The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 3: Century

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen #3

by Alan Moore, Kevin O'Neill (Artist)

Collects League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century books 1910, 1969 and 2009.

The nineteenth century, expiring with a flourish of Moriarty and Martians, has left the division of Military Intelligence commanded by Mina Murray in a state of disrepair. While she and her lover Allan Quatermain have achieved a measure of eternal youth, recruiting new talents such as the trans-gendered immortal Orlando, the ghost-finder Thomas Carnacki and the gentleman thief A.J. Raffles to replace their deceased or missing colleagues, former associate Captain Nemo has retired to his Pacific pirate island to decline in surly isolation.

Now it is the early years of a new and unfamiliar century, and forces are emerging that appear to promise ruin for the Murray group, the nation and indeed the world, even were it to take a hundred years for this apocalyptic threat to come to its disastrous fruition.

From the occult parlours and crime-haunted wharfs of 1910, through the criminal, mystical and psychedelic underworlds of 1969 to the financially and culturally desolated streets of 2009, the disintegrating remnants of Miss Murray and her League must combat not only the hidden hand of their undying adversary, but also the ethical and psychological collapse accompanying this new era.

And a lot of things can happen in a CENTURY.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction, Comic Book, Graphic Novels Comics

255 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Alan Moore is an English writer most famous for his influential work in comics, including the acclaimed graphic novels Watchmen, V for Vendetta and From Hell. He has also written a novel, Voice of the Fire, and performs "workings" (one-off performance art/spoken word pieces) with The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels, some of which have been released on CD.

As a comics writer, Moore is notable for being one of the first writers to apply literary and formalist sensibilities to the mainstream of the medium. As well as including challenging subject matter and adult themes, he brings a wide range of influences to his work, from the literary–authors such as William S. Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon, Robert Anton Wilson and Iain Sinclair; New Wave science fiction writers such as Michael Moorcock; horror writers such as Clive Barker; to the cinematic–filmmakers such as Nicolas Roeg. Influences within comics include Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Kirby and Bryan Talbot.

Reviews

[XenofoneX · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another Experiment in Reader Tolerance from the Mad/Maddening Genius of Comics
3.25 Stars out of 5

Yeah, I miss this League.

The Third Volume of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is closer to The Black Dossier than Volumes 1 and 2, which means it's a polarizing work that is going to frustrate most people, and please a dwindling number of hardcore Moore fans. Each of the three chapters, 1910, 1969, and 2009, introduce period specific references that become increasingly arcane, as if 'Century' was conceived as a hyper-contextual scavenger hunt, sending readers scurrying across Wikipedia pages to collect all the obscure literary clues and occult Easter eggs.

There's little chance of picking up every detail Moore and O'Neill leave taped under table-tops and stuffed inside tree-hollows, but following the trail beyond the book can lead in fascinating directions. It can also really piss people off, and there's no question that Volume III lacks not just the accessibility, but the quick pace and pure entertainment of previous instalments. It's a complex work... and for some, another infuriating experiment in reader tolerance from Moore, whose latest hobby seems to be alienating comic fans. I liked it, in some ways... but it's simply nowhere near as fun, clever or memorable as the first two volumes. Anytime a book makes me nostalgic for it's earlier instalments, while I'm reading it... well, that's a bad fucking sign. It's disjointed and off-putting, and Moore knows that increasing referential density doesn't make up for a less entertaining story, but he obviously doesn't give a shit. I'll suggest that readers who disliked The Black Dossier will probably hate Volume 3.

As for the plot... ugh. Their last mission was in a Cold War Britain of the late 1950's, where Mina Murray and the rejuvenated Allan Quatermain risked their apparently endless lives to steal the ultra-classified documents detailing the secret history of the League. As enemies of the (literally) Orwellian state, they were pursued by fictional weapons of statecraft that included a humorously inept young spy named 'Jimmy' Bond. 'The Black Dossier' ended with a visually stunning, very confusing trip to 'The Blazing World', rendered in 3-D by O'Neill and Ray Zone.


Volume three takes us back almost 50 years, introducing a League that has replaced it's dead and retired veterans with the immortal hermaphrodite Orlando, the occultist Thomas Carnacki, and 'gentleman thief' A.J. Raffles. It also introduces the teenaged daughter of Captain Nemo, Janni, who abandons her ailing father and her birthright of piracy and slaughter, seeking a new life for herself in England. The League, meanwhile, finds itself up against an enemy who has grand ambitions that involve shaping the future of humanity to fit his own desires. With a stratagem that transcends death and time, Mina Murray is the only person capable of following and defeating Oliver Haddo (a character taken from 'The Magician' by W. Somerset Maugham, based on the infamous 'Great Beast' and co-founder of The Order of the Golden Dawn, Aleister Crowley; Crowley later assumed the sobriquet himself to critique the novel). Her increasingly odd and unreliable contacts make the whole thing seem pretty fucking 'unlikely', but that's a close relative of 'extraordinary', I suppose. Her one 'informant', for example, is a time traveller whose tether has been cut, leaving him to occupy a single place in London as time flips forward and back, like a TV skipping through channels every few seconds, making him like the human equivalent of the real estate in Richard McGuire's 'Here'. His insane, hypercryptic jabbering is one of her not-so-impressive 'weapons' in a struggle that spans the course of the 20th Century. It's that kind of a 'battle' -- it almost feels like a prequel to The Invisibles*(See P.S.): the hand of glory, the reanimated and mechanized head of John the Baptist, the Royal 'Moon-child' that was the slobbering, tentacle-faced offspring of Princess Di and a Lovecraftian monster -- weirdest fucker wins.

For completists: the book is well-designed, with thick, semi-gloss paper of the highest quality and sturdy, cloth-bound covers -- Top Shelf didn't cut corners by using the cheap, acidic paper and stamped particle-board that DC do quite regularly (my copy of The Black Dossier hardcover has already yellowed, while older books printed on better stock remain arctic white. Even the 'glossy' paper DC uses is still thin, pulpy, acidic trash that puts an expiry date on purchases. They do use premium paper on Absolute editions and the more expensive hardcovers, however. So even if you don't love the course Moore has been charting the last few years, at the very least you end up with a well-produced book. It includes all the prose stories and ads that came with the softcovers, and features painted endpapers by O'Neill. The format is the standard 7 x 10 inches (roughly) of The Black Dossier and the Nemo books, one size down from the LOEG: Volume 1 and 2 Omnibus hardcover.

See, I don't even know what to say about this... climax, I suppose?


P.S.: *Oh, both Moore and Morrison would hate that... they only despise each other because they're so alike. Moore lets his hair and beard grow out, goes for the ultra-hirsute 'mad-hermit' look, while Morrison keeps his head and face gleaming like plastic, going for the 'alien-prophet' look. I think they love each other.

P.S.II: Update, Jan.23, 2023: Now that I've read the series in its entirety -- re-reading Vol.1 for the 28th time*, Vol.2 for the 10th time, & descending multiple readings for the rest, ending with a second reading of Vol.4 to complete the read-through -- I can say that my feelings for Vol.3 & the Black Dossier have changed dramatically. That's a logical progression, as reading the end of a narrative will inevitably change your perception of the middle. In this case, it's definitely changed for the better, deepening my appreciation for a book I was probably too harsh with. I can only call the LOXG a 5-star seq-art experience that ranks among the very best of the medium. It will test you at times, but persistence is rewarded.

