The League of Extraordinary Gentleman: The Black Dossier

Before it was a dismal Sean Connery movie, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was a celebrated comic book bringing together characters from disparate literary works to protect an alternate nineteenth-century Britain. The latest collection—the last with DC—centers on the mysterious Black Dossier, stolen by H. Rider Haggard’s series hero Allan Quatermain and the forever youthful Mina Murray of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. As these two read the dossier while pursued by government agents, the secrets and history of the League over the years unfold, and various “documents” interrupt the story line, including a pornographic “Tijuana bible” aimed at Orwell’s 1984, a 25-page biography of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, and an early League-days section featuring Shakespeare’s Prospero. The file proper includes a segment written in Beat style by Sal Paradise of On the Road and a 3-D finale (glasses come with each copy). Exhausted casual readers may think this is all too clever for its own good, but League-oholics will love undergoing multiple readings and poring over every packed panel and reference to adventure, travel, and speculative fiction classics.