NEAR MYTHS: THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN 1999 (1999-2003)

Though I gave higher mythicity ratings to two later iterations in the LEAGUE franchise, BLACK DOSSIER and the last third of CENTURY, I must admit that the first two episodes of the series, featuring both the formation and dissolution of this 19th-century "Justice League," are the most fun to revisit. 

The main reason for the greater fun quotient is almost certainly that in these stories Alan Moore was far more focused giving the reader the thrill of adventure rather than the Olympian perspective of satire. Moore and O'Neill still work in a sizable number of cross-references involving both fiction-history and real history, but herein there's no unwieldy attempt to weave together a couple hundred such quotations into a super-pastiche, possibly the most ambitious crossover of all fiction. Here the creators of LEAGUE concentrated on charting the interpersonal relationships of the five protagonists: Allen Quatermain of KING SOLOMON'S MINES, Mina Murray of DRACULA, Edward Hyde of DR JEKYLL AND MISTER HYDE, Captain Nemo of 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, and The Invisible Man of the Wells novel of the same name. There's such a rich tapestry of dramatic interactions that in this work alone, Moore effectively usurps the title of "Master of Melodrama" from its preceding title-holder, and so wins the coveted award of "The New Stan Lee."

 

I joke, of course. Though I would consider such a title  complimentary, it would direly insult Alan Moore to be considered like Stan Lee in any way, since he's made it clear (particularly in the final pages of TEMPEST) that he holds nothing but contempt for the late Marvel writer-editor. And of course there are many differences between the dramaturgical strategies of both Lee and Moore. Yet the give-and-take between the often quarrelsome "Gentlemen" resembles nothing in comic strips or books-- not Caniff, not Eisner, not Kurtzman-- so much as it resembles the trailblazing "heroes with problems" mindset of Stan the Man. It's possible that Moore had some notion of deconstructing Marvel Comics, as he had in the "1963" series from 1993. If so, Moore was spectacularly unsuccessful, and for that many readers can be profoundly grateful.

LEAGUE does approach myth-status insofar as it crystallizes Moore and O'Neill's often contradictory feelings about their native country. On one hand, the United Kingdom was, if not the womb from which modern popular culture was born, the midwife to its creation, and this is reflected in the fact that four of the five Gentlemen were created by UK subjects, with Nemo standing as the lone representative of La Belle France. On the other hand, from the 17th century through the 19th, the UK was also a major player in the spread of imperialism, and LEAGUE's creators constantly remind the reader that they should never forget the jingoism and material exploitation that stemmed from the British Empire. And yet the quintet of heroes, despite their uneasy alliance to the Empire, never fall into the trap of being spokespersons for sociopolitical causes. Nemo is the great rebel who finds himself helping the Empire because he wanted adventure in his life once more. Quatermain is more or less dragooned into espionage by the officious Miss Murray, which ends up being a prelude to their erotic encounters. Monstrous Mister Hyde largely subsumes his alter ego Jekyll but evinces a more profound form of humanity than the good doctor did, while The Invisible Man betrays his comrades in order to forge his own empire.

   

The creators choose the opponents just as deftly, and also from the pages of British fiction-writers. The first six-part adventure unites the Gentlemen against two master criminals vying for power, Conan Doyle's Professor Moriarty and a devil-doctor who is clearly supposed to be Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu (but whose name is still trademarked and so can't be casually invoked even for pastiche purposes). The second six-parter, which chronicles the dissolution of the unstable team, is arguably even better as the Gentlemen cross swords with the heat-rays of H.G. Wells' Martians. Some of the dramatic turns are all the more impressive given that Moore has testified (in an interview for Jess Nevins' A BLAZING WORLD) that he did not have a long-term plan for both sequences. He suggested a future conflict between Hyde and Invisible Griffin in Book One before he even knew how said conflict would play out in Book Two. Mina Murray, the former victim of Dracula, bore the wounds of the vampire's brutal assaults on her throat, and this visual depiction later dovetailed impressively with certain parts of Allen Quatermain's backstory as elucidated by original creator Rider Haggard.