*(I have the 12" x 17" Gallery Edition, reprinting every page of Kevin O'Neill's original art at their original size, using ultra-high resolution full-color scans of the black-&-white inked art, capturing traces of blue-line pencil & notes & stains & marginalia, which also gave me a new appreciation for the artist behind one of my Top 5 all-time favorite comic books. Every time I come to examine the gorgeously detailed, hyper-articulated imaginings of Moore's Steampunk-version of fin-de-siecle Victorian England, I'm inevitably sucked into the story all over again...)

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen spend a century trying to prevent the birth of the anti-Christ and the apocalypse.

That whacky warlock Alan Moore crafted one hell of a tale here with Kevin O'Neil. Starting in 1910 and ending in 2009, Century tells of the League's efforts to stop Oliver Haddo's plot to conceive an anti-Christ over the course of a hundred years. Quartermane and Mina are still young due to having drunk from a pool in Africa. Orlando is pushing 3000 year old and switches genders a few times in this.

Alan Moore puts some heavy lifting on the reader in this. I was fortunate enough to know Oliver Haddo from The Magician, and Jeremiah Cornellius from the works of Michael Moorcock but some of the references went over my head. I expect I'll ferret out what's what on the next go-round.

I don't want to spoil anything but the 2009 section is easily my favorite, partly due to the balls to the wall nature of it and partly due to who the anti-Christ turns out to be. I'm not sure what the hell the fourth volume is going to entail but I'm along for the duration. Five out of five stars.

[Dennis · Rating 3 out of 5]

What the fuck did I just read?

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the first two volumes and The Black Dossier over a long period of time and so I get lost occasionally as I read this, but I had read all of these three chapters separately and liked them pretty well, but in this big beautiful volume you get a view of the twentieth century from three different year perspectives and it is really impressive and makes more sense together. I still don't love LoEG but this is my favorite trip through a part of the landscape, in part because it tried to do this more cohesive story, so that encourages me to reread the other volumes.

[Rod Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of my projects this year is catching up on series I let fall by the wayside over the years. I read the first two parts of this collection when they were originally released, but I never got around to the conclusion of the story arc until now.

The through story has the League of Extraordinary Gentleman -- reduced to a core group of Mina Murray, Orlando, and Allan Quartermain -- facing off against a pastiche of Aleister Crowley in his century-long attempt to create the Antichrist and bring about the apocalypse. Each of the three chapters is built around a parody of a particular work. In 1910, the events of Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera play out, complete with musical numbers. In 1969, things get a little recursive as Moore turns the 1970 film Performance, which starred Mick Jagger as a rock star, into a fractured history of the Rolling Stones and the death of Brian Jones. Finally, in 2009, the Harry Potter franchise becomes ground zero for the end of time.

Of course, in a shared universe for all literature ever written, one can also find Easter eggs galore from the works of Ian Fleming, Jules Verne, W. Somerset Maugham, Shakespeare, Michael Moorcock, P. L. Travers, Arthur Conan Doyle, and many, many more. Film and television characters are also included, often just wandering through the background, but a version of Emma Peel from TV's The Avengers plays an increasingly important role in the main story. While the League started with public domain characters, Moore usually tiptoes around more modern trademarked material by clearly being satirical or staying in the vague realm of allusion. Moore's friend Iain Sinclair actually let him straight-up borrow the Andrew Norton character from his Slow Chocolate Autopsy. There are various websites that try to document the many obvious and obscure references crammed into this book, and I recommend browsing around to get a full appreciation for the sheer volume of them.

In the end, this the sort of book where the core story may not be totally satisfying, but it's ultimately secondary to all the research and analysis it inspires. Sort of like a lot of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies.


FOR REFERENCE:

Contents: 1. What Keeps Mankind Alive [Century: 1910] -- 2. Paint It Black [Century: 1969] -- 3. Let It Come Down [Century: 2009] -- Minions of the Moon, Chapter One: Into the Limbus -- Minions of the Moon, Chapter Two: The Distance from Tranquility -- Minions of the Moon, Chapter Three: Saviours -- Cover Gallery

[Nevin Lough · Rating 3 out of 5]

As an adolescent, I was an almost obsessive fan of the first two volumes. As an adult, I still appreciate Moore's more "serious" work, such as V for Vendetta, Watchmen, and From Hell. I'm probably the most receptive audience a book like this has.

I'm going to be blunt. The thing that's great about (the first two volumes of) League is that it's a straight-forward superhero adventure yarn with a Victorian steampunk setting and a compelling gimmick. That gimmick is that all of the characters from 19th and early 20th century pulp fiction (Doyle, Fleming, Haggard, Poe, Rohmer, Stoker, Stevensen, Lovecraft, Wells, Verne, etc) share the same universe. Moore has stated as such that this was his original idea; a Justice League with Mr. Hyde instead of The Hulk, etc., and originally wisely kept Sherlock Holmes and Dracula as unseen characters to keep them from overshadowing the other elements of the story. The first two volumes, while not shying away from the premise that the world Moore was creating was a crossover-universe of the entirety of fiction, used this seasoning sparingly. Hallway portraits contain hints that individuals such as Orlando, Prospero, and Lemuel Gulliver had previously walked through the world, and tertiary plots mentioned in passing suggest that the fantasy realms of Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum, C.S. Lewis, and W.H. Hodgson exist right outside the central protagonists' peripheries. Characters from "high" fiction such as the works of Dickens, Melville, and Wilde make brief cameos. The most sublime example of this is the beginning of the second volume, which vividly shows (but doesn't linger too long on) a meta-Mars in which the Martians from A Princess of Mars, Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation, and Out of the Silent Planet form a united front to battle the Martians from War of the Worlds. (In my opinion, a single cameo from Martian Manhunter or Marvin the Martian would have ruined this scene.) As an adolescent, I was left in suspense by the volume 2 cliffhanger. When would the League finally encounter Sherlock Holmes, or fight Dracula? Would they encounter Frankenstein's Monster next? Tarzan? Ayesha? Cthulhu? The Cheshire Cat? Would they go venturing for an ancient artifact that belonged to Conan or Frodo Baggins? Would there be a subtle, clever illusion to the birth of Clark Kent? These are obviously not the most original ideas, but they give a context for where I, as a teenage boy, thought the stakes were set.

My personal theory is that Moore was traumatized by the unauthorized 2003 film adaptation. This abysmal film made him question whether or not he was making generic adventure schlock. But beneath the frivolity were decent introductions to important readings of the source materials. The ending of Vol 2, for example, illustrates how War of the Worlds was a critique of British imperialism. Mina Harker as a suffragette with PTSD illustrates the feminist reading of Dracula. League was not vapid; it was a good, and solidly intelligent introduction to English lit for teenage boys obsessed with comic books.

