Die Liga der außergewöhnlichen Gentlemen

Books, comics, TV, music
1

Gruss Gott, wie geht’s?

I just finished up reading Vol. 1 of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Pretty mixed bag. More on that in a second.

I was a comics guy in a fairly big way in the 80’s. Well, Marvel guy. I didn’t really venture outside of the Marvelverse (except to follow Dale Keown; after he left the Hulk, I let my subscription lapse and starting buying up his mediocre-storylined but fantastically-drawn [of course] series Pitt with its every-nine-months-or-so release schedule). I stopped collecting comics in the early 90’s, partially because of University-precipitated poverty, and for one other reason.

I had forgotten that reason. Until now.

I imagine a lot of you who are and were more serious than I about comics will relate. The talent loss at the major houses that was the result of the fracturing of the industry in the early 90’s bit some of my favorite titles pretty hard. Nothing screws up a story like poor art.

Which brings me back to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 1. I’m farily new to Moore comics, having just picked up Watchmen - I had a Barnes & Noble gift card that was filling my favorite plaid golf slacks with pocket holes (and when you hitch your slacks to just under your armpits, friends, and have a pacemaker, you can see the serious health risks that holding onto something that is burning orifices in one’s pockets can pose), and I’d seen the unanimous recommendations here. It was all that.

So I decided to try the League. I really dig the stylization, the vaudevillian chiding of the editor, the characters, the awesome steampunked-up, crawling-with-filthy-commoners-with-warts-and-cleft-palates rendition of London. The characters are terrific, the dialogue a little forced at times but very good. I couldn’t help but see a little bit of a correlation between Griffin (the Invisible Man) and Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen - characters with abilities that make them so powerful as to almost remove their humanity, or at least any of humanity’s normal moral calculations. From a nuts and bolts standpoint, the foundation for a great series is all present and accounted for.

Which brings me to the “art”. Motherfuckin FUCK motherfucker I HATE piss-poor art. What the hell were they thinking, putting this O’Neill clown on this story? Does his dad run America’s Best, and he knew the only way his son would ever have a career was to have genuinely gifted writers like Moore create a story that was good enough to overcome even fourth-grade level doodles? I mean, I understand that I like more realist drawing, and that there’s a time and place for more abstract stuff, but O’Neill’s is neither. It’s ridiculously poor.

This product cries for vivid, detailed work! So many of its moments occur in grand, beautiful visions of the steam-driven future and its fantastic conveyances; or shockingly graphic panels of Hyde-fueled mass carnage; or just panoramas of overbuilt, filthy London or the waterfall where Holmes and Moriarty dueled it out. The story is so dependent on its visual portrayal - why in the FUCK did they leave the pencils to this dickhole, whose talentless scrawlings look like the image on Silly Putty that has been pressed against a Peanuts cartoon, turned over, and randomly stretched so that Charles Schultz’ progeny were no longer even symmetrical, as well as unfunny? FUCK! It pisses me off when shitty art sucks the life out of what would be a fantastic comic.

I really want to buy the second, but shit… my eyes. My poor poor eyes.

Can anyone tell me a little about Top Ten, and the sequence to buy them in?

2

I like Kevin O’neill.

3

I like O’Neill as well. One of the things I like the most about Moore as an artist is that he really seems to tailor the books to his artist’s strengths - I couldn’t imagine anybody but Gibbons on Watchmen, or Eddie Campbell on From Hell.

As far as Top Ten goes, it’s a police prodecural with a rather unique setting: a city where everybody (and I mean everybody) has superpowers. There’s only two collections of the Moore run, so read those in order. I actually enjoyed Top Ten the most out of all of the ABC line - sure, Promethea’s a more impressive comic, but Top Ten is just a joy to read. After you’re done with those, read the collected Smax mini, which is terrific, with an almost Terry Prachett-esque tone. And after all that, finish off with The Forty-Niners, which is an original graphic novel (in that it’s not collected from single issues, but rather was conceived and released as a single volume) that might be the most heartfelt book Moore’s ever done.

I envy you, because you have so many great comics to read for the first time.

4

Whereas I do not disagree with you nor this sentiment out of hand OMG, you gotta try to re-shift your personal gestalt to match the current comic paradigm, here. I say that because stylistic art (like O’Neal’s) shouldn’t break your deal on a comic (especially Moore, e^2specially LoEG). This isn’t Cynthia Martin during the end days of the OG Star Wars run or Rob Leifeld or Erik “The Third Dimension Is Dead to Me” Larsen we’re talking about. I love O’Neal’s style, particularly for the setting of League, kind of thin-lined and formal but not picture-perfect. Anyway.

Which brings me back to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 1. I’m farily new to Moore comics, having just picked up Watchmen - I had a Barnes & Noble gift card that was filling my favorite plaid golf slacks with pocket holes (and when you hitch your slacks to just under your armpits, friends, and have a pacemaker, you can see the serious health risks that holding onto something that is burning orifices in one’s pockets can pose), and I’d seen the unanimous recommendations here. It was all that.