There are a few dozen "guest-stars." Some are preludes to more famous figures of later eras, such as the unscrupulous Campion Bond, whose perfidy prefigures Moore's trashing of his descendant James later on. But most of the guests are icons from famous fictional works, with even a few American ones, like Auguste Dupin and John Carter, making the cut. In the later volumes I could complain of Moore and O'Neill's treatment of Ian Fleming's Bond, and even more, of their maltreatment of Haggard's She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. But in GENTLEMEN 1999, I found their every choice note-perfect, just as I found that O'Neill's art captured the mythic vraisemblance of the Victorian era. 

I should note that crossovers, like popular fiction, really took off in the 19th century, with Scott's IVANHOE ringing in as one of the first, combining its fictional hero's exploits to those of Robin Hood. Haggard and Verne each wrote one famous crossover, with the former having Quatermain meet She, while the latter revived Nemo to encounter the castaways of the Mysterious Island. But GENTLEMEN 1999 is definitely one of the greatest pastiches, even if it's arguable that the "super-pastiche" of later years may turn out to be just as overburdened as... 

(Yes, I will say it...)

...THE MARVEL UNIVERSE!!!!

NEAR MYTHS: LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN: TEMPEST (2018-19)

I put off reading the final collaboration of Alan Moore and Kevin O"Neill on LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN in part because of the extraordinary un-evenness of CENTURY, which managed to shuttle from very bad to very good without any sense of transition. That said, a part of me wanted TEMPEST to be as good as the third part of CENTURY, if not BLACK DOSSIER.

However, this was also the project with which Moore and O'Neill purported to end their careers in comics (though O'Neill actually worked in the medium a little longer). I suspected that TEMPEST would wrap up the LOEG universe much the same way Moore concluded the PROMETHEA series, of which I wrote:

One of the myth-images that Moore invokes most frequently is that of the Biblical “Whore of Babylon,” though naturally the author turns the Christian connotations around, so the “whore” is just the other side of the “virgin” coin, and both are seen more as vehicles through which the energy of the Godhead manifests. Indeed, in some vague manner Promethea is also consubstantial with the Great Whore, in that both are supposed to bring the world to an end. Moore attempts to give his heroine this myth-status without delivering anything but an “apocalypse deferred,” which might seem fairly original if the author hadn’t used a similar trope at the end of his SWAMP THING run.

Given the above sentiments, one might think I'd welcome Moore committing to an actual apocalypse, in which he and O'Neill decisively "let it all come down" for not one but two fictional planets, Earth and Mars. But one would be wrong, for the simple reason that Alan Moore is much better at creating worlds than destroying them. 

Since the final book is named TEMPEST, and since the Moore-O'Neill version of Prospero stands behind the scenes pulling various strings, it was to be expected that the writer would abjure all the "rough magic" he used to create his world. This too he also did after the conclusion of an apocalyptic SWAMP THING run, where Moore, after a major crossover of DC's magical heroes, then spent pages lecturing his readers about the importance of ordinary life. And that's what Moore does here as well. He's not infrequently expressed ambivalence about delving into the archetypes of popular fiction, even though one can't imagine him having made such a mark in American comics had he sought to emulate Harvey Pekar. So here once again, Moore follows his dive into the archetypal subconscious by a renunciation of his fictional powers. Prospero is Moore's self-insert, bringing about the destruction of Earth and Mars for ill-conceived reasons, just to provide closure. Such closure isn't technically necessary. Unlike both SWAMP THING and PROMETHEA, Moore and O'Neill could, even after their respective deaths, legally ban any further iterations of the LEAGUE property. So in my opinion the real motive was that of desiring an end to the franchise that would distinguish it from the many endlessly-proliferating serial concepts.

