Broken Frontier

England, 1958: Preserved by the mystic Fires of Life, Mina Murray and Allan Quatermain infiltrate the old headquarters of British Intelligence to retrieve a classified file. Within this file are secrets of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, that collection of heroes, monsters, and science oddities to which our immortal protagonists once belonged. Unfortunately, certain factions in the government want this document back and dispatch a somewhat shaken (but not stirred) secret agent and other dangerous operatives to retrieve it.

It’s been said that Alan Moore is a comics visionary. Said so often, in fact, that it’s become a somewhat clichéd buzzword when discussing the man and his work. But lest one think that praise is heaped upon Moore too easily, the bearded one seems to outdo himself with every project. With the Black Dossier, the latest volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Moore’s homage to pulp literature has evolved into a sprawling multimedia experiment with a story that stretches across the millennia. If not visionary, Moore certainly proves himself capable of thinking outside the box (actually, at this point, he’s probably transcended the box and started using it as a spiritual conveyance to the shores of distant Yuggoth. But I digress…).

The format changes in the Black Dossier come a mile a minute, blending traditional comics, text pieces, historical comic strips, pamphlet inserts, postcards, and yes, a 3D sequence. Among the highlights are a secret mystical history of the world, a deliciously naughty novelette about Fanny Hill, a staggering 3000 year life story of Orlando, and flashbacks to the founding of three incarnations of the League. Moore even has the audacity to create a lost folio of Shakespeare, written in the style of the Bard himself. Insane and exhausting as it all is, it works quite brilliantly.

Assisting and embellishing Moore’s work is the always reliable Kevin O’Neill. His gritty and understated linework perfectly captures the pulpy feel of this universe. O’Neill ably transforms his style with each format switch, from the rich illustrations of Orlando’s segments to woodcarving texture in the Fanny Hill tale to crude comic strips and everything in between. Keeping pace with an epic like this is no small feat and O’Neill is more than up to the challenge.

As ever, the book is teeming with literary references and characters drawn from sources both well-known and obscure. Moore does not give quarter for an instant, peppering his tale with sly inferences and expecting readers to keep up. To his credit, the story is skillfully told and can be enjoyed without an encyclopedic knowledge of adventure fiction. The thrill of the chase sequences and the sheer sense of wonder engendered by the League’s astonishing history keep the momentum going. The central heroes of the piece—sweet, befuddled Allan and the haunted though sharp-as-a-tack Mina—remain compelling as always.

To those more familiar with the source material, however, the book is a delightful scavenger hunt filled with famous faces and locales pulled from human imagination through the ages. Moore’s League stories have always been as educational as they are entertaining and once again, he takes us on a whirlwind tour of our dreams and nightmares. For this reader, half the joy of the experience comes from those maddeningly familiar names that send me scurrying to the bookshelf or the internet to try and remember just where I’ve heard them before.

Even coming from the pen of Alan Moore though, not every sequence is a winner. The five pages of nonsensical, stream-of-consciousness beat poetry are a tough slog for even the most dedicated reader. I had no idea how much I would miss punctuation if it suddenly took a holiday. Also, the depiction of the League’s first African-American member may be a controversial element for some fans (this is more a reflection of the era he was created in than a storytelling flaw by Moore though). These missteps aside, the Black Dossier is a truly impressive achievement.

"If we mere insubstantial fancies be," muses Prospero in the book, "how more so thee who from us substance stole?" In the Black Dossier, Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill have once again shown us the inspiring power of imagination and taken us on a trip through its blazing world. Heck of a ride, fellas.