Review: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier

Creators: Alan Moore, writer; Kevin O’Neill, artist
WildStorm/America’s Best Comics, 208 pages, color, hardcover, $29.99
So? Reading "The Black Dossier" is like reading an extended appendix to the events of the series’ previous two outings. This truly is a dossier, being comprised as it is of numerous excerpts from fake publications of the kind Moore has been creating since at least "Watchmen" that detail the history of the League both before and after the previous tales, with a comic book story in between. The comicbook story is a fairly fun 1950s-style spy tale that is not without its pleasures (a young Bond) and innovations (a 3-D section; glasses are included) but it’s far from being as satisfying as previous League outings. Still, the cleverness of the dossier material in many ways makes up for it, with formats ranging from vintage English comicstrips and a long-lost folio by Shakespeare himself to a Tijuana bible, a P.G. Wodehouse imitation, a stream-of-consciousness beatnik novel and government briefings. Each reveals in surprising ways key details in the long history of the League, which goes wider and deeper than had been suggested up to this point. While a fascinating way to tell this story, it’s disappointing to not be able to read these “lost adventures” as actual stories rather than as what ends up feeling like a compendium of supplementary material and format tricks. O’Neill’s art is, as usual, terrific even as it feels slightly out of place now that the comicbook section is set in the 1950s instead of the Victorian era his scratchy kinking so beautifully evoked. The esoteric nature of the format and the story will make this all but impenetrable to new readers, who will join even die-hard League fans in hoping that the stories this book is an appendix to will one day come to light. Grade: B+