Earlier episodes discoursed on the 20th century's development of costumed superheroes, but in contrast to the artist's general fidelity to the many creations of prose literature, Moore and O'Neill offer nothing more than an aimless concatenation of superficial pastiches. Marsman? Electrogirl? Hard to believe we got such bland spoofs from the co-creator of WATCHMEN. All of the stuff with the superheroes is a waste of space, and because CENTURY ended with the death of Allen Quatermain, Mina Murray doesn't get a very good character arc, though a little better than that of Orlando. In compensation, Moore and O'Neill give us the resolution of BLACK DOSSIER's conflict between their versions of Emma Peel and James Bond, both of whom gain their youth in time to greet the space-age delights of 2010 and beyond. But even if I didn't dislike Moore's jaundiced take on Ian Fleming's creation, this wouldn't be enough to hold my attention.

So in the end, it's mostly about Moore and O'Neill using their loose plot as an excuse for as many crossovers and references as they can fit in. And no one can accuse them of skimping. Some characters are named outright, like the Thinking Machine and Stardust the Super Wizard, while Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty are worked into the continuity once more for this last hurrah. Many other characters just make unidentified cameos: the Beagle Boys, Tower Comics' Iron Maiden, a gorilla with a bandolier (probably Monsieur Mallah) and a house that seems to be "Usher II" from the Ray Bradbury story of that name. All of these O'Neill renders in his unique style, but I didn't get the sense that their parts contributed to a greater whole, as I did with BLACK DOSSIER.

The basic problem with TEMPEST is that it doesn't really depict the development of pop culture icons the way the first two volumes did. Possibly no one could manage to cope with the astounding proliferation of such icons not only in comic books and strips, but also in movies and television as well. Thus Moore and O'Neill just stuck in whatever characters caught their interest, be it a version of 1904 comic-strip obscurity Hugo Hercules or Grandpa Munster. There's some fun to be had with such freewheeling association, but they didn't manage to make a myth this time.

And I would be remiss not to comment that Alan Moore's tired anti-Stan Lee jeremiad is on display in a "funny" sequence riffing on a sequence from the Silver Age wedding of Reed Richards and Sue Storm. The tiresome joke didn't make me mad, and I might even examine its presumptions in a separate essay. But I will end by saying that it shows Moore's animus toward the very "century" in which he was born, toward his inability to make the world work the way he wants-- to which his fantasy-impulse is, of course, to blow it all away.

QUICK OBIT ON KEVIN O'NEILL

I liked Kevin O'Neill's art on such works as NEMESIS THE WARLOCK and MARSHAL LAW. He seemed, to my American eyes, to be aligned with the punk aesthetic of the 1980s, though I've not come across any statements by O'Neill to that effect. Everything in his universe seemed, to coin yet another word, "hyper-steroidal," full of twisty figures and bulky muscles-- though if so, it was a "steroidism" with a very different agenda than, say, the Image muscle-fetishism of the 1990s. Many of the latter artists became grotesque by accident as they sought to "soup up" the bigfoot aesthetic of Jack Kirby. But O'Neill wrought grotesque forms as if that was the only type of thing worth drawing: a horse-headed alien (Nemesis), a future cop wearing barb wire on his arm (Marshal Law). 

At the same time, much as I admired his devotion to grotesquerie, I tended to think of O'Neill as an intense one-trick pony. In the debut stories of MARSHAL LAW, his collaboration with writer Pat Mills, several characters are put through the wringer, all in keeping with the mythos of the irony, where there's no value that can't be sullied. But future installments had nowhere to go beyond finding new ways to bag on superheroes.

But happily, O'Neill collaborated with Alan Moore on THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN-- and in so doing, I believe O'Neill pushed his art into new directions. It was more than just the discipline required to replicate the myriads of settings and physical body-types needed to pull off the "Victorian Justice League" concept. Since Moore and O'Neill were aping the characterizations found in the 19th-century prose-fiction that defined Western popular fiction for the next century, both of them had to "up their game" if they hoped to convince readers that they could come up with something as impressive as their pop-fiction ancestors.

Take the above scene between Edward Hyde and Mina Murray. The Hyde of LEAGUE is not Stevenson's Hyde, just as LEAGUE's Mina is not Stoker's. But there's an attention to characterization that goes beyond the average pastiche. Moore had produced exemplary characterization before in works like SWAMP THING-- though, to be sure, he could sometimes be as lazy and dilatory with his characters as any nineties Image-writer. But LEAGUE gave O'Neill a chance to execute visual characterizations as no earlier project (that I'm aware of) did before. In the above scene, Hyde is no less grotesque here than elsewhere, and even the demure Mina is rendered with some pop-eyed cartoonisms. But there's an unsentimental tenderness between the two that makes them seem real, or as real as such characters can seem. 