The next installment in the League series, Black Dossier, totally went off the rails. Moore seemed more obsessed with extravagantly world-building this 'unified field theory' of fiction setting at the expense of characters, tone, or compelling plots. The bulk of the narrative is set in the League's version of the 1950s - an incoherent and jarring slurry of Fireball XL5, Bulldog Drummond, and Nineteen Eighty-Four. The beginning of Vol 3: Century made me hope this was a hiccup. I have to admit I got a pang of childhood nostalgia seeing the museum halls crammed with statues of Babar the Elephant and skeletons of Gulliver's Travels races. Once again we are in the late Victorian era, and are introduced to a compelling new character; Captain Nemo's daughter, who it turns out is also Pirate Jenny from Brecht's Threepenny Opera. Off the bat, we have the first problem. If Vols 1 and 2 of League had tried to retell Moby Dick or Oliver Twist, they would not have worked. What works about them is that they primarily revolve around the era's equivalent of superhero comics - magazine serials - and using a crossover comic to merge all the elementary parts of late 19th century magazine serial fiction adds a titilating, but not overpowering new level. Brecht, on the other hand, was a modernist and Marxist playwright, and Pirate Jenny is a brilliantly haunting metaphor for proletarian revolution. Moore's choice to make the Threepenny Opera the central plot of Vol 3 act 1 comes off more as bastardization than as a sublime creative reimagining ala his past treatment of serial fiction. (The graphic novel is also a questionable medium for a musical, a problem that plagues this volume throughout.) The new League roster is lackluster, comprised only of E.W. Hornung's AJ Raffles and W.H. Hodgson's Carnacki the Ghost Finder, who pale in comparison to Nemo, Hyde, and the Invisible Man. This is likely intentional on Moore's part, as he is trying to establish that the League is degenerating, as a metaphor for the decline of artistic quality throughout the 20th century. (More on this later) However, this does not make it any less boring to read. (Act I also has a boring rehash of the Whitechapel murders, an inexplicable choice from the author of From Hell.)

But we're dispatched with this fairly shortly. After all of Act I is spent establishing the character of Jenny, (the only interesting character in the lot) we are immediately whisked away to 1969 for Act Two, where Jenny is an old woman and disappears after a single scene, never to be heard from again. Quartermain and Mina are now beatnik mods. The two characters are now immortal, thanks to the events of a minor subplot in Vol 2. Making Alan and Mina and their struggle with immortality the central plot of this story is a narrative decision I find questionable. (The meditation on the ramifications of immortality is also humorous in a world where the reality of vampires is humdrum.) Moore overestimates how compelling these two specific protagonists are. If anything, their third wheel Orlando ends up stealing the show. Neither Alan Quatermain nor Mina Harker represent archetypes of 19th century British fiction the way, say, Sherlock Holmes does. Now that Moore has crowded up his panels with all sorts of fantastic aliens and demons, his decision to keep Holmes a mostly unseen character seems quaint. The 1969 setting of Act II failed to keep my attention. The superhero comics Easter Eggs were fairly unimaginative, and knowing Moore, I saw the Jerry Cornelius cameo a mile away. The LSD scenes struck me as the sort of cheesy neo-retro-psychedelia that you would see in a mid-series Simpsons episode where Homer smokes weed. (Moore and O'Neill make the especially embarrassing choice to finally illustrate Dracula as a cartoonish bat during one of these scenes.) Moore's view of the 60s is simultaneously Polyanna and cynical, focused on the drug culture, hippies, and occult sex orgies. It is here where we start to see Moore's obsession with magick bleed into the story. (As someone who finds magick to be a rather boring subject, it's a lot like reading a cartoonist write about golf.) The plot of this entire book involves a quest to prevent Oliver Haddo (from W. Somerset Maugham's The Magician, in other words, Aleister Crowley) from creating a "moonchild" who will become the antichrist. In Act II we learn, somewhat predictably, that the events of Rosemary's Baby were a failed attempt to create such an antichrist, and that the titular baby has since died. This illustrates my problem with newer League, the attempts to integrate the plots of other fictional works begin to strike me as perfunctory and joyless, as well as preoccupied with "rectconning" the plots of, say, Nineteen Eighty-Four or Rosemary's Baby to fit the plot of League. (As opposed to the alternative of reconsidering whether League should venture into the late 20th century with its furcating fictional apocalypses and dystopias., or if it's the best vehicle to reinterpret a work with the political gravity of a Nineteen Eighty-Four.) Also an important secondary character throughout this volume is a character from Slow Chocolate Autopsy, an obscure novel by Alan Moore friend Iain Sinclair.

Act III of Vol 3 is when Moore, not content with distracting himself from the once secondary element of creating a unified field theory continuity of all works of fiction, now tries to heavy-handedly introduce what is the "real" message of League this whole time, that the quality and creativity of modern commercial mass-entertainment has reached its nadir. This is something I agree with Moore on, and I think it's truer now than it was in 2009. The irony that Moore fails to realize is that this very work itself, when compared to Watchmen or V for Vendetta, is an example of this phenomenon. (Certainly our era has produced better works of art than this) The problem is, because Moore is an unplugged boomer, he doesn't really know how to populate his 2009 League world. We're left with the occasional Easter Egg reference to a contemporary sitcom or prime time television drama that Moore has likely seen in passing. This doesn't capture the feeling of dreariness Moore is going for, and instead just comes off as unpolished. The one decision that other critical reviews of League vol 3 deride, which I will defend, is the choice to make the central antagonist - the antichrist - Harry Potter. Moore is not literally saying Harry Potter itself is the decline of western art, he is using it as an example, and one that works within this little plot he's created for himself. I actually think this story element would have worked better if it had been developed more, but that would have meant Moore actually needing to read the Harry Potter books. (I don't blame him for not wanting to, but also I'm not the one who chose to put Harry Potter in my graphic novel) What's stranger to me, and more underlooked, is how he has Mary Poppins appear out-of-the-blue as a godlike deus ex machina (I don't recall any allusions to her up until this point) to defeat Antichrist Potter. I have to admit I like Moore and O'Neil's version of Marry Poppins, and wish she could have appeared in one of the more down-to-earth installments of the League I imagined as a kid. All and all the ending is unsatisfying and unrewarding. I'm left not caring about Mina Murray the immortal bisexual sex beatnik and wish I had gotten to see more of Mina Murray the Victorian suffragette vampire-hunter.

All and all I feel he same way about this that I do Twin Peaks: The Return. I understand why Lynch and Moore want to deconstruct their fan-favorite works in order to raise a critique of the sort of commercial mass-art they inadvertently played a role in creating. But why punish Twin Peaks or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen fans? Are they truly the greatest offenders? If you hold your own previous work in such contempt, why not just make a Lynch film or a Moore graphic novel that isn't Twin Peaks or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? I still think there are some glimmers of good ideas scattered throughout. Ironically, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, in its entire scope, might be one of Moore's rare works than an unauthorized adaptation could actually stand to improve on. It's not as if he has a claim to have created any of these particular characters!

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay time to try and capture my thoughts and put them to type - DEEP BREATH - here we go (and for anyone who has read this book you know what I mean)

This is the third omnibus edition of the adventures of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - even though there is also the Black Dossier and technically the Nemo trilogy can also be considered part of of the story as well. Anyway this book - well as the cover says it follows the League as it tries to decipher and then stop the plans of a madman which unfold over the space of 100 years. As usual I wont give anything away from the story but to say that you get the same artwork you would come to expect from the two previous editions. Not surprising I know considering it is the same man Alan Moore behind the controls for the series - although I am sure anyone who has followed a long running series before has seen style and artistry change along the way - which makes for a reassuring constant.
A constant I feel is all the more important considering that even though the style and artistry do not change the changes brought about by the shift in storyline from one "age" to another is disconcerting in its own right, although this is obviously intentional since it is an integral part of the plot.
I must at this point draw attention to the cameos and Britannia references dotted through all the storylines (but more obvious in the later ages). the whole ideal of the League was a rather side ways poke at the British Empire and those that defend the faith as it were. Here you see Britannia almost as a physical entity and one that reflects the fortune of her country (or is it the other way around).
So for someone who grew up in the country and who has pretty much seen the way certain images and characters have become firmly embedded in my perception I love how they have been transplanted in to these stories making them something totally new and yet disturbingly different from Parker to Rupert Bear to Doctor Who. I get a distinct feeling I will need to read this book again just to see how many more I can spot and recognise.

