PDP Panic Reviewing!

OKAY... I recently heard of a rumour that my tutors still look at our blogs and still expect us to keep up with our PDP work. This seems doubtful considering their track record, but I've started writing reviews again just to be safe. Here is the first:


The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Century: 1910 (Top Shelf Comics, 2009)

Many people were disappointed by 'The Black Dossier', the long-delayed and largely inaccessible previous entry in 'The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen'. I personally loved that book for its inventive and very fun coverage of fictional characters and places. But how to follow up a series that includes everything from Gormenghast to the Gollywogg? Easy, you have the third volume span an entire century of popular culture!

This, the first of 3 parts, is set in 1910, just over a decade after volume 2. London has changed little (although there seems to be an abundance of cars, steamboats and airships). Murray and Quatermain have been given extended life thanks to their exploits over the previous decade (mentioned in volume 2) and have amassed a new league, albeit one that is alot more... human... than the one we have previously seen. The new league includes the immortal and annoyingly foppish Orlando, the ghost-hunter Carnacki and the gentleman thief Raffles.

Carnacki's psychic powers have given him visions of an occult group attempting to bring about the apocalypse and the league decide to investigate. Meanwhile, Macheath (from Bertol Brecht's Threepenny Opera), who it turns out also happens to be Jack The Ripper, returns to London to resume butchering prostitutes. The role of Jenny Diver from the Threepenny opera is played by the daughter of Nemo who runs away to London to escape her father's dying wishes.

Alan Moore's world of fictional characters is fully realised in Century: 1910 and this may pose a slight problem for casual readers. Many of the characters in this story are somewhat obscure and not as instantly recognisable as, say, Jekyll and Hyde or The Invisible Man. However, this doesn't stagnate the story (in fact, League fans will likely find that it enhances it), and it moves along at lightning pace. On more than one occasion while reading the book, I found myself on Wikipedia looking up some characters that I didn't recognise, and rewarding myself for the ones that I did (Popeye, a Face Hugger from Alien, The 14th Earl Of Gurney from the Peter O' Toole film The Ruling Class, George Edward Challenger and so on). The story is 72 pages long (about the same as 3 normal comics) but contains a very satisfying amount of content. It also features a 6 page illustrated text story at the end (the first of 3 parts that will continue throughout Century), Minions of the Moon, which spans many different periods of time and is equally as satisfying as the main story.

Whilst there is quite a lot crammed into the book's 80 colourful pages, Century: 1910 definitely feels like chapter one of a larger tale. And although Moore and O' Neill have succeeded in meeting my high expectations and leaving me begging for more, part two (set in 1969) isn't scheduled for release until 2010, and part three (set in 2009) not till 2011, so there is a fair amount of speculation in the mean time! This is the best thing I've read all year and I can't see any graphic novel surpassing it until its followup next year. Highly recommended.