So I decided to try the League. I really dig the stylization, the vaudevillian chiding of the editor, the characters, the awesome steampunked-up, crawling-with-filthy-commoners-with-warts-and-cleft-palates rendition of London. The characters are terrific, the dialogue a little forced at times but very good. I couldn’t help but see a little bit of a correlation between Griffin (the Invisible Man) and Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen - characters with abilities that make them so powerful as to almost remove their humanity, or at least any of humanity’s normal moral calculations. From a nuts and bolts standpoint, the foundation for a great series is all present and accounted for.

Which brings me to the “art”. Motherfuckin FUCK motherfucker I HATE piss-poor art. What the hell were they thinking, putting this O’Neill clown on this story? Does his dad run America’s Best, and he knew the only way his son would ever have a career was to have genuinely gifted writers like Moore create a story that was good enough to overcome even fourth-grade level doodles? I mean, I understand that I like more realist drawing, and that there’s a time and place for more abstract stuff, but O’Neill’s is neither. It’s ridiculously poor.

This product cries for vivid, detailed work! So many of its moments occur in grand, beautiful visions of the steam-driven future and its fantastic conveyances; or shockingly graphic panels of Hyde-fueled mass carnage; or just panoramas of overbuilt, filthy London or the waterfall where Holmes and Moriarty dueled it out. The story is so dependent on its visual portrayal - why in the FUCK did they leave the pencils to this dickhole, whose talentless scrawlings look like the image on Silly Putty that has been pressed against a Peanuts cartoon, turned over, and randomly stretched so that Charles Schultz’ progeny were no longer even symmetrical, as well as unfunny? FUCK! It pisses me off when shitty art sucks the life out of what would be a fantastic comic.

I really want to buy the second, but shit… my eyes. My poor poor eyes.

Can anyone tell me a little about Top Ten, and the sequence to buy them in?

Wow. Hey, to each his own, I guess. Top Ten is essentially the first run collected in two TPBs, a SMAX limited series (no doubt in TPB as well), then the new one. Artist Gene Ha is solid and will give you no ocular spasms. Likewise JH Williams for Moore’s Promethea, the best comic ever, or Chris Sprouse for Tom Strong.

Here’s a fairly easy algorithm for well-written, well-drawn (by your definition, but again I implore you to loosen the reigns on this) comics from recent times:

Must have both author and artist of:

Author:

Alan Moore
Warren Ellis
Garth Ennis
Mark Millar
Grant Morrison
Mike Carey
Kurt Busiek

Artist:

Bryan Hitch
Steve Dillon
Frank Quitely
Tom Rainey
Chris Sprouse
JH Williams
Gene Ha
Brent Anderson
John Cassaday

Target comics:

The Authority (including the end run of Stormwatch)
Planetary
Transmetropolitan
Prmoethea
Top Ten
Tom Strong
Astro City
Marvel MAX Punisher
Preacher
Fables
The Ultimates
Global Frequency

I could go on futher, and I only went with the safest bets there.

If you dig Gibbons, he and Miller did those Give Me Liberty minis, which no doubt are collected in a couple TBPs. I liked them.

Per your artist mandate, you’re gonna miss Lucifer, The Last Man, 100 Bullets, Powers, Sleeper, and several others.

5

O’Neill is awesome.

He remains (to my knowledge) the only artist to have recieved a blanket ban from comics code approval, back when we had such things.

The fact that O’Neill can (and does) cause such paroxysms of hate makes me love him even more.

6

Two words, Andy: Martial. Fucking. Law.

“I’m Martial Law. I hunt heroes. I haven’t found any yet.”

7

Every time I see the BART logo I still think of Marshall Law.

8

The only reason I know what the BART is is due to Marshal Law. Who says comics aren’t educational?

I hated O’Neill’s work at first (pre-Marshal Law), much like I hated Keith Giffen’s stuff early on. In fact, most of the more abstract artists rubbed me the wrong way (except Mignola, always adored him) until I got a feel for their work and looked at it on its own terms. I’m not denying that he’s an acquired taste, nor do I think that his style would suit any old thing, but I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have illustrating the League than Kevin O’Neill.

A lot of people say I’m a uniformed thug, no better than the scum I hunt down… a fascist cop… a glorified Nazi… a legalized vigilante, handing out his own highly suspect street “justice”… someone with a pathological hatred of superheroes, reveling at the chance to beat the hell out of them.

That sounds fair. I can live with that.

–Marshal Law

9

I appreciate the measured responses, chums.

Especially since the original post was so… vituperative. As I think about it a bit more, mayhap Andrew kind of brushed up against something a while back that bears consideration - the very fact that the art moved me to spasmodically swing my tiny fists around like a diminutive, old, pantsless Edward Hyde probably shoulda tol’ me something at the outset. If only it hadn’t made me so furious. I’m fucking profoundly rigid, I guess.

I suppose the use of sort of dirty, misshapen art to portray events that are driven by outcast, twisted-soul individuals and occur in the dirty, misshapen underbelly of a filthy, coal-fired metropolis is, I guess, appropriate, and may have even been a good choice in art direction.
I reckon a stop at Hastings, to pick up that League Vol 2 I saw there, is in my near future.

Thanks for that list, B-Dung… S’been a long dry spell, and I’m pretty keen on getting back into comics. I don’t mind saying these two Moore books have been pure joy, even despite my personal art pecidillo on the League one.

Erik “The Third Dimension Is Dead to Me” Larsen

I <3 U