1910
Although I read The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century: 1910 just a year ago, I am already fuzzy on the details. Alan Moore discarded the use of easy chronological volumes after vol. 2, and started jumping around in the time stream as well as jumping around in style, prose and the use of storytelling as a way of telling a story. Although some of the results are brilliant in my estimation, many of the faithful became disenchanted quickly. Looking up obscure fictional characters starts losing its charm when you've never heard of them and aren't convinced they were worthy of reincarnation. This particular book had almost 650 ratings on Goodreads, and nearly 100 reviews written, most of them bad. And, well, I gotta say I agree.
We do get to see some familiar characters, and the development of some pretty good new characters (namely Nemo's daughter "Pirate Jenny" and Orlando, an immortal multi-gender member of the League). There are a few other teasers of Oliver Haddo and storylines to be further developed in the ever-postponed conclusion to the Century trilogy. But mostly the story drags, the characters fail to elicit wonder or excitement and if Moore was going for a down-beat mid-chapter ala' The Two Towers
or the Empire Strikes Back
, he missed the mark- which would be having the reader give a crap.
If I had the time or resources, I would expand this blog entry to highlight some of my recurring characters and how they fit into this story. But the truth is - and it hurts me to say this about one of my favorite writers and one of my favorite series - this comic is weak and not worthy of taking time away from things in my real life like scrubbing toilets or packing a sack lunch for work tomorrow.
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