This is comic book storytelling at its finest. What Alan Moore does in this book is essentially create a Justice League of the late 19th century, assembling a team of famous literary characters from the time to fight a criminal threat to London. The team is lead by Mina Harker from Dracula, and features Allan Quartermain from King Solomon's Mines, The Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, and Captain Nemo. The literary allusions are numerous, and Kevin O'Neill's art is like nothing else out there. There's a direct sequel to this volume starring the same cast, but this is the sort of idea that could take place in any decade in any place and still be wildly entertaining. Pick this up if you like comics. Ha, just kidding, I know you won't read this you elitists.RATING: 90%
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36 comments:
It's good, but Moore is pretty sexist. I would have loved to see Holmes included as well, even though I know Moore said he didn't include Sherlock because he worried the character would take over the story.
Several of my friends who loved Watchmen didn't like LOEG. They said it was too wordy and literary, and they had already seen the movie. I should send you their emails so you can compare notes on Lord of the Rings.
LOEG: The Black Dossier is also good, although it's a little more eclectic and internally inconsistent. Sort of like the Silmarillion compared to LOTR, except the Silmarillion doesn't come with 3D glasses.
God, I love Alan Moore.
Jeremy, how is Alan Moore sexist?
V for Vendetta!
I have nothing else to add to this conversation.
My favorite part in V for Vendetta is the scene with those two wiretap guys listening in on that really boring conversation:
"What?"
"What what?"
"What do you mean, 'what what'?"
Hee-larious.
Well, I can kind of agree with Jeremy that Moore often puts women into situations of extreme distress. I mean, Mina Murray is often threatened throughout this book, sexually a number of times, and the scene where the Invisible Man is raping Pollyanna in that girl's school is played more for humor than terror.
Also, let's not forget Barbara Gordon, Evey being tortured in V for Vendetta, detailing the sexual mutilations of Jack the Ripper in From Hell, and all the sexual abuse against women going on in Watchmen.
Also Moore left Swamp Thing because he wanted to change the book's name to Woman Killer, Esq., and they wouldn't let him.
Also the movie version of LOEG, LXG, is ridiculously terrible. I do like the concept of including Dorian Grey on the team, but making Quartermain the leader? Mina Murray is a vampire? Tom Fucking Sawyer? Give me a break.
Saying Moore depicts women as victims of sexism is not the same as saying he's sexist. It sounds like you're trying to smudge the distinction between the two without actually committing to saying they're the same.
Are they the same thing? And do you think Alan Moore is sexist?
John - I'm going to say yes to both of those, but that's just my opinion.
As I read it, Mina is mostly in LOEG to be threatened and or kidnapped so the others have a motivation to act. She is a set piece instead of a character. This, after Stoker actually made her a fairly strong women (particularly for Victorian times) is a disservice to the character. And, of course, we have the Pollyanna rape scene which is really only funny until you think about it in terms of pedophilia and rape - and the crime goes essentially unpunished (Hyde eats the Invisible Man for much different reasons).
I like the book, but I've got problems with it nonetheless. Still, it doesn't quite enter "girlfriend in the fridge" territory of awfulness.
Jeremy: that last comment of mine was actually aimed at Glenn's equivocation, but I was interested in your explanation as well.
I think Murray is one of the strongest characters in the series, but it's a different kind of strength--covert, rather than overt. Her power over Mr. Hyde, for example, is a deliberate statement about the difference between force and another kind of efficacy, another kind of agency, and another kind of value:
"How with this rage can beauty hold a plea / whose action is no stronger than a flower?"
You can push a rope all you want, but you'll never move anything with it. In advanced martial arts, confrontations are won not by pummeling one's opponent, but by using the force of his/her motions against him/her.
It's the kind of power women have traditionally wielded over men--the power, for example, of Guinevere and Morgan La Faye to move the entire story in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. IMO, it's authentic in period terms, and it's still valid, if neglected, today. I say good for Moore for exploring a kind of value ("power" has a lot of industrial and Foucauldian baggage) that is deeply feminine, if not feminist in the zero-sum power game ideological sense.
Sorry for being so long winded--
The Polyanna rape scene is graphic and disturbing, but it's symbolic. A "Pollyanna" is someone who refuses to acknowledge evil or ugliness. The school's insistence that it must be the holy spirit impregnating the girls is critique of the Pollyanna-ish character of Victorian society, especially Victorian women, who were so naive and hoodwinked by religion and social norms that they didn't realize they were being raped, metaphorically and sometimes literally, by "the man" (hence the invisibility).
I would argue that it's also funny, or at least classically comedic, and that it makes its serious point more powerfully as a result.
Last one, I promise:
Plus, Murray's the narrator AND the acknowledged leader of the team. If she were physically invulnerable on top of all that, what kind of "character" would she be?
Maybe I don't think that Moore is a sexist, but he definitely demonstrates misogynistic traits. Although Murray is a pretty strong character in the book (her reduction to a hissing nobody in the movie was it's most egregious offense), she is still put in these situations of sexual distress, not just typical physical threat. Sure, I guess that's realistic, in that it's possible, but it's still Moore's hand guiding the operation.
