This trade collects The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen Issues 1-6 along with some supporting text and novelty material. Written by Alan Moore and drawn by Kevin O' Neill.
Again this comic book of the week comes in high regard, written by the now legendary Alan Moore which immediately projects certain expectations on the expectant reader, and Moore's lifting of characters from such iconic and well loved works of classic literature such as King Solomon's mines, the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and twenty thousand leagues under the sea among others only heightens the expectation.
The story is mostly set in a London stylized by the industrial revolution, and plays out kind of like a Justice League or Avengers origin story but with characters from classic literature playing the roles of the team members. The story is pretty straightforward, it's only 6 issues long and many are taken up introducing the characters and forming this odd literary dream team. If your knowledgeable on the books the characters and story elements are drawn from there's a lot to find interesting here. But apart from being reasonably familiar with most of the main characters from other TV and film adaptations I had only read King Solomon's Mines and The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes(not even the right Holmes books for this comic) so I constantly felt I was missing out on things, and maybe that's why I thought the plot was a little simple. After a couple of issues I did want to read the source material but by the time I'd finished the book I'd found it hadn't made a big enough impression on me, and any urge I had to do some research for a second reading faded away.
The artwork by Kevin O' Neill adds a lot to creating the old Victorian look and feel which is prevalent throughout, everything in this trade even stuff outside of the story like creator biographies and credits are written as if the book was published at the time. O'Neills panels really suit the story and some of the drawings have a great illustrative look, and you get a real sense of the character of the world and all the people that inhabit it, but I found the style used here in combination with the muted colour palet, which for the most part is beneficial to the story, can get a bit boring after a while and sometimes it just lacked a dynamism especially in the larger splash pages.
Overall I'm glad I read The league even if I was a little disappointed, it's essentially a set up story for volume two, which is considered the better of the two and the one that's consistently sited on top 100 comics lists. I can only assume with all the characters introduced and the premise in place, the second story arc will be more focused on plot.
The next comic book of the week will be The Punisher Welcome Back, Frank.
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