Of course, verisimilitude was not LEAGUE's primary appeal. O"Neill and Moore shared a fascination with the history of popular fiction, predominantly that of the British Isles, with the creations of America and France coming up second and third. I have this or that quarrel with the ways they rewrite that history, but I can't imagine any artist but O'Neill managing to bring so many pastiched characters and locales under his aegis. O'Neill had to draw beauty as often as ugliness, and the result is a sort of weird enchantment that combines the appeal of both artistic modes.

I had put off reading TEMPEST, the final LEAGUE work, since I felt the series had to some extent "jumped the shark," more for reasons relating to Moore than to O'Neill. But because O'Neill passed this week, I descended into the last LEAGUE, and though I have my usual complaints about Moore, I give him all respect for having conceived a template on which Kevin O'Neill's art could realize its utmost potential.

MYTHCOMICS: "LET IT COME DOWN" (LOEG: CENTURY #3, 2012)

 

Although my title references only the third part of the Moore/O'Neill CENTURY trilogy-- one of the last few offerings in the LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN property-- I'm actually going to discuss all three parts, albeit briefly for Parts One and Two.

The title "Century" references the time-span of the three books, in which the three central characters attempt to head off a magical apocalypse. All three had appeared in earlier LOEG comics, with Mina Murray (of DRACULA fame) and Allan Quatermain having been charter League members, while Orlando, an amalgam of the medieval Roland and the immortal Virginia Woolf character, appeared slightly later. For most of the story Mina and Allan have become as immortal as Orlando, but their longevity doesn't seem to be of that much help. They spend most of their time chasing vague clues around London and getting railed at by their Blazing World boss Prospero, while Moore and O'Neill devote copious space to side-plots.

Part 1, dated "1910," is the least interesting of the chapters, largely because of Moore's peculiar conceit of subordinating his pop-fiction characters-- some semi-original, like the daughter of Captain Nemo-- to a long and pointless homage to Bertolt Brecht's THREEPENNY OPERA. The overbearing didacticism of Moore's script reduces this segment to the status of a null-myth, though Moore and O'Neill work in a ton of "occult investigator" types to set up the main menace. The most consequential homage is Oliver Haddo, who in Somerset Maugham's 1908 book THE MAGICIAN, creates supernatural entities called homunculi. Moore melds this Maugham concept with a "moonchild", a concept from real occultist Aleister Crowley and with the Antichrist of the Bible.

Part 2, dated 1969, takes place after both BLACK DOSSIER and a 1964 text-story I chose to bypass. Mina, Allan and Orlando return to London to pick up the trail of Haddo once more, but again there are a bunch of side-plots about gangsters and drug-addled musicians that don't come to much. In contrast to the three immortals, Haddo has managed to survive by continually transferring his consciousness into younger bodies. Mina foils Haddo's plan to transfer his mind into the body of a rich rock-star, but he still manages to take refuge in someone else's form, while Mina accidentally gets packed off to an insane asylum. Her disappearance estranges Allan and Orlando and they break up, with no intervention whatever from their mystic master. Moore and O'Neill don't succeed in emulating any aspect of the 1960s but the emphasis on psychedelia, though without getting into the reasons psychedelia was significant to the culture. Still, there's enough good psychological interaction between the principals that I'd term this a "near-myth."

With CENTURY #3, dated 2009, Moore and O'Neill finally get down to brass tacks. Prospero conveniently waits until the Antichrist Apocalypse is almost nigh to belabor Orlando for having lapsed in his duty. During that time, immortal Mina has remained in an asylum for forty years, and the bereft Allan has become hooked on drugs again. But thanks to Prospero's tardy bitching, Orlando decides to call upon British intelligence to find Mina. This plotline works because it follows logically from a subplot from BLACK DOSSIER, as Orlando encounters what is essentially a doppelganger for TV's Emma Peel. (In fact, all of the female characters from the two AVENGERS serials make appearances in CENTURY #3.)