[Gavin]

I realized this is just the collection of LXG 1910, 1969 and 2009.
I've already suffered thru the first 2, and I briefly glanced at the third part...no thanks.
Horror week be damned.

[Francesco · Rating 3 out of 5]

I disegni di O'Neill sono spettacolari, e ho molto apprezzato le sottili citazioni a pressoché l'intero spettro letterario.
Non posso però dire che la storia mi sia piaciuta, è troppo confusionaria e mi mancano alcuni dei "vecchi" personaggi. Mina è come sempre un capo spietato, ma la Lega ha ormai perso troppi pezzi ed è difficile farsi aiutare da personaggi strani - che in questo contesto vuol dire ancora più incomprensibili degli altri - come Norton. Il capitolo sugli anni '60 inoltre non aiuta, perché è un trip acido - che rende sicuramente bene l'atmosfera ma non aiuta la comprensione.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN books are amazing. I could read them over and over every year.

I don't, but I could.

I have read the first two volumes many times, but the same issue always keeps me from returning to them as often as I would like: I feel duty-bound to read the endless prose pastiches that author Alan Moore includes in every volume. This third volume is no exception: We get another prose pastiche, this one patterned after a lurid softcore porn Sci-Fi magazine.

I struggled with nearly five decades of comics OCD before finally deciding to liberate myself from my hatred of prose pieces in comics, and I said FUCK IT! I'm skipping this endless, hard-to-read wankfest! And I did. Now I need to bag up the book and file it away before I relent and try to read it. Must...be...strong!

That said, the main event, the actual comic-book portion of this volume? Enjoyable. Nowhere near as good as the first two volumes, but you can't help but have fun with all of Moore's obscure and not-so-obscure references and characters, and O'Neill's art, as always, is a treat.

The problem that I had with this volume, aside from the prose piece, is that we're presented with a massive story starring the most boring members of The League. Alan Quatermain is a snooze, and Mina is like your nagging grandma. Orlando is fun, but the allure of this team has always been the freaks, weirdos, and lunatics, and I really felt the absence of Nemo, Griffin, and Hyde. There was a lot of fun stuff here, but the two most boring characters were front and center for all of it, dragging it down.

[Barbarroja · Rating 3 out of 5]

¿Qué diantres acabo de leer?

Las tres partes de este tercer volumen (1910, 1969 y 2009) narran realmente... algo. Creo. Confío en que el cuarto sea un cierre apoteósico. Cosas, desde luego, van a pasar.

[fonz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Visto que la propuesta inicial ya está agotada y los autores empiezan a tener problemas con DC, entonces editora de los tebeos ABC, la serie se mueve a Top Shelf, y Moore ya se ve libre para introducir sus temas habituales en el tebeo, básicamente realizar un recorrido sobre la cultura popular del sXX como termómetro espiritual colectivo y ese concepto un poco gnóstico del Mundo de las Ideas Pop y el Mundo Real que se influyen mutuamente. Como consecuencia se dibuja un panorama de progresiva decadencia en el mainstream popular que desemboca en un estado colectivo de desesperanza, confusión y agotamiento de lo imaginativo, sumidos en el continuo reciclaje de conceptos pop del sXX (aquí podría señalarse la ironía de que el propio Moore ha cimentado gran parte de su carrera en esta estrategia creativa), desembocando en "2009", un tebeo no demasiado sutil en el que el pobre Harry Potter se lleva una azotaina a manos de Mary Poppins, sobre una sociedad en un callejón sin salida espiritual, sumida en guerras distantes mientras en casa la situación económica y social se degrada sin remedio, como niños pequeños buscando refugio en fantasías consoladoras y estancados en tiempos apocalípticos en los que el fin del mundo no acaba de llegar, incapaces de imaginar nuevos conceptos, ideas, ARTE que galvanizen lo espiritual generando artefactos "mágicos" que influyan en el plano de lo material.

Pues guay. El problema es que todo esto está muy bien, meter ideas es muy divertido, pero luego viene la parte coñazo, que hay que organizarlas y ponerlas en tinta y papel, es decir, currarse un argumento y unos personajes con unos conflictos que resulten interesantes (los inmortales también lloran, perdón si me la suda), una trama estructurada con ritmo, pulir los textos para sustraer y no sobreescribir (como en "Black Dossier"), en fin, darle al pico y pala y está claro que Moore, por falta de tiempo, o por que no le interesa este aspecto del trabajo o por la razón que sea, no hace. Tanto en "1910" como "1969" todo está sometido a las ideas; personajes insulsos navegando por tramas inexistentes. Y aunque "2009" mejora algo, no faltan las ideas argumentales perezosas y recicladas (joer, ¿otra vez una batalla final con el Kid Miracleman? Y viene un ángel y salva a los buenos, ya podía haber aparecido en "1910" y eso que nos hubiésemos ahorrao). Esta narrativa desmañada acaba contagiándose al dibujo de O´Neill que empieza a perderse en dibujar referencias sólo aptas para el público inglés y aún con hallazgos, no brilla a la altura de las dos primeras series.

[Freder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sweeping, brave, complex, flawed, moving and deep. Must, I repeat, *MUST* be read in conjunction with THE BLACK DOSSIER and NEMO -- and even then you had better be properly up on your pop culture references. I can well understand why the Millennial crowd may not like this -- because most if not all of the references and characters date from well before their time and will fly a million miles over their poor, pathetic, empty heads. This is not a story for the inexperienced reader, and even the literate will find themselves seeking out the annotations online. CENTURY is not a book that stands alone, but one that draws on a whole history of culture -- and then arrives at a humane conclusion for all of its iconic characters.

Moore isn't the first to play this kind of game (Phil Farmer was playing it decades ago), but to my mind he is the best player. I'm very much looking forward to TEMPEST.

[Marco Stabile · Rating 3 out of 5]

Troppo ambizioso, questo terzo volume. Cambia la formula narrativa, basata su tre capitoli anziché sei, con due forti stacchi. Alcune sottotrame sono abbandonate senza ritegno, forse per i futuri sviluppi, ma tolto Orlando gli altri personaggi nuovi non lasciano il segno. Ben riuscita la caratterizzazione delle tre diverse epoche, ma le citazioni cominciano a diventare troppe - signor Moore, concentrarsi su un'epoca è una cosa, ma dover spaziare su oltre un secolo di letteratura non è affatto facile, specialmente se uno già deve concentrarsi su questa storia dell'occulto. Il finale non mi ha convinto. Mi sarei aspettato qualcosa di più, viste le premesse. (Senza contare la scelta dell'anticristo, unico personaggio che sembra non avere nessuna base letteraria.)
Da leggere solo se siete fan di Moore o della Lega... anche se della Lega che conoscete c'è ben poco.