To me, the most misogynistic thing Moore wrote was "The Killing Joke," in which Barbara Gordan has a walk on role carrying tea just to be shot, paralyzed, and sexually assaulted by the Joker. Why, to prove a point to Batman?
With Moore, there is violence against men, and violence against women, but the violence against women is so often transformed into something sexual that it's tough to ignore.
(Although, now that I think of it, wasn't it implied that Hyde raped The Invisible Man before he ate him? Did I imagine that? If I did imagine that should I see somebody?)
13 comments on "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" vs. 3 comments on my vibrator review = my cue to jump ship and start a rival XX-chromosome-review blog. Laurie, you with me??
Yeah, he did.
Violence against women IS more often sexual than violence against men. Moore's not asking you to ignore it--he's forcing you to acknowledge it. Bystanders get hurt in battles between "great men" (an ethos that includes the superhero/villain, as well as the soldier, the politician, etc.) all the time, especially women, and it's glossed over or ignored. Including it in the story isn't the same as condoning it.
You can't equate the presence of a theme in a story with the author's approval of it. Do you think Mark Twain was a racist because he had slaves in Huck Finn? Was Orwell a totalitarian? Is Margaret Atwood a misogynist?
No, I agree that you can't impose the views of characters onto the authors of those characters. But Moore is always putting his women in these situations. You can't ignore that he's inventing these situations. So either he's especially concerned with sexual violence towards women, or he's taking some kind of perverse joy in depicting it.
Look, I haven't read large portions of Moore's catalog - just the first two Leagues, V for Vendetta, Killing Joke, and Watchmen. That's not a substantial amount of his work for me to make the claim that he is definitely a misogynist, but I think he has misogynistic tendencies in the writing of his I've read. Who else in League is such peril besides Mina? Oh, I also just remembered that when the balloon is going down, she begs Quartermain to hold her, diminishing her power even further.
It's an idea we should certainly discuss. I frequently want to review girly stuff but don't because I know the guys won't comment on reviews about my new moisturizer or my iud or whatever. Or they will be like, uh...iud's are great so I don't have to wear condoms...uuh. (Sorry for making you sound dumb, boys.)
Posting here!
*hops on train*
Laurie: Do you really think a new blog is the answer? I think part of the reason R3 gets as many readers as it does is b/c of the talent pool and diversity of posts. Yes, several of us are boys and hopeless geeks. That's why we NEED you guys. Also, about 1/2 of my posts get no responses too.
Glenn: She said, "hold me," not "save me I'm weak" It's just like that part in 2010 when they're doing that thing with the heat shield and the American and Russian scientists hold each other. We're sexual, social mammals, and we act like it, especially when we think we might die in the next 10 seconds. You could even argue that the Victorian male ethos prevented Quatermain from asking Mina to hold him, even though he probably wanted to.
I think the first thing you said hit the nail on the head--Moore is "especially concerned with violence against women." The Victorian age, and to some extent human history generally, has been unfortunately characterized by violence against women. If depicting this violence makes you misogynist, and leaving it out of the story makes you sexist, then what's left? Woman CEO?
If Moore was a woman, would you feel differently?
Maybe what is coloring my attitude toward Moore is The Killing Joke, which is arguably the worst piece of comic writing he ever did. I feel that having Joker paralyze Barbara Gordon, a strong hero character, and then photographing her in stages of undress just to prove a point to Batman was an example of Moore's personal misogyny. Sure, it's not unreasonable to think that Joker is capable of such a crime, but in the book Batgirl is a complete afterthought. She's barely given any lines at all, never mind personality. She was just a tool to move the story of the men forward.
Lauries, I've always felt that everybody here brings a different sort of aesthetic, which is what makes R3 great. I'm always open to having more women join the team, but everybody I ask is usually not interested if you know somebody who might be a good fit just let me know.
20 Comments!
*post post pots*
i think im the best commentor on this blog... meta-comment, etc.
yall should do a review on my posting record
She said, "hold me," not "save me I'm weak" It's just like that part in 2010 when they're doing that thing with the heat shield and the American and Russian scientists hold each other. We're sexual, social mammals, and we act like it, especially when we think we might die in the next 10 seconds. You could even argue that the Victorian male ethos prevented Quatermain from asking Mina to hold him, even though he probably wanted to.
Okay, but he's the author, right? So he could have written Quartermain (Quatermain?) differently, or (if he wanted to keep it Victorian) at least indicated Q's thought process.
I need to read The Killing Joke. Can I borrow it Glenn?
PS - I like having both Laurie and Laurie post here.
PSS - Alan Moore apparently wrote a series of essays on sexism in comics in case anyone really wants to know his view.
Shoppista--2 things:
1) Why would Moore have written Quatermain differently? He's an aging victorian/colonial jungle adventurer. Wouldn't you say he acts like one? League is satirical--on one level it's certainly not painstakingly Victorian, but on another level it is, and ideological revisionism makes for bad art. My point was that it isn't necessarily weak to want to be held when near certain death approaches, and that if VIctorian men (and some more recent detractors as well, it seems) thought it was, then to bad for them.