Thanks to MI-6's information, Orlando finds and liberates Mina Murray. Unable to elicit further help from Allan the addict, the two heroines try to track down the Antichrist, who was born over twenty years ago and cultivated in what sounds like the other-world of Harry Potter-- all under the manipulation of the continually reincarnated Oliver Haddo. Finally Orlando and Mina confront the monstrous Moonchild, seeking to delay the demented creature until Prospero can send help, and Allan comes to their aid at the eleventh hour, only to meet his doom. The Moonchild, by the way, has some brilliant lines: seeing the two mortals challenging him, he complains, "I thought you'd at least be Jesus or an angel or somebody." 

Though the Moonchild/Antichrist isn't a pop-fiction character, Moore sagely chooses just such an icon to vanquish the abomination: a never-named female who is in essence a cosmic version of Mary Poppins. (She destroys the Moonchild by reducing him to a chalk outline.) Orlando and Mina are left to mourn Allan, though their ally "Not-Emma-Peel" helps them return the adventurer's body to his adopted land of Africa. I assume that this denouement is an indirect tribute to the second Quatermain book by Rider Haggard, in which the hero dies (despite getting about six "prequel novels" afterward). Oddly, the LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN film contrived a similar death for Quatermain, but I think it axiomatic that Moore, who has expressed antipathy for all of the film adaptations of his work, probably did not mean to homage this movie.

Of the four or five remaining LEAGUE works, I've read one and found it below par. I may force myself to read the rest in due time, but I'd almost like to imagine that the series ended with "Let It Come Down," despite all the damned Brecht references.

MYTHCOMICS: MARSHAL LAW; FEAR AND LOATHING (1987-88)

(Note: I'm using the graphic novel designation for the untitled six-part story as originally released by Epic Comics. I have not read any additional materials within the TPB collection.)

I've referenced the Pat Mills-Kevin O'Neill creation MARSHAL LAW in various essays, like this one, but this essay is the first one I've devoted to its status as a mythcomic.

It's nearly impossible to imagine this project having been published without the influence of the 1986 WATCHMEN. Like the Moore-Gibbons work, MARSHAL LAW conforms to the mythos of the irony, but the Mills/O'Neill approach to satirizing superheroes diverges from many of the Moore/Gibbons strategies.

For one thing, the WATCHMEN superheroes evolve in much the same way as normative American superheroes: assorted characters who possess independent origins.  The superheroes of the MARSHAL LAW world share the same origin, aligning them with the "one-gimme" rule propounded by prose science fiction-- which, so far as I can tell, seems to be a rule Pat Mills usually followed in the serials he wrote for British comics. Most if not all superheroes in the LAW world are created by the technology of the U.S. government in a near-future timescape, and all for the purpose of making "supersoldiers" to serve in foreign wars. Some of the super-types merely have enhanced strength or endurance, while others have more exotic super-powers, like flying or "pumping ions."

For another comparison, whereas WATCHMEN only devotes one narrative thread to the employment of super-types as the tools of American imperialism-- mainly, the character-arc of the Comedian-- this is the primary focus of MARSHAL LAW: that supersoldiers exist so that the U.S. can ride herd on other countries. FEAR AND LOATHING does resemble WATCHMEN in that the reader barely encounters any reference to political situations or technological advancements in the world outside the U.S.: both are clearly focused upon portraying America as a thousand-pound gorilla that no other nation can oppose, and that can only be challenged, if at all, from within.

Mills and O'Neill also diverge from WATCHMEN's acknowledgement of the existence of American crime and even super-criminals, for in MARSHAL LAW, all the criminals are superheroes home from foreign wars. A few super-types have attained the lofty heights of public celebrities, usually because they function as mouthpieces for the government. But most of the retired supersoldiers have deteriorated into costumed, ultraviolent gangbangers, while a few others are simply shell-shocked basket cases.