[Cami L. González · Rating 3 out of 5]

No sé si soy muy fan del cambio que se produjo para este tomo. Amé los dos volúmenes anteriores y me encantó (aunque fue complicado de leer) el Black Dossier, pero la primera mitad de esta entrega no me estaba enganchando y ni siquiera me gustaban sus personajes.

La historia sigue a Mina, Allan y Orlando a lo largo de tres años 1910, 1969 y 2009, mientras siguen a una sociedad secreta que planea traer al Anticristo.

Partiré por lo que sí me gustó y tuvo que ver con el cansancio de Mina frente a la inmortalidad, apenas estaba llegando a su primer siglo, pero ya comenzaba a notar el peso de la inmortalidad y la idea de que iba a tener que seguir viva por muchos años más. Me gustó ese aspecto, aunque sí que en la primera mitad me pareció que fue la excusa para que tomara decisiones estúpidas que la sacaron un poco del personaje.

Allan y Orlando eran inútiles, la verdad es que no fueron grandes compañeros y, de hecho, no sentí que fuera la liga, sino que era solo Mina y la peor Mina que hemos tenido. Para el final, Orlando logró tener un rol más activo y ser un apoyo para Mina, pero el resto del tiempo ambos personajes eran una mezcla de comic relief y un contraste con el estrés de Mina. Nada más, no tuvo la gracia de los primeros volúmenes de ver a un equipo de gente extraordinaria teniendo que trabajar junta.

La historia estuvo bien, quizá la sentí algo caótica, no fue una a la que pude seguirle el hilo con claridad durante todo el volumen. De hecho, recién para la segunda mitad fui entendiendo más y creo que estuvo interesante, pero no sentí que se le acercara a lo que podría haber sido. Por ejemplo, el final lo sentí anticlimático, ni de cerca tan bueno como podría haberlo sido.

Creo que la novela gráfica no es tan antigua como para ser tan rancia con respecto al sexo y aquí realmente me amargó la primera mitad. En un momento ocurrió una violación en grupo hacia una chica, que después deduje que debía de ser una niña, cuyo propósito era solo justificar el motivo por el que ella decidió tomar cierto rumbo en su vida. Me pareció una decisión asquerosa y clásica de un hombre hetero queriendo justificar que un personaje femenino fuera fuerte y despiadado. Además, en una parte Mina estaba en un festival de música y quedó insconciente y puso a unos personajes manoseándola de forma asquersosa, ¿podría pasar? Sí, claro que sí. ¿Fue de algún aporte a la trama, personajes, historia, mundo, etc.? NO. Las novelas de Alan Moore suelen tener esa sexualización en los diseños, que no son necesariamente tema de él sino de quien dibuja, pero acá fue parte de la trama como tal y eso no me gustó.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, vol. III: Century es el tercer volumen de las aventuras de estos personajes, pero que mostró a solo una parte de la liga que conocimos. Este volumen abarcó varios años y se notó el paso del tiempo, aunque más que mostrar a una liga o un equipo, se centró en Mina pasando su peor momento.

"Las gentes respetables que convertís en vuestra ambición librarnos del mal que nuestro corazón embarga, antes deberías solucionar nuestros problemas de alimentación. Sabes que vuestra lección de moral nos amarga".

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's really a lot to like in this book, lurking underneath Moore's labyrinthine use of literary references and homage. The fact that I'm starting a review with "there's really a lot to like," though, doesn't bode well for the book's overall quality. Unfortunately, this book just has too much going on for its own good. Moore is so eager to string together seemingly every fictional universe ever created, literary or otherwise, that he frequently sacrifices plot and character in favor of world-building. And if you build a world and don't have anybody to care about inside of it, the question starts to become-- who cares?

But, again, there is a lot to like here. This, the third volume of Moore's League saga (4th if you count the standalone Black Dossier) tells an interconnected series of stories that pan out over the course of 100 years. Each of the three chapters of the book is set in a different year (1910, 1969 and 2009), and utilizes the major fictional tropes of that era to inform its world and side characters. It's dazzling in a way, reading such an epic story that manages to incorporate familiar characters from penny dreadfuls, James Bond, Harry Potter, Lovecraft, The Rutles, superheroes, Mary Poppins, and about 12 million other worlds. This world is shown to even be populated by characters from 30 Rock, The Thick of It and The West Wing for crying out loud. It's impressive that Moore makes them all fit, too, by having them stand in for real-life equivalents.

Unfortunately, the thing that really worked about the first two volumes of League, though, is missing. And that's character. Moore did such an incredible job making you love and/or hate all those throwback characters. He spent time with them, built them out, gave them goals and ambitions and fears. He also gave them agency and made them the drivers of their own stories. In this volume, the remaining League is made up of people who just seem to kind of go with the flow, who by the end of the story have affected genuinely zero change on any of the events surrounding them. They aren't heroes anymore. They're honestly just washed-up losers who watch a lot of cool things happen and then get saved by the world's weirdest deus ex machina in the end.

Now, there is a brief attempt to humanize a few of them here and there. In the 1969 chapter, Mina struggles with her newfound immortality in a very interesting way. There's a subplot about her trying to maintain some level of youth and modernity in the face of never growing old (she's nearly 100 at that point), and it feels like a great metaphor for aging in general. However, it's never fully explored, and the way that story ends doesn't give any level of closure or final critique on her desire.

Then, there's Allan, who starts to fall back into the same drug haze he was in when Mina first discovered him way back in League volume one. There's a deeply human story to be told about relapse and addiction there, about how the fact that he can live forever means he only sees more hardship, and therefore can never break himself out of his cycle. But, Moore doesn't deal with it. He just kind of makes Allan a junkie again because it sounds like a story to tell, but doesn't actually tell the story. It's very disappointing (and even more so because of the way that story ultimately ends).

So, I don't know. I still enjoy Moore's world-building and plan on reading the final volume of this when it comes out in January. Kevin O'Neill's art is fantastic, and the way he brings to life the various eras presented here is a testament to his talent. But I just feel like Moore has gone too far into the rabbit hole of trying to make every book he's ever read exist in one reality, and has sacrificed genuine, human storytelling in the process. Oh well. We can't all stay great forever.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Harry Potter reference and commentary is probably the highlight. I liked Black Dossier better, though this was still interesting and trippy.

[Eric Mesa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I try to go into these books without any foreknowledge about the particular volume. It’s all too easy when researching to end up coming up against the opinions of others and I’d rather form my own opinions before potentially incorporating the views of others as I write these posts. In the case of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume 3: Century, this was not a good idea at all. I’d previously read volumes 1 and 2 and they seemed to follow one another in terms of narrative. In this case, on the other hand, you’re best off consulting a reading order. I spent a large chunk of the narrative profoundly confused about what was going on because between each of the three vignettes it was assumed the reader had read The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier and the Captain Nemo trilogy. Additionally, when collected, all the text story portions are placed serially at the end, but they take place within the timeline of the comic portion. Luckily, while it made for a poor reading experience not to know this, Comic POW! is not a review site, and the missing information did not prevent me from noting the themes present in the narrative.

