I heard of this book when I was younger, of course. There’s a movie based on it that came out in my childhood, but I never actually bothered to look into it beyond hearing about it in passing.
And then I saw the full volume set in a comic book store, and I knew I had to buy it.
Created by the man who brought us V for Vendetta and Watchmen, this graphic novel is not just a raunchy tale of mystery and action, but it is also an homage to some of the best characters literature has to offer.
Starting off in nineteenth century England, the story follows Mina Harker (Bram Stoker’s Dracula) as she’s tasked with finding a group of individuals who are to form a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Among them are Captain Nemo (Jules Vernes’s Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea), the Invisible Man (H G Wells’s The Invisible Man), Dr Jekyll (R L Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde), and Allan Quatermain (H Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines). Other characters also include some famous detectives written about by Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle, but I won’t go too much into that…
Once Mina gathers her team, they are sent on a few strange quests by a mysterious benefactor that lead to the (almost) destruction of the world, in a beautiful homage to H G Wells’s The War of the Worlds, with a guest appearance by other H G Wells characters from The Island of Dr Moreau.
Basically, if you love nineteenth to twentieth century literature and want to enjoy a story that incorporates some of the greatest characters we’ve all heard of, you should definitely read this book.
What I will tell you is this – while the characters are amazingly adapted into a dark fantastic version of our world, and there are some truly brilliantly written moments, this graphic novels also comes with a massive trigger warning for rape and very graphic sexual scenes (even when the sex is consensual), as well as body horror and gore. The art does not shy away from depicting some truly horrific stuff, even if it is just alluding to it sometimes. I would exercise caution because this graphic novel is not for anyone who isn’t mature enough to be seeing graphic stuff like what I’ve mentioned.
All in all, if you love fantasy, nineteenth century literature, and raunchy adventures, I definitely recommend this graphic novel. It’s a brilliant read and will take you at least three days to get through because there’s just so much to it that you can’t absorb it all in one sitting. ( )

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Omnibus edition (2011) by Alan Moore, Kevin O’Neill (Illustrator). You’ve probably seen the movie that bears the same name as this graphic novel. While there are some wonderful actors in it and the plot has many of the same fine points to it, as usual, the book out distances the adaptation by miles.
In short, if you’ve read this, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, well, what is stopping you. This is the omnibus edition, with every issue of the series of books plus a lot of fun frills and whistles and pretty, pretty streamers. This is the one to read.
You can’t go wrong with a book from Mr. Moore and this is no exception. ( )

This one automatically hits a bunch of my reading buttons. It’s British, basically steampunk, a massive and well-thought-through crossover, deals with all sorts of Victorian and Edwardian lit, and kind of strange. It’s also got some great funny bits (largely to do with the cameos) and wonderful action scenes. I could’ve done with less of Mina Murray getting told she’s weak and should stay behind, though that’s period-appropriate and she tends to go anyway, and I felt like the sex and romance was wedged in and not really pertaining to the story. Also, there’s some Yellow Peril and sexual violence that made me really uncomfortable. Apart from that, though, I did enjoy the book, the way it played with the world and characters and tropes, and the sense of love and fun surrounding the lit Moore chose.

If you are a super-nerd (like me), try to find the omnibus rather than the individual collections, because there’s a travel guide of sorts to the greater world, with all sorts of other references to classic SFF. Like, Woolf’s Orlando is in there, and Lemuel Gulliver, and Cloud-Cuckooland, and the Blazing World, and so much I didn’t catch as well.

7/10 ( )

Freaking. Weird. ( )

I'm going to count this toward my Books I Should Have Read Already theme for 2016. because I've had it on my iPad for a few years now, never able to get far into issue #1 of volume #1, and although I wouldn't count it as a "book", I'm given to understand that some refer to these comics as graphic "novels". I was more than somewhat interested because unlike seemingly most of the viewers, I didn't think the 2003 movie that bad. Now, having gone through the first two volumes of the comic book, the movie while only so-so, in my opinion actually improved on the source.

I read to learn, be entertained, or as a diversion (...never as an "escape"; a diversion is not an escape.) I learned something again with this diversion that I already knew: I ceased to be entertained by comic books more than forty years ago. Now, I like the visual components of steampunk. I suppose I should have liked this "classic". But Moore's stories are obtuse, disconcertingly inconsistent and poorly crafted. And more disturbingly, takes a bizarre turn for the prurient in the fourth and fifth installments of Volume #2. I suppose that was to appeal to the adolescent psyches of a target audience? O'Neill's illustrations range from quite good to WTH? bad. Mostly toward the latter.

So much for comic books. Seems there was a good reason for me to put off this one. Instead of comic books, I should probably stick to books of comics like the Far Side collection. Smarter. ( )