Date: 2008-11-02 11:52:02 Created: null
It was a sweet and frosty March when I first set about purchasing copies of volume one and two of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Because I feel good comics are worth good presentation, I ordered them both in their "absolute edition", each with two hardback volumes inside a slipcase. While volume two was dispatched relatively quickly, the wait for volume one turned epic, ending, after two delay emails, in August with a sheepish confession that Amazon had been unable to find a copy.
Eventually I just gave up and got a speedily delivered softback edition at a sixth or so of the price.
The possible downside to great comics is that they end deceptively quickly. And with panels so full of details as this I almost feel I haven't done them justice as I turn the page to devour the next spread. While the League may not have the depth of Watchmen it's a wonderfully detailed, quite dark and completely entertaining victorian adventure. I recognise the origins of quite a few characters, but experts in victorian era fiction heroes apparantly have a field day spotting and sourcing everyone appearing in the League.
The first book of the "absolute edition" contains the actual comic and its assorted extra material. The second consists of the complete scripts written by Alan Moore and some sketches by Kevin O'Neill. While it's nothing I'll read from back to back it's certainly interesting to find out what Moore has thought about the content and meaning of each panel.
Quite a lot, it turns out.
There are so many details about angle and contents of each panel that I start wondering if the artists he works with ever fell constrained by his level of detail. I assume it's not all set in stone, but still.