Alan Moore, “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”
The other day, some guy came up to the counter at the bookstore with a huge stack of books. Well, not huge — nine titles to be exact. The odd thing was, that for the first time, I had read everything this guy was buying. And it’s not like he had a whole lot of Steinbeck, his tastes were varied. There was some sci-fi, some literature, some cultural criticism, some humor, and some various non-fiction. And I had already read them all.
It’s very odd to think about that — that some guy is getting these books for the first time, and for once, I can give an opinion on any one of them. Normally, people ask me about a certain book, and it’s usually some crappy popular flavor of the month mystery that I wouldn’t touch, if it wasn’t my job to put it on the shelf.
One lady on that same day asked me about five different titles — crappy mysteries, some Christian fiction, an alcoholic-recovery-type manual, something inspirational, and then a lame pop psychologist. When I answered that I hadn’t read any of them, she asked me if I ever read anything at all.
“Yeah,” I said. “I read a few things.”
So it’s odd for me to read this graphic novel, taken from a neat idea where Moore takes all these public domain staples of literature and combines them for a graphic novel. And yes, I saw the movie. When I saw the movie, I realized that every person featured – Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, Dorian Gray, Allan Quatermain, Captain Nemo, Mina Harker, The Invisible Man, and Tom Sawyer – were from books I hadn’t read.
Rather than reading all of these books, I was lucky enough to have this come into the store. But as it turns out, these aren’t even all of the same characters. Nemo, Quatermain, Jeckyll, and Mina are all here, but there’s no Dorian Gray or Tom Sawyer. Frankly, I was a little confused on why Tom Sawyer was in the group at all (in the movie). Everybody else has skills and powers – what is Sawyer supposed to do exactly? Spin down-home witticisms and convince the enemies to paint the fence?
Anyway, about the book, there are some great ideas with a fair amount of execution here. It goes from serious to nearly cartoony and back again within six pages, but it’s a goddamn comic book, so I guess I should expect that. Did it blow me away, like other Alan Moore titles such as Watchmen, Promethia, and Swamp Thing? Hardly. But I’ll keep reading, as long as it comes into the store.
And volume two just came into the store.
