[comics] Side by side in the fantasy league — Roger Sabin reviews recent comics in the Observer including The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill … ‘The ‘league’ is led by Mina Murray from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and consists of H. Rider Haggard’s Allan Quartermain, Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo, R.L. Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde and H.G.Wells’s Invisible Man, all brought together to combat an evil criminal mastermind from the East and his band of ‘sly Chinee’. Thus begins a penny-dreadful adventure that mimics modern superhero team-ups – Moore’s own Watchmen comes to mind – while retaining an all-important sense of humour. This is very postmodern humour, you understand – Quartermain is discovered in an opium den and the Invisible Man is caught hiding in a girls’ school. Yet it never threatens to overwhelm what is essentially a ripping yarn of a rather quaint kind: you feel that Moore and O’Neill really yearn for a bit of old-fashioned romance.’

Roger Sabin on some recent comics

This entry was posted on Monday, September 3rd, 2001 at 1:45 pm and is filed under Alan Moore, Comics.

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