While the first volume contained characters everyone could pretty quickly recognize, volume two began the process of getting a bit more esoteric. At the time of the release of volume 2, John Carter of Mars was not quite as well known in the public as The Invisible Man or Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. In volume three Alan Moore takes this to 11 and includes the following characters which you may or may not be familiar with: Orlando (from a Virginia Wolf book as well as a BUNCH of other characters all mixed into a blender a la Jack in Fablesbeing every time someone was named Jack in a fable), Prospero, Thomas Carnacki, A.J. Raffles, an Aleister Crowley analog, Andrew Norton, Vince Daken, Jack Carter, Kosmo Gallion, Jerry Cornelius, Voldemort, Harry Potter, Colonel Cuckoo, Rosa Coote, O from The Story of O, Golliwogs, and even more. I consider myself to be well-read – I’ve read most of the classics and have literally read nearly 1000 books or more. I didn’t know MANY of these characters. Or, in some cases, like Voldemort, it was easy to miss the clues at first if you didn’t pay attention to all the small details. In both Top 10 and this series, Moore rewards the reader who has lots of background information in their heads. It provides a depth to the characters that he doesn’t have to waste pages establishing. Of course, this depends on the reader knowing the references, but it can be seen as rewarding a reread.

The Leage of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 3 – Sexual Assault

One theme that’s constant in Alan Moore’s work is that of sexual assault. I’ve been thinking about this topic for years, ever since I first was introduced to the idea of Women in Fridges and then learned about the attendant tropes like the raping of female characters. Of course, inLeague of Extraordinary Gentlemen Mr Moore is an equal opportunity rapist as volume two has Mr Hyde rape The Invisible Man as a punishment for his treachery. But, getting back to the tropes, the problem is not the existence of sexual assault in comics, books, TV shows, and movies. It’s something that happens. I know someone who’s been raped and, statistically, you, dear reader, do as well – even if you don’t realize it. It’s a threat in times of war, when people have their faculties compromised, or in societies where the rapist rarely endures punishment (or in which the woman’s punishment is worse despite being the victim). The problem with the trope comes when every single writer uses it as a way to inflict trauma on (mostly) women characters. It becomes lazy. And, in the case of Mr Moore it gets disturbing when it’s present in every book. This book contains the following sexual assaults: Janni Dakker is raped when she works in a hotel, Oliver Haddo rapes the wife of someone whose body he’s inhabited, and Mina is felt up by Voldemort when she’s on drugs. What’s more problematic than the rapes themselves is the message they seem to be sending. Janni Dakker’s rape is essentially punishment for not inheriting her father’s position at the helm of the submarine. The rape is the precipitating event to her reclaiming her inheritance and it’s pretty well telegraphed that she wouldn’t have been raped if she’d just submitted to her father’s wishes.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 3 – Janni and Capt Nemo FightThe Leage of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 3 – Immortals

On a less controversial note, Mina and Allan Quartermain are used to explore the effects of immortality. It’s pretty clear once anyone does any thinking beyond the cursory, that immortality is often more of a curse than a blessing. Even Buffy reflects in season 6 that life has more meaning because it’s fleeting. Each of the two immortals deals with the condition differently. Quartermain falls into a deep depression that leads to drug addiction. It’s a way to dull the continuous life and disappointment. Even in extreme futuristic science fiction in which people can live forever often has people take time unconscious or “dead” as a way of dealing with the infinite tedium. Drugs, of course, offer a similar break for a never-ending life. Mina, on the other hand, becomes obsessed with not ending up an old person in a young person’s body. This leads her to act more and more recklessly, culminating in her drug use in the 1960s that leaves her vulnerable to both Voldemort’s molestation and Oliver Haddo’s spirit attacking her in the astral plane.

The Leage of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 3 – Immortals the next dayThe Leage of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 3 – Orlando Changes

Recently as the trans community has become the new front in the LGBTQ fight for rights, many of the trans struggles and issues are becoming more well known. Growing up I always thought it was just that some people enjoyed wearing the clothing of others. And while that’s certainly one part of the spectrum of trans, I have recently learned about how some people who are trans are disgusted by the body they inhabit. I’ve also been more directly exposed to the stories of people who have changed their bodies to conform with the gender they align with.Of course, if people elect to go the most extreme route (adding or removing organs), it can be very difficult to reverse. Orlando is a very interesting character in this respect in that the character goes from male to female every few years. We don’t get as much time to explore this as we might if it were a slightly different story that gave the characters more time to breathe, but from what we do see – it appears that Orlando seems to relish each transformation as a chance to live life in the shoes of the gender he currently inhabits. I don’t have first-hand experience in gender fluidity, but from what I’ve heard on programs like This American Life, it does seem to ring true that when people are able to transition (or in some cases just dress in the clothing of the other), it releases inhibitions that allow them to act differently. There’s also the case for different neuro-chemical balances affecting people differently. The same subject of that This American Life story related how he/she viewed things differently and reacted to the world differently under the effects of different hormones. He also ends up being a lot more fluid in his sexuality. Having been both a man and a woman appears to have given him an attraction for both sexes and he doesn’t limit himself to only pursuing the sex opposite the one he currently inhabits. While it’s certainly unfortunate that Orlando doesn’t have control over his changes (in the text portion of the book he has to flee from his fellow soldiers during ancient times once he starts becoming a she), I feel that can certainly help people empathize with the lack of control trans people feel. I also feel that Orlando (who inherits this sex change property from a Virginia Woolf story) may end up being a foreshadowing of a tolerant future in which people are free to fluidly change their gender expressions daily if they so wished. And, with possible future tech the ability to be able to change back and forth without lasting physical effects. Many science fiction stories and short stories have mined similar territory.

Mr Moore has a vaunted position in comics for a reason – although he has an unfortunate tendency to include sexual assault in his stories, he also has a way of throwing lots of complex ideas out without turning the story into A Very Special Issue. One is often left with quite a lot to think about after the excitement of the story has abated. This volume was no exception.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 3: Written by Alan Moore with art by Kevin O’Neill. Lettering by Todd Klein

[Jaime Barcelo Garcia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Moore se pasa de frenada.

Las referencias literarias (y ya no solo literarias, también aparecen referentes cinematográficos y televisivos) son agobiantes. La trama se desdibuja, los personajes se convierten en caricaturas de sí mismos o de sus homólogos literarios (en especial, los que acuden a cierto colegio de magia y hechicería) y la coherencia descarrila.

Moore peca de excesivo en el uso de sexo para dar impacto a la historia, y por momentos los personajes parecen más ¿fetiches del autor? que personajes propiamente dichos.

El nuevo elenco de personajes, a excepción de Orlando, no deja la huella de sus predecesores. Los villanos se quedan cortos, especialmente el del tramo final, y el único valor más allá del trabajado dibujo de O'Neill es, en mi opinión, el intentar conceptualizar un universo literario inglés de un siglo de amplitud, hilvanando tantísimos personajes en una misma historia.

Énfasis en "intentar".

Un buen ejemplo de que quien mucho abarca, poco aprieta.

[Celtic · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a lot here to like for fans of the previous books but this is rather uneven in comparison. It feels like the enthusiasm for taking the story forward through time eroded as the author/artist got further away from the original Victorian setting, only then realizing that's what they most enjoyed. While there's some fun to be had in the different settings, the jump cuts forward in time don't do the coherence of the story any favours and for me the gain is less than what's been lost. Still worth a read, but leave any Great Expectations behind.

[Florian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Alan Moore is hit or miss for me. I like V for Vendetta, I don't like Watchmen. I like the first 2 volumes of LXG, I don't really like this one. It was ok-ish, but tries too much and falls flat story wise. It's ridden with obscure references that require a catalog of footnotes to understand, but in the end do not amount to any revelation or extra meaningful layers.

