A Blazing World: The Unofficial Companion to the Second League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

I might as well get the mean bits of the review over with first. I enjoyed 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume 2' even more than Volume 1 but I cannot say the same, alas, for the companion book. Jess Nevins first volume, 'Heroes and Monsters', had detailed annotations about the graphic novel but also contained several informative essays. This second companion has no such essays and the annotations are unbalanced. They are unbalanced because Alan Moore wrote a long joke on his annotator and included it in the novel. ’I felt sure that The New Travellers Almanac would finish him off,’ says the bearded one in his introduction. In a way it did. There are 54 pages of notes on the 145-page story. There are 152 pages of notes show more about the jokey bits at the end, mostly on 'The New Travellers Almanac' which, Moore says ‘is sort of dense prose and I’m expecting that the readers aren’t gonna get through it, to tell the truth.’ In my case he was right. Nor will I read the detailed notes about his detailed prose joke. I doubt if many people will. Perhaps Jess Nevins should have ignored it as well.

There are nice things to say about this companion. First, respect is due to Nevins for the colossal amount of work he must have put into it. Second, the annotations for the actual graphic novel are as excellent as ever. The chap on the flying carpet at the start of the story is identified and there are interesting notes on the various sources for Moore’s fictional Martian history. Truly dedicated fans will enjoy working their way through the panels with the companion open alongside.

While the annotations are the raison d’etre for both companions I found the supplementary material more fun so was disappointed by the lack of it in Volume 2. For consolation, there are interviews with both Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill. Artists are not wordy people but O’Neill talks interestingly of his work on the project. He calls Alan ’the greatest architect of sequential graphic storytelling in the world’ and opines that though the master allows it he would be a fool to deviate from those precise gigantic incredibly detailed scripts. I believe O’Neill got started in the field with 2000AD and that comic magazine is worth a plug here. It’s a curates egg of a thing and too violent sometimes but it is a seedbed for new talent in the British comic industry, many of whom make it in America too. Our culture, as well as our balance of trade, is the richer for its existence. Subscribe now and tell Tharg I sent you.

Writers are wordy people so Moore’s interview is three times as long. Fans will be pleased to know there are more League tales to come, though not on any definite schedule. He is scathing about the film industry, respectful of literature. He is a fluent and provocative interviewee but to be taken with a pinch of salt perhaps. English people will know how to do this. Americans might not.

Conclusion: Don’t get this unless you really want the annotations as they comprise the vast bulk of it. show less