Mired in copyright lawsuits and corporate wrangling for gods knows how long, the third volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was finally released as a standalone graphic novel. The plot, if you can call it that, is simple. Mina Harker (now a leggy blonde) and Alan Quartermain (who's grown young again and posing as his own son) sneak back into an Orwellian 1940s England. The oppressive government has a book about the League's adventures that Mina and Alan want to read, even though they star in most of them. The government wants to stop them.
So you get a dizzying array of letters, plays, documents, magazine articles, stories and even government-produced porn, all telling a bit of what happened between the end of the second volume and now. In between are sandwiched bits of chase scenes and a more traditional story, but the government opposition isn't that great and the end, where Mina and Alan get away, is never really in doubt.
And everything is a literary Where's Waldo, with literally dozens of characters from the past 200 years making guest appearances. If you're not familiar with the past 100 or so years of literature, most of this is going to go right over your head. I'm positive I didn't catch them all.
I could *not* get through the Beat pastiche in one sitting. Ouch.
Also ouch was the headache-inducing 3D sequence at the end. Nifty idea, but I needed two Advil afterwards.
And really, this doesn't do much to advance the League's story. It's a fun read, and a masterwork of breaking the rules of a graphic novel, but is it something I would say you *have* to read? No.
In fact, I can sort of see the point of all the rumors saying Alan Moore made this to finish up his contract with DC, so he could take the future adventures of the League elsewhere.
A beautiful work of modern art, but not the best comic I've read lately.
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