[Jason Panella · Rating 2 out of 5]

Absolutely bonkers. There's a bunch to like here, but it feels so rushed and over-saturated that I'm sure I won't remember it fully in a few weeks.

[Tropo Alegro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edición recopilada de Century en la Colección Trazado.

[Simone S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Century, terzo volume di The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, di Alan Moore e Kevin O’Neill, comincia come il primo volume di The Sandman di Neil Gaiman: con dei cultisti che tramano nell’ombra, naturalmente! In questo caso vogliono dare vita a un Moonchild (Figlio della Luna, come cantavano i Mecano negli anni Ottanta) capace di distruggere l’umanità. I cultisti non li vediamo direttamente, ma attraverso una visione di Tom Carnacki, un componente del nuovo gruppo di gentlemen che ci accompagna nella prima parte di questa storia che, come suggerisce il titolo, si svolge lungo il corso di un intero secolo (Carnacki è un personaggio creato da William Hope Hodgson e lo possiamo definire come un detective dell’occulto).

Ed è sempre attraverso un sogno di Carnacki che vediamo la giovane figlia di un capitano Nemo prossimo alla morte (Janni): è una ribelle, e dopo un litigio col padre lo abbandona per imbarcarsi su una nave diretta a Londra. Infine, Tom sogna anche una canzone, che scopriremo solo più tardi essere cantata da un assassino di prostitute che avrà una qualche rilevanza nella trama (e che arriva nella capitale inglese a bordo della stessa nave su cui si è imbarcata di nascosto Janni). Più in generale, Moore qui tradisce un amore per i musical che non avrei immaginato, visto che in tutte e tre le parti di Century hanno un ruolo prominente delle canzoni che narrano gli avvenimenti.

Ma tornando al principio della storia, nella prima decina di pagine sono anticipati quasi tutti gli elementi della parte di storia più vicina temporalmente a quella del primo e del secondo volume della League (è il 1910), che poi si sviluppano successivamente in una trama che si rivela un poco alla volta. E la prima cosa da scoprire è la composizione della League: oltre al già citato Carnacki, c’è Mina, naturalmente, e c’è Quatermain Junior (che è in realtà un eternamente giovane Allan Quatermain, come per avvenimenti narrati nel Black Dossier – un volume uscito tra il secondo e questo terzo). E poi ecco tale Anthony Raffles (famoso ladro gentiluomo creato da E.W. Hornung), e Lando, cioè l’immortale Orlando (che combatte niente meno che con Excalibur). Mina è preoccupata per l’imminente distruzione di Londra sognata da Carnacki qualche tempo prima, e teme che questa possa essere collegata al culto che la League sta investigando.

Così scopre di una guerra magica tra il misterioso satanista Oliver Haddo e il signor Zanoni (la cui madre aveva fatto il rito di Smarra con Fortunio e il conte Von Ost: a cosa si riferiscono tutti questi riferimenti non lo so!), vinta dal primo.

Haddo non è che uno dei mille riferimenti letterari di cui è piena la League of Extraordinary Gentlemen di Alan Moore. Alcuni dei più evidenti sono i seguenti:

Carnacki usa uno specchio di obsidiana nera appartenuto a John Subtle, alchimista di Gloriana (cioè la regina Elisabetta d’Inghilterra del XVI secolo). Nel mondo di Moore, Subtle pubblicò la prima traduzione inglese del sacro testo di Yuggoth, il Necronomicon (e quindi riecco H.P. Lovecraft). Sotto il nome di John Subtle si nascondeva Prospero, duca di Milano esiliato (e qui andiamo su Edgar Allan Poe: The Masque of the Red Death – ho scritto del film del 1964 qui).
Oliver Haddo invece appare nel romanzo di W. Somerset Maugham intitolato The Magician (1907). Haddo era modellato su Aleister Crowley, e in The Magician degli adoratori dell’occulto provano a creare la vita. Haddo, nell’universo narrativo della League, è l’equivalente di Crowley, e non è un caso che il libro del 1917 di Crowley si intitolasse proprio The Moonchild (Il figlio della Luna) e trattasse di una guerra tra maghi, in cui una delle due fazioni era guidata da Simon Iff (che viene cercato dalla nostra League of Gentlemen all’inizio della storia).
Anche i membri dell’equipaggio di Nemo sono il frutto di ricerche letterarie di Moore: Ishmael arriva da Moby Dick (1851), di Melville, e Broad Arrow Jack apparve nell’omonimo libro di E. Harcourt Burrage (1886).
Secondo le informazioni dell’anziano Mycroft Holmes (da Arthur Conan Doyle, ma lo sapevamo già), l’assassino di prostitute è John MacHeath, discendente del brigante MacHeath del XVIII secolo (si veda The Beggar’s Opera, di John Gay, 1728, ma anche The Threepenny Opera di Bertold Brecht, 1928), e il caso è affidato a “Tiger” Brown, dalla stessa fonte letteraria.
Andrew Norton, il prigioniero di Londra, viene consultato da Mina a più riprese in Century. In questo caso il personaggio è stato creato da Ian Sinclair, amico di Alan Moore, per il romanzo del 1997 intitolato Slow Chocolate Autopsy.
Ma torniamo alla storia. Gli eventi precipitano quando Janni viene stuprata nello squallido hotel dove ha trovato un lavoro nella zona dei docks, e lei finalmente chiama il Nautilus a salvarla, e a seminare morte e distruzione (quella sognata da Carnacki? No, quella è molto peggio, dice lui). Nel frattempo Mina e Raffles scoprono dell’imminente esecuzione di MacHeath (che non avverrà per la confessione del 14th Earl of Gurney dei delitti di Whitechapel – e qui Moore si ricollega al suo From Hell). Gli altri tre componenti della League parlano con Karswell Trelawney, incarnazione di Oliver Haddo. La trovata brillante è che senza volere Carnacki aiuta Haddo parlando di una sorella Iliel che ha visto in sogno ma che Haddo non aveva ancora conosciuto… Lo showdown finale, comunque, è tutto per il Nautilus e i suoi pirati, con un confronto significativo tra Mina e Janni. E così si chiude la prima parte di Century, prima di un salto temporale fino al 1969.

E nel 1969, dopo che dei cultisti uccidono la popstar Basil Thomas (che si droga con un derivato del taduki – si veda Allan and the Sundered Veil), il Nautilus capitanato da un’anziana Janni arriva in Inghilterra con a bordo i membri immortali della League: Mina, Allan e Lando (che nella storia cambia sesso per diventare una donna). Sono ancora sulle tracce dei cultisti di Haddo. Parlando tra di loro, menzionano eventi e personaggi come una guerra (mondiale?), una League of Marvels in azione nel 1964 e il fatto che la League non sia più associata all’M.I.5, il servizio segreto inglese. E sono espliciti su cosa voglia Haddo: l’anticristo, tanto che ci si riferisce a Rosemary’s Baby (Rosemary’s Baby – Nastro rosso a New York, 1968), dicendo che quel tentativo fallì perché il bambino morì giovanissimo. In questa parte della storia si capisce anche chiaramente che Haddo riesce a trasferire la sua mente nel corpo di qualcun’altro in punto di morte (ecco il moonchild), e quindi è ancora vivo nonostante siano passati decenni dalla morte del suo primo corpo (serial possession, possessione seriale la definisce Norton parlando con Mina).