2) There are no thought balloons in League.
I'm having a hard time imagining the kind of League that you guys would consider acceptable. The whole point of the characters is their problems, their lack of Victorian "propriety"--Quatermain is old and a junkie, Hyde is a bloodthirsty predatory beast, the invisible man is a sociopath, Nemo is a dissident and of an "inferior" race (despite his obvious physical, intellectual, and technological superiority, and 'Mina is a woman and a divorcee. That's the joke, and that's the critique.
Here's a link to Moore's essay on sexism in comics that Chris mentioned, "Invisible Girls and Phantom Ladies," written in 1983.
http://boredrigged.blogspot.com/2008/02/alan-moores-essay-sexism-in-comics.html
(I thought I posted this link a minute ago, but my browser is screwy. If this is on here twice, someone just delete one of them, please.)
1) It's not this thing in particular as much as it's this thing ("hold me") in conjunction with a bunch of other things that says sexism to me. Women act in stereotypically feminine ways, rape is played for humor, etc. Put it all together, and you have a certain view of women that isn't entirely realized or successful (and I don't buy the "it's Victorian" argument, first because 1) none of this is real, which means he has, yes, as you point out, not total leeway, but certainly more leeway than he took, 2) Victorian views of women were in more flux than I think you're giving them credit for here).
2) Sorry re: implicitly requesting thought bubbles from Q -- it's been a long time since I read the comic :)
and,
3) re: what version would be acceptable, I wonder if that's behind some of the fierceness of your critique? I think LOEG is totally "acceptable" as is, but I've never found a perfect piece of art, and I think this is one of the weaknesses of this particular piece of art, that's all. Sometimes I think "sexism" can be taken as shorthand for "not culturally worthy" or "no one should read it" or whatever, which isn't what I think it necessarily means. What I mean is, "like lots of things, but eh, could have written some of the woman situations better." Just as in another comic I might say "great writing, hate the art." Or "love Pound's poetry, what was up with that whole fascist thing, tho?"
Will read Moore's essay, thx for link.
Loco & Laurie: keep writing! Post about moisturizer. I will comment. :) I wonder if this didn't get so many comments just because everybody loves controversy, plus LOEG is a crossover comic even non-comics persons have read.
Shoppista: My critique is fierce because Alan Moore is one of my favorite fiction writers, and I don't believe he's sexist at all. The attitude of my opponents in this argument reminds me of the party committee in Milan Kundera's The Joke: petty, humorless, and politically opportunistic.
I would defend any of my colleagues here at R3 with the same loyalty, if it came down to it.
But I appreciate your lightening the mood--it is just a book, after all. I don't use emoticons, so I'm sure I come off a lot heavier than I actually mean to.
:)
Plus, people just keep responding. Usually they ignore me after a while.
Anyone want comment 30? Don't leave me hanging!
LAURIE I AM DYING TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR IUD. I am not even kidding. I found a brochure at my gyno's office and got all excited and went to the brand's website and it said you needed to have had a kid first to get an IUD. How does that make sense?? Please talk all about your IUD and your moisturizers and I will talk about my lip glosses and eyelash curlers. It's ON.
petty, humorless, and politically opportunistic.
Ouch.
Maybe we just fundamentally disagree? I don't think criticizing the ways an artist falls short means someone is not making "a sincere effort to participate in an artist's world view," and I can't see how acknowledging a piece of art's limitations takes value away (from the art, or the world).
What are the alternatives? And would you be as outraged if someone criticized the coloring or the writing, or is it the "isms" you find particularly irksome when they're addressed as shortcomings? (These are real questions, not rhetorical.)
Hey, I have been arguing "against" Moore, but I do still stand by my 90% rating of this book, and consider it one of my favorite graphic novels of all time. I can't remember if I like the second part better or not, but I do remember it ended in a pretty depressing manner.
Shoppista: Yeah, that was an overly harsh thing to say and I regretted it immediately. However, I don't have a trashcan icon on my comment window and I figured posting three comments in a row would just make me look like a lunatic. The three adjectives notwithstanding, I think there is an us-and-them coterie quality to PC value judgement, and that's what I meant even if I expressed it poorly.
It's OK to acknowledge the shortcomings of a piece of art--all art fails, and that's part of criticism's job. I just think it should do so constructively and creatively, and I wasn't satisfied with some of the arguments produced here, especially early on. Yes, -isms piss me off--they're so often taken to be self evident, and so often wrong, even to the point of doing violence to the authors in question.
I once heard a girl in a class say that Sir Gawain was sexist "Just like all that stuff back then." My professor expressed surprise, to which she responded "Well it's not called Mrs. Gawain and the Green Knight, is it?"
holy fuck!
where the dick jokes at
Tom: So this dick walks into a bar, and the dude says "Ow, my dick!"
Heh heh heh.
rofl
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