.
Sorn - The Ents of Tolkien Lore (Mysterious, 50-ft tall guys who breach the Dark Lords' Towers)
Mollusc - Sauron the Dark Lord/Hitler in a Bunker

O'neill - A Monet of a comic artist. Upclose he's messy as hell; from a broadsweeeping overview, he blows me away.

The Natural Way

07:45 / 27.07.02

PAT:"I seem to recall some lovecraftian beasties being confronted in his future, After He and Minna hook-up."

Well, the Molluscs bear a striking resemblance to Lovecraftian Beasties....so....maybe.

10:17 / 27.07.02

but where do these tripods fit with the tripods from that saturday evening sci fi show we used to watch on bbc? dr who, number 6, juliet bravo, cracker [fatbob coltrane] and renton from trainspotting for my latterday league. hey postmodernism happened and i go from 60s to 90s in one easy leap.

11:03 / 27.07.02

Kim Newman must be foaming at the mouth by now.

11:21 / 27.07.02

he's always foaming at the maouth. Seen that beard?

No star here laces

15:26 / 29.07.02

GUUUUUUSSSSSSH!

Open first page. Stare slack-jawed having forgotten just how luminescent, atmospheric and genuinely beautiful the colouring is on this book. In fact Dimagmaliw is the unsung hero of LOEG - the colours are unique, no other comic looks this lush and solid.

Focus in on first panel, the crispness and weirdness of the carpet pattern giving me little squirms of excitement - feel sure it represents some beardy mystical guff, but content to leave my knowledge of it in that form.

Then turn the page..... BAM! Whoah. How good is that panel with the Martian canal and all the dust devils spinning down it? Breathtaking. Those two pages alone are one of the best things I've ever seen in comics. The suspense, the detail the drama of the landscape rather than the mundane drama of action. O'Neill and Moore (the names definitely go that way round) treat their settings reverentially with the respect they deserve, giving the milieu enough space to really resonate with the reader.

And then, whoosh - riotous strangeness. Many-armed green giants, facemasks, alien battle tactics, more Martian landscapes.

MMm-mmmm. I can't believe that this won't be the best issue of the whole series, but I'll probably be wrong.

That art. DAMN.

I wanna be able to draw.

15:43 / 29.07.02

This may have been flagged up already, but turns out there's a film of the original series in the pipeline. Latest update is 10th July 2002.

22:37 / 29.07.02

LOEG:the Movie!?!?

They Nixed Capt. Nemo!!! :0

23:33 / 29.07.02

Ginchy ginchy ginchy, this just oozes good story, but the first issue has rendered me intensely antsy for the second and made me remember why I never read anything till the trade is out.

17:34 / 15.08.02

the crispness and weirdness of the carpet pattern giving me little squirms of excitement - feel sure it represents some beardy mystical guff

Anybody got any more info on the carpet design? On first glance at that page I didn't even realise that was what it was - I had it pegged as some Tarot-type card.

19:29 / 16.08.02

"They secrete it themselves"

Aliens (Cameron), anyone?

16:06 / 22.08.02

Sneak peek: cover and first 4 pages of issue #2 hither.

Yikes. Big bangs right out of the gate, eh?

16:33 / 22.08.02

yikes as fuck. aliens perhaps inspired by ID4, best film of the nineties. like the wait for next week wasn't going to be tuff enuff already.

17:08 / 23.08.02

They didn't "nix nemo" he's being played by an actual real life honest to gosh Indian chap. Although I still think Connery would have made a better Nemo, can't you just imagine him, last issue scene losing it "Come forward men of england, and tell your god nemo sent you....."

Oh, and Tom Sawyer's in it as an American Detective, y'know for the demographic.

09:18 / 24.08.02

*finally* got 'round to buying this .. what to say except it's frrkin' AMAZING!!! Seriously, it's taken my breath away .. god, I wish I was 12, cos then it would be twice as good..

21:44 / 29.08.02

& NOW ISSUE #2:

Wowo oh Wow!!!

Spoilers!!!!
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. Well, nice cover...

That mysterious invisible Heat Beam!!! Smacked of many a childhood nightmare... "don't let the evil eye see you!!!"

Everyone's shaken up, even Hyde. In all the world He & Minna Don't hate each other!

Quartermain's Dream again & again...

Scary Alien tenticled things... However they we're killed by earth Germs ala War of the Worlds

& then the Invisible Judas!!! WOW!!!

10:25 / 01.09.02

i hope that page wih all the annotations goes up soon because i was seriously lost for most of the almanac. how's nemo's chain-gun gonna stop those? guess it's griffin who's gonna die then. he still owes for that cop he battered in the last series. read wotw after the last issue - the atmosphere in this issue is PERFECT. easy as it is to malign moore these days, when he's doing it right...

The Natural Way

07:44 / 02.09.02

Goodness (in no particular order):

Aaah..."the Mystery Men"....mmmm.... What the fuck's a Nyctalope? Yeah - annotations NOW!

Don Quixote! The optimist in me always knew he was real...that other guy and his shitty life were the illusion...that pesky silver mentallium!

The dialogue between Wilhemena and Hyde was great.

