EW runs four pages of THE BLACK DOSSIER, the new LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN book by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill.
Long before it became known for being a terrifically crappy movie starring Sean Connery, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was a terrifically acclaimed comic book franchise created by one of the medium’s most revered scribes: Alan Moore, the British writer behind Watchmen and V for Vendetta. For Extraordinary Gentlemen, Moore, in collaboration with artist Kevin O’Neill, took the entire genre of Victorian fantasy fiction and treated it as a cohesive world akin to Marvel’s superhero universe — a place where Captain Nemo, the Invisible Man, Allan Quatermain, Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, and Wilhelmina Murray (a.k.a. Dracula’s neck-ravaged obsessive love) could be recruited by a secret division of the English government to protect the crown from all kinds of wickedness and weirdness.
30 more days, I’ll be pulling an all-nighter reading this!
“Quatermain and Murray…(and they were quite old back then — like, liver-spotted and wrinkled-prune old),”
The fuh? Mina was liver-spotted and wrinkled-prune old? Not in the book I read.
“(In the last miniseries, the pair attempted a nooner in Moreau’s mutant-inhabited forest. Emphasis on ”attempted” — did we mention that they used to be really old?)”
Mina and Quatermain were having no problems at all (and, apparently, Q. is well-equipped) until Moreau’s critter showed up.
I guess in the reach for a icky old people having teh smex joke, Jensen decided to flat-out make something up.
Tsk.
I’ll always support Alan Moore, all the way, but I haven’t been overly impressed by the past few years of work. Not to say it isn’t good. It is. It’s just that there are writers out there who are doing better. Alan Moore made those writers possible though, and I’ll never forget that.
Interesting to see that my lettering has been replaced on these preview pages with a rather awful font, and by someone who doesn’t understand how to use it very well. From the resolution of the art, the actual lettering must have been unreadable on these, and was replaced by someone at EW, I’d guess.
Why “support” Alan Moore? Is he a charity? If you like his work, buy it. If you are unsure or ambivalent, borrow it from someone or go to the library. Or just read something else.
The notion of “supporting” something like it’s distressed or injured is just… odd.
I don’t think he’s missing too many meals these days, though if he is, he can always do a few issues of Liefeld crap.
This one’s for Todd,
I was wondering if you have anthing to do with how letters are presented as part of the art inside the story and outside dialogue balloons. By this, I mean, if the artist has to draw a billboard or a newspaper in a panel, do you have any input in the lettering that goes into it? Thank you very much.
Giancarlo
I was kind of bemused by the whole “magnifying glass” thing, myself. It’s like….how hard is it to post a big page you can read? Sure you’d have to scroll, but everyone already does. Jeez, maybe this “comics on the intarwubs” thing will never fly!
Yeah, I much prefer ComicMix’s reader which works just fine. The EW interface was weak.
I’m afraid of the copyright matter. Could you say who is the character protected by european copyright law?
“I was kind of bemused by the whole “magnifying glass” thing, myself.”
I felt the same way. One look and I was like, why not just make the page a hair larger where you could just read the dialogue? Duh!
Why “support” Alan Moore?
I simply meant that I’ll always read his work. I’ll tell other people who don’t know about him. He’s a name I’ll get behind, because we owe a lot of what comics are today, to him. But, I think most people already knew what I meant. I’m looking forward to playing the recored, if they’re still doing that. I didn’t have time to read the preview.
According to the owner at my local comic shop we won’t be getting this in Canada because of the copyright thing. Grr.
gianco: I often do sign lettering, but in this case Kevin usually likes to do it himself. In any case, I would follow indications by the artist if there are any.
Re: the font. Thank goodness that’s not the lettering, because that lettering is completely ass.
I sure hope that that’s not the final lettering.
Todd: don’t you ever want to just mass-educate comics people about the uses of serif and sans-serif I? (Manga and webcomickers are some of the worst offenders.)
At least it wasn’t Comic Sans.
UPDATE, as Heidi would say: that shite magnifying glass interface has been replaced by hi-res PDFs with Todd’s wonderful lettering intact.
The clickable bars for same still have that shit lettering, however. Moral: a font doesn’t make you a g*ddamn letterer, it makes you an asshole with a font putting letters in word balloons.
It’s not because of the copyright thing. That’s just a reason being given.
Say what you will about Alan Moore,…he is one of the few comical book authors I’ve read that has actually inspired me to read and investigate other stuff,…other writers and characters and ideas from different realms,…different eras. From his early stuff with 2000AD to his ABC stuff. I have actually “learned” more reading Alan Moore than virtually any other writer in comics.