Joe Gilmore is the only veteran seen in FEAR AND LOATHING who isn't either a basket case or a gangbanger, though everything he does is still in a sense determined by his former military service. Loathing what the modern superheroes have become, he somehow becomes a special police operative in the city of San Futuro (a bombed-out version of San Francisco). As the masked officer Marshal Law-- who wears something like a policeman's fancy dress-uniform crossed with fetish-wear-- Gilmore is able to use his special powers, and even a special superhero hideout, to monitor the activities of rogue superheroes when they cross the line and break the law. The narrative makes it clear that Gilmore hunts superheroes-- and no other criminals-- because he hates their perversions of morality, and possibly because he himself, as a former supersoldier, did things in wartime that he's not proud of. More than one character remarks that Marshal Law's outfit looks "gay," though any gayness Gilmore may possess is laced with sado-masochistic elements (Law's mask looks like bondage gear and his bare arms are encircled with lines of barbed wire).

WATCHMEN's events are triggered by one murder, but the narrative of FEAR AND LOATHING spring from the serial rape-murders of young women. All of the victims are killed while wearing the costumes of Celeste, a cape-celebrity whose sole accomplishments come down to being born with huge knockers and being affianced to America's greatest superhero, the Public Spirit (patently Mills' derogatory take on the original superhero, Superman). Marshal Law has no proof that the Public Spirit is the serial killer-- eventually identified as an ulcerous-looking "Batman type" called "the Sleepman." But for years the Marshal has borne a grudge against the Public Spirit for being the respectable face of America's imperialistic policies, and also suspects that years ago the Spirit murdered his previous fiancee, a cape-celebrity named Virago, to keep his name clear of scandal. I won't discuss the Sleepman's true identity, except to say that from the first it's plain that he's not going to be Marshal Law's most hated super-type, since there wouldn't be any suspense to such an easy resolution-- though the script comes up with a valid reason for the "hero-hunter" to go after his most loathed opponent as well.

The simplistic political outlook wouldn't give FEAR AND LOATHING any status as a mythcomic, but its psychological myths, heavily indebted to Freud, do display the necessary complexity. Marshal Law, the Public Spirit, the Sleepman and two other major characters are locked together in a complicated "family romance" that I won't attempt to lay out here. It's perhaps enough to note that one of the principal characters remarks on the "Oedipal" nature of his conflict, and then promptly tries to claim it doesn't mean that much. I take this to be the author's own process of disavowal: he wants to be able to evoke the emotional charge of Freudian tropes and patterns, but he has one of the characters distance himself from said patterns, as if trying to proclaim independence from his destiny as an authorially determined figure. While I've said many times on this blog-- even this very week-- that I don't think Freud counts for much as an observer of human nature, his tropes and patterns still possess great power within the expressive world of literature. Indeed, the Freudian matrix is perfect for this level of irony, as it helps Mills and O'Neill consistently depict a world born "inter faeces et urinam," between shit and piss.

An unintended irony of MARSHAL LAW is that the only time Mills seeks to place any positive value on anything, it's devoted to human beings who are safely deceased. After the dubious hero of the story has vanquished all of the evildoers-- and has even found himself implicated in the same evil of the Freudian "authority-figure" that takes in the Public Spirit-- he visits the gravesite of his girlfriend, one of the victims of the Sleepman. He mentally repeats his catchphrase-- "I'm a hero hunter. I hunt heroes. Haven't found any yet." Then for the final panel, the camera shows him walking through the cemetery, surrounded by gravestones and monuments, and finishes by thinking, "But I know where they are." This implies that there is some nobility to be found in the departed, implicitly the deceased soldiers with whom Gilmore served. And yet, the satire of Mills and O'Neill has shown nearly every other aspect of human activity to be fraught with hypocrisy and concupiscence, so it seems a bit of a cop-out to give special dispensation to the dead-- particularly those who willingly served in imperialistic wars.

I'll note in closing that though FEAR AND LOATHING shows that Marshal Law is implicated in the evil he fights, most of the other installments in this erratic series don't follow up on this trope. Thus the series largely devolves to assorted scenes of the hero finding new and increasingly repetitive ways to destroy superheroes, with very mixed results in terms of scoring satiricial points.