"I think perhaps you have met someone more frightening than me..."

Or whatever he said. Great.

And the soldiers marching to their doom. Wonderful. God...so cinematic. No music, just their trudging feet....their bawdy, confident greeting and brief natter w/ A.J. and Willy....their trudging feet again as they disappear down the road...as the darkness settles..... Yes!

Stent cheerfully greeting the mollusc. Horrible.

Go check # 1: they're building a tripod down there. I suppose they knock them up out of their secretions....

Urrgh! Truly alien.

03:18 / 04.09.02

Volume 1 is being released in softcover in the US. For a scant $14.95. Tomorrow (Sep't 4th, 2002).

Get it.

11:52 / 04.09.02

Annotation for 2.2 available hither.

As for translating the Martian dialogue: hold the pages up to a mirror.

No, seriously.

12:35 / 04.09.02

Runce asked What the fuck's a Nyctalope?

Ask and ye shall receive.

The Natural Way

13:47 / 04.09.02

Thanks Jack.

15:05 / 04.09.02

As for translating the Martian dialogue: hold the pages up to a mirror.

No, seriously.

I tried that, and it remained goobledygok. So to speak. I got a couple letter-like things, but nothing resembling words.

23:00 / 04.09.02

Moore's gradual revealing of character via dialogue is masterful. However, I think he's ripping the War Of The Worlds off a little too much. I know that all the characters are from other works, but not the plots, surely?

20:00 / 05.09.02

He's certainly not ripping WotW off any more than he did any of the Fu Manchu books in the first seies' climax. The Martians are simply acting the way they're supposed to - the circumstances will change as non-WotW characters start interfering with the invasion (Griffin's intervention being the first major diversion).

Talking of Griffin: using a smouldering twig to calmly light his cigarette was a brilliant piece of characterisation.

03:02 / 06.09.02

LOEG is some of the finest damn serial storytelling in my recent memory. So tightly woven. (Just perusing Jess Nevins' analyzation site - Stays up, unlike the GeoCities mirror) gives me this very heavy narrative history rush of excitement. Moore researches like a fucking crazy person. That Almanac is mindblowing with it's asides to Dracula and Fantomas and all that wonderful bullshit.)

Anyway, I'm fairly sure Moore's going to infer that the 'Martians' are Lovecraftian beasts of some sort, and that most of the League aren't going to survive this. (Hyde has heat-sensitive vision, remember. I'll bet Griffin tastes terrible)

I got the same vibe from issue 2 that the story felt a little too strict to HG Wells' plot, with the League just sort of sitting around, but then I have no doubt things are going to jump about a great deal from issue to issue (If Vol. 1's any indication).

Check out the covers of Issues 3 (Poor Mr. Toad) & 4 (Spoiler Warning for the Obviousness Impaired - The Martians build a tripod and it blows things up - Gasp!).

The Natural Way

07:30 / 06.09.02

The martians are already building tripods...

08:45 / 06.09.02

the colouring really stands out in this issue - fuckin incredible. THe darkness settles around the characters and landscape in a way I've never seen before in comics - it's one of the few times I've felt: ' woah, this colourist dude REALLY is an artist' (I know that's a bit mean, but you KWIM, don't you?)

yeah runce, soldiers marching off was awesome.....

my only complaint is that the diction of the dialogue can be 'somewhat' tedious at times, hmm?

09:14 / 06.09.02

Oooh, Issue two wasn't as action packed as issue 1 but it was still mint. Conversation between Hyde and Ms Murray was brilliant, 'Please leave no before I break your jaw' very nice.
Damm I really need to read Volume one at some point.
I also loved the almanac at the back, Alan Moore is one of those people who has far too much knowledge in his head. The reference to the Duchy of Grand Fenwick along with Fantomas were some of the few I managed to get. I know the bloke who compiles the annotations must be having a heart attack getting through them all, too...much...detail

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The annotations also explained a few bits of the comic that seemed a bit superfulous, they're direct quotes from WotW, the bloke falling in the pit and the two gentlemen talking in the corner of one panel, one of them is the 'narrator' of WotW. Nice, but I hope he's got that out of his system now and can get on with tripods blowing stuff up

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21:31 / 06.09.02

Impressive stuff indeed. This just keeps getting better and better. Kev O'Neil's Martians just look utterly *alien*.

I think it just shows how good a writer Moore is to have just one major action scene in the whole issue yet it still remains gripping.

Nothing to do now but wait for issue 3.....

15:17 / 07.09.02

I think of the Almanac as Moore's attempt to kill me.

So far it hasn't worked.

So far.

jess

''A lot of the series is done for the three people out there who are complete obsessives, have no lives, and actually do recognize these references to Anthony Trollope and William Thackeray."

How did he know?

15:39 / 07.09.02

Welcome, Jess. Hope you'll stick around: this is a pretty interesting place...

16:04 / 07.09.02

Thanks! Unfortunately I've got a lot on my plate right now and don't have nearly the time for the 'Net that I'd like (I'm at work right now, actually), but I'll try to drop by regularly.

For the older Brits among you reading this, btw, there's a "Wolf of Kabul" reference in the next issue of League. (Four preview pages are up here.)

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