Haddo appare anche in visioni inquietanti a Nina, che adesso ha un rapporto amoroso con Allan e Lando, anche se non privo di incidenti. Il culmine della storia è in un concerto in Hyde Park in memoria del deceduto Basil Thomas con la popstar Terner, portata lì da tale Felton (che altri non è se non un’ennesima incarnazione di Haddo).

Più che nei precedenti volumi della League, c’è tanto sesso nelle pagine di Century. Allan, Lando e Mina formano un triangolo amoroso, ma tutto è complicato dalle turbe mentali legate all’immortalità di Mina e ai cambi di sesso di Lando. Inoltre qui Mina sperimenta sesso saffico, pare per la prima volta, con la compagna di Haddo/Felton, e le popstar della storia passano tutto il tempo a drogarsi e a fare sesso (realisticamente, aggiungo io). Così come tanti degli hippy al concerto della Purple Orchestra in Hyde Park! E come interpretare lo spettacolo pornografico nel night club dei mafiosi (che hanno un ruolo chiave nella vicenda) tra un mostro alato e una ragazza?

Il climax della seconda parte di Century è molto psichedelico, con Nina che fa un trip grazie alla taduki e incontra Haddo nel piano astrale, impedendogli di possedere il corpo che aveva scelto (quello della popstar Terner) e facendolo ripiegare su uno studioso dell’occulto / molestatore sessuale (e già Haddo non è proprio uno stinco di santo!) di cui non rivelerò l’identità perché sarebbe fare un disservizio a chi non ha ancora letto questo libro. Nell’ultima vignetta Lando e Allan si guardano intorno spaesati non sapendo che Nina è stata portata via in un’ambulanza in preda al delirio…

Otto anni più tardi troviamo Allan di nuovo schiavo della droga, e Lando che lo abbandona: non hanno più visto Mina. Altro salto temporale, e siamo nel 2009, nel Southern Q’Mar, dove Lando nell’esercito trova un altro immortale, dopo aver compiuto un massacro insensato.

Ed eccoci alla terza ed ultima parte di Century. Lando ritrova Mina, rinchiusa per 40 anni in un assurdo ospedale psichiatrico (dove tutto funziona all’insegna del sesso, manco a dirlo), e insieme vanno alla ricerca del moonchild, ma non voglio rivelare niente perché mai mi sarei aspettato un crossover della League of Extraordinary Gentlemen con l’universo fantasy che arriva nella terza parte… La scelta di Moore mi è sembrata geniale, ma non ne voglio scrivere! Chi altri sarebbe potuto essere l’anticristo secondo Alan Moore? Mi sono fatto non poche risate quando l’ho capito!

Come concludere questi miei pensieri su Century, ovvero il terzo volume della League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Ammetto che all’inizio ho faticato un po’ a farmi prendere dalla storia: mi mancava di sicuro il tema steampunk vittoriano dei primi due volumi (che appare a sprazzi nella prima parte) e molti dei riferimenti letterari mi sono risultati più oscuri di quelli principali delle prime due storie (invece ci sono un sacco di camei pop di Kevin O’Neill che, per esempio, fa apparire un paio di volte Andy Cap, tra gli altri!). La scelta di mantenere almeno Mina e Allan paga, anche se inevitabilmente non sono gli stessi due personaggi delle prime avventure, perché col passare dei decenni le loro personalità e il loro rapporto evolvono.

Mano a mano che ho proseguito con la lettura, però, Century mi ha conquistato sempre di più, con la seconda parte che rilegge in chiave Mooriana la Summer of Love del 1969 e con la terza parte che non mi aspettavo minimamente e che mi ha stupito e affascinato come mai mi sarei aspettato. Un crescendo che mi fa consigliare la lettura a chiunque, perché il viaggio secolare che ci fa fare Moore in questo caso è davvero immaginifico. Di fatto, dopo averlo letto una prima volta ci sono tornato già a più riprese. Ciao!

[ferrigno · Rating 4 out of 5]

Memorable. For the first time we are witnessing the transformation of Orlando: nothing monstrous, no special effect. The gimmick adopted by Moore is simple and ingenious.
Then the reader finds out what happened to Mina & Allan; the three of them get together and go hunting for antichrists, but the atmosphere is not that of the beginning: our heroes are more like the three musketeers in "Twenty Years After". The antichrist is located in a college of wizards, where you get by taking a train from a hidden platform in King's Cross.
The college was destroyed by one of the students, the one with the scar on his forehead, and that at the moment is a bit rotten. The apocalypse begins when the student finishes the stocks of haloperidol, the psychotropic druag he's taking. When Moore is at his best, the quote never ends in itself: Moore is like a parasite, he takes advantage of the myths that have taken hold of our imagination, subjecting them to unexpected twists, which have the dual function of making the final unpredictable and create aura of mystery around a character: Bram Stoker's Mina is the imaginary, while Moore's is TRUE. The real Harry Potter is the one you see in TLOEG - 2009: he has lost his mind and tried to erase the scar from his forehead, is drugged and an instrument in Voldemort/Oliver Haddo's hands.
This book is beautiful but hopelessly thrown away. Moore was in too much hurry to finish.

[pierlapo quimby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prima o poi qualcuno mi dovrà pur spiegare le ragioni della ossessione degli scrittori inglesi di una certa età per la swingin' London.
Ora anche il vecchio Alan Moore se ne lascia contagiare e così una storia che cominciava sotto i migliori auspici con la fuga in occidente della figlia del capitano Nemo si affossa inesorabilmente nel secondo atto, tra i fricchettoni, le mode e le stronzate psichedeliche della Londra anni sessanta e non ci sarà più nulla da fare, perché da lì la trama non riuscirà a risollevarsi neanche nel terzo e ultimo episodio.
Dannata swingin' London!

[Loki · Rating 5 out of 5]

So this afternoon, I read the three Nemo books and all of League of Extra-Ordinary Gentlemen: Century, carefully placing them in chronological order (as best I could - the text pieces I read out of sequence). While both the threads in these plots start in Century: 1910, after that, they can be read more or less independently - but reading them together gives a much richer experience. I really enjoyed all of these, and I look forward to Moore and O'Neill's next exploration of this universe.

[Derek Royal · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's been a few years since I read the first two volumes of LoEG and the Black Dossier, so it took me a little while to get up to speed. But the League books are such that you don't have to have read the earlier volumes to enjoy the current. Although it does certainly help to have done so. Maybe I'll go back and reread the earlier LoEG books. And of course, now I need to get to the Nemo books I've been meaning to read.

[Albert Yates · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a long drawn out story.

I'm normally a fan of Alan Moore but this book did me in. I don't know that I can pick up anything else without having a stiff drink on hand to try and lighten the mood.

I really want to like it, because the characters were mildly interesting. unlike the first few League stories I had no idea who any of these characters were supposed to represent.

I already miss Hyde.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

Century is the weakest link in the LoEG saga. Moore experimented a little too much with his characters and if you add the abscence of the core league group, it just wasn't enough. Big minus were the portraits of all three of the main characters, where Mina and Alain were shadows of their former selves both in spirit and decision making, while Orlando was more like a snobbish boy that the grand adventurer we saw in the Black Dossier.