[...] reported here in July, the Absolute Edition of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier was supposed to contain a recording of Alan Moore songs that fit into the story, but DC removed it. [...]

[...] the much-delayed League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier was supposed to be a deluxe package that included a 45 RPM single. Those features were cut back in [...]

Try the 3-D glasses. besides being cool on it’s own right, there’s a point where a Lovecraftian entity can be seen where, if you close your right eye, it is speaking jibberish and looks like Cthulu, but if you close your left eye, it looks humanish and is speaking English. Brilliant!

Eric

I don’t care so much that there’s a lot of sex and I don’t care if it is a type of fanfiction. If it is done well, then great. The problem with those eighties shows is that the writing was poor.

Part of me agrees with Joanna about the inserts, but the other part of me (who reads Tolstoy and Hammet) mocks that first part for being lazy and needing pictures. I do get myself into a certain mindset when I pick up a comic book that is different that picking up Umberto Eco–but the wonderful stuff at the end of League #2 warned me not to be like that with Alan Moore.

That said, while I think it was another brilliant comic, I liked the first two better because the plot was better.

I “read” the book over the holidays (my review is at http://slithytoves.sytes.net/~dthiel/ravings.php?wl_mode=more&wl_eid=410) and just felt completely overwhelmed. After the first text piece and the rambling, uninvolving “Orlando” comics insert, I found myself unwilling to wade into the other diversions from the main storyline. Like you, I found the potential reward for plowing through page after page of faithfully reproduced archaic prose not worth the time necessary to parse it. I’ve never enjoyed reading real Shakespeare, so an authentically obtuse Shakespearean pastiche ain’t my idea of a good time.

Ultimately, the real problem with the “Black Dossier” is that the game of “spot the ridiculously obscure reference” that had been fun when it was going on in the background of the previous two volumes here becomes the entire thing. And yet, despite the ’50s setting, I probably got fewer of them this time, either because Moore was deliberately obscuring them to avoid copyright hassles, or because he drew so frequently on unfamiliar British pop culture.

Chris G. above makes an excellent point that Moore’s use of “1984″ neuters its impact. I would take it a step further: if ALL fictional characters (except, for some reason, Doctor No) really exist in a single, shared reality, none of them have any meaning. As I put it in my review, “When Adam Strange, Dagwood Bumstead and Dobie Gillis can team up to face the combined threat of Count Yorga, Count Chocula and Count Dooku, it’s just pointless madness.”

Rational mad man, a real art house snob would at least be able to engage with the argument critically instead of attempting to slay it from a distance with lofty disdain! This guy’s just a wannabe.

==========================================

Observe the inane twiitering of the arthouse snob.

Too bad.

Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Romeo & Juliet, Othello — not one of these characters was created by William Shakespeare; he swiped them all from somewhere or somebody else. Applying your logic to this fact, Shakespeare was a writer of fanfic, too. Taking your logic one step further, you don’t like any of the works these characters appear in because of this fact and couldn’t care less about the “rep” the writer has. Shakespeare’s greatest plays were all works of fanfic. Therefore, all of Shakespeare’s plays suck and you’ve, like, so totally “outgrown” them.

Now, you see how silly you’re being here? I’m not asking you to thank me for pointing this out to you. I’m just doing it out of the kindness of my own heart.

[...] I didn’t even read the bulk of the text sections for that very reason. Snooze. I agree with Johanna Carlson’s observation that the book feels too much like homework much of the time, and that’s no fun. It feels very [...]

Aw, that prat had it coming. Seeing “Jimmy” get his ass kicked again and again by the last two surviving members of The League was more than enough to justify the price of admission for me. I could even hear his theme music playing in the background when, gazing out over the airstrip and spotting Mina and Allan fleeing in the distance, he said to himself, “All right, let’s go,” before drawing his gun and hopping the rail to the asphalt below. Then to have Allan shoot the bastard with his trusty elephant gun…I loved it! And if that weren’t enough, thanks to Moore’s book I’ll never look at Bond’s great nemesis Dr. No the same way again…for, as we all know now, there WAS no Doctor. Brilliant stuff! But don’t feel so bad for ol’ “Jimmy”: He got the girl in the end, after all, both figuratively and literally.

You’ve given me grounds for a new principle: if someone skips criticizing points from the review to go straight to criticizing the critic, then they’re admitting that they can’t intelligently refute the points.

Your comment boils down to: it doesn’t matter if it’s fanfic is the great Moore does it. Which, hey, you’re entitled to think. Me, I don’t like it no matter how much of a rep the writer has.

And cringe you should: As if writing the entire first act of a “lost” play by William Shakespeare, and pulling it off beautifully, were somehow comparable to your own childhood scribblings about Charles In Charge babysitting Punky Brewster. Utterly laughable. And then, refusing to quit while you’re so far behind, actually going on to say that Moore’s dizzying accomplishment here — to say absolutely nothing of the rest of his magnificent and challenging book — is something you’ve “outgrown.” So preposterous, it’s downright adorable, like a small child blinking perplexedly at work by Picasso, turning to her mother in the gallery and saying, “I can do better than THAT, mama!”

I will say that this is a cautionary tale in reviewing works that you probably know you won’t like before you go into it (I imagine that a quick flip through it reveals, yeah, not much in the way of comics in there) – and I sympathize. I’m very selective about what I review (both in the paper and on my web site) largely because of means – really, there’s only so much I can do and only so much I can get ahold of in a timely fashion – and also because at a certain point, I became more interested in writing essays about works that I found worthy than critiques of things I found lacking. Partly this is selfish, but also it’s because I came to a decision where I decided that promoting the positive – that is, the best, most interesting in any creative medium – was the best way to promote the same – often, when you tear things down, it ends up speaking only to the converted, but a recommendation travels uch further, I have found.

On the other hand, I do remember both The Polar Express and Zathura and, totally unplanned for each, I decided that they deserved to have new assholes ripped in a daily newspaper because I found them so heinous. Sometimes, it cannot be helped – you feel that some things really need to be taken down a few pegs, you need to say something. Which is what I think you felt here and I applaud you for that, even as I disagree with the actual opinions about the book. I respect the clarity of your arguments, though.

Chris, it’s obvious we’re talking past each other. I put up the post because I read the book, I had some thoughts on it, and that’s what this site is FOR. It’s gotten many responses, which tells me that readers were interested in talking about the book.

I think the book’s a failure because it’s not interesting or thought-provoking, it’s navel-gazing. You disagree, fine. That’s why you have a site (and the chance to comment here). If you want to crusade against those reviews you think are sloppy, well, there’s a huge internet out there with a ton of targets for you.

None of this is convincing me that my opinion on the work was wrong or shouldn’t have been expressed the way it was. You’re not engaging my review, you’re calling me names for not living up to *your* standards. Which is flattering, in that you think I should do and am capable of better, but I don’t think we were aiming for the same things.