The concept is incredibly clever: the traditional comic narrative follows Mina Murray and Allan Quartermain, both ageless following a bath in Ayesha's Eternal Flame in Uganda some decades previously, as they locate, steal and attempt to escape Britain with the eponymous Black Dossier, a collection of intelligence on all of the previous incarnations and members of the League, including their foreign counterparts from the 1910s, Les Hommes Mysterieux and Zweilicht-Helden. The narrative takes the form of the traditional chase between opposing intelligencers familiar from many spy films and stories, with Mina (now a blonde bombshell in a trenchcoat) and Allan (looking much sprightlier than last time we saw him) being pursued by Jimmy, a brutal, amoral spy (clearly a youthful and thinly veiled James Bond), Bulldog Drummond (of pulp magazine fame) and Miss Emma Night (a pre-marriage Emma Peel from 'The Avengers'). The story takes place in 1958, two years after the fall of the Ingsoc government (the in-universe explanation for this being that Orwell came up with the title of 'Nineteen Eighty Four' by reversing the year he wrote the book in 'Nineteen Forty Eight', thus the reader is led to assume that the Ingsoc regime lasted at least eight years), and within the pages of the dossier, evidence of conspiracy soon emerges, causing Mina to persuade Allan to investigate it with her before they escape into the ether. This narrative frames the contents of the dossier itself, with each comic book escapade ending with Mina and Allan sitting down to read the various items that make up the dossier.
You have to give props to Alan Moore and his illustrator Kevin O'Neill for the sheer ambition and cheek of the series of parodies they attempt (the storyline explanation is that these materials were collected for Big Brother by "Gerry O'Brien", a presence based on the terrifying Inner Party member who entraps and tortures Winston Smith in 'Nineteen Eighty Four). Through these works of literature and "field reports" we learn more about the history of the League than ever. The first item in the dossier is an account of the history of the occult in Britain, with the metafictional world of Moore asserting that Queen Elizabeth I (here known as "Gloriana") was in fact a fairy and a patron of fairies and the magical (this aspect of her character being taken from 'The Faerie Queen' by Edmund Spenser), while her successor, King James I (here known as "King Jacob") was puritanical and pursued a policy of ethnic cleansing against those with fairy blood. It was Gloriana who allegedly set up the first league, led by Prospero from Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' and aided by Virginia Woolf's gender switching and ageless Orlando. The following section is a spoof state porn booklet re-telling the story of Winston and Julia from 'Nineteen Eighty Four', which is amusingly done, and that is followd by the real jewel in the crown of this dossier, an extract from a folio of a "lost" Shakespeare play 'Faerie's Fortune's Founded', featuring Prospero, Orlando and the ancestor of Campion Bond (from the first volume of 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen') and presumably Jimmy also. Everything about this play parody is authentic, from the alliterative title to the iambic pentameter the characters speak in. Alan Moore clearly has a great deal of fun here, naming the two comic characters "Shyte" and "Pysse" and following it with a scholarly note on the text. The section after that raises temperatures still further, being a "sequel" to the Eighteenth Century erotic novel 'Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure' starring Fanny Hill, whose further erotic adventures upon joining the League are written in the same style of the orginal novel. If that doesn't get you hot under the collar, O'Neill's incredible illustrations, featuring heaving bosoms, tiny waists and well turned ankles galore, will.
The second tranche of dossier materials includes Campion Bond's memoirs about the first Murray group (Mina Murray, Allan Quartermain, Edward Hyde/Henry Jekyll, Captain Nemo, Hawley Griffin) as well as a collection of correspondence between members of the group and a run down of the French and German attempts to form similar groups out of individuals with unusual abilities. An attempt at a new P.G Wodehouse Jeeves and Wooster story falls rather flat for me, as does the first full blown entry in the third dip into the dossier, a parodic stab at a beat novel featuring Quartermain and Murray as involved characters. The final entry of the dossier is a report by the Head of British Intelligence to O'Brien, following O'Brien's supposed promotion to Party Leader, implying that O'Brien himself is in danger of removal.
The conclusion to the comic strip story is interesting, with the Extraordinary pair taking a ship piloted by toys back to the "Blazing World", a "Fourth Dimension" outside of time and reality inhabited by many of the "gifted" individuals we have met along the way as well as a plethora of fairy folk. All in all, this is an incredibly satisfying book that not only ties up a whole bunch of loose ends but also leaves many open for Moore to explore later on. The Cold War paranoia and general sense of tension is very real, and the lack of morality shown by British Intelligence is consistent with previous outings. The thing I enjoy most of all, however, is the title of the Graphic Novel. With this entry being published in 2007, four years after the "dodgy dossier" that justified war in Iraq, I can only assume that Alan Moore was quietly mocking that entire enterprise. This collection of materials and sources is a fantastic read, especially if you are savvy enough to pick up the references, satires, parodies and homages. Now I'm looking forward to the most recently published entry in the series, following Mina Murray's adventures in 1910...
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