League of extraordinary gentlemen

[Leigh S]

Small piece in the Times today saying that Sean Connery has signed up to play Quartermain in the LOEG film.  No mention of Alan Moore or it's comic book origins.  Wonder oif they still want to ditch half the cast and put in Tom Sawyer!!  Dear God, please do not let this film come to pass....

[Leigh S]

Actually, LOEG would make perfect reprint material for the Beyond 2000 slot - pity it's so unlikely.

[paulvonscott]

Hello 'he that watches'

Is the League any good?  I haven't read any moore since small killing.  It sounds a bit like a kim newman anno dracula novel, with all the different vitorian characters in.  What is moore's other stuff like?  Is it as good as it used to be?

[Wood]

Of course it's unlikely. That's the whole point :)

It's flippin's excellent, IMHO, anyway. Not too worried about a film. If it comes to pass, it comes to pass. You've still got the comics, right? Que sera, sera.

[nathan]

PVS,
Even Moore's worst work is still worth reading, but "LOEG" is far from his worst, it's good honest adventure-story fun with beautiful Kevin O'Neill art (or should that be Kevin Flint? ;-))
The first series can be bought as a collected volume and is recommended, the second series isn't out yet but I think it concerns  invasion from Mars!
All the other series Moore is writing for ABC comics are very good, my personal favourite being Top 10 - a kind of Hill Street Blues in a city where everyone has superpowers, not just the heroes and villains.
Tomorrow Stories is  anthology format and features Greyshirt  - a hero in the style of Eisner's The Spirit, First American -  a broad superhero parody, The Cobweb - an erotic costumed detective and  Jack B Quick - a child genius inventor.  Jack B Quick is probably the closest in flavour to Moore's early 2000AD stuff, a tiny bit like Abelard Snazz but more a series of Future Shock sci-fi ideas in Rockwellian rural America.
Tom Strong is a nostalgic superhero comic, a straightforward Fifties-style science hero with old fashioned morals and a gorilla butler (before that mediocre DeMarco strip in the Megazine).
Promethea is about myths and I stopped reading it because it came out so erratically (a problem with all the ABC stuff) and I wasn't keen on the art.
The Lost Girls will finally be out soon, but if you thought pubic crabs was too rude you probably won't be buying that!

N

[Dominic O'Rourke]

let me cast my tuppence on the pile, READ the League, but for others like myself, who aren't versed in victorian litrature, I would also reccomend reading the following books. 20,000 Leagues under the sea, King Solomons Mine, Around the world in 80 days, Dracula, Murder in the Rue Morgue (short story)The time machine, The invisible man, and the John Carter series on mars, Tarzan, then try PJ Farmers tarzan books, Phileas Foggs other Diary, then try this link for a frame by frame anaylisis of League.


http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/7160/league1.html

Link: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/7160/league1.html

[paulvonscott]

Cheers Nathan

That's pretty comprehensive!  Once I have got to London, later his year, even if I don't get the Mayor's job, I'll sell some golden cobble stones to buy some trade paperbacks.

As for lost girls, well, I don't object to sex and a little rudeness (who doesn't?) just crassness and vulgarity.  There is a difference, though perhaps it's just in my mind.  Not that the presence of lesbians would influence me.  Oh no.

I had heard (in an interview) that Moore was incredibly prolific now.  For my mind he hasn't done anything to surpass 'The March of the Sinister Ducks'.  Quack Quack!

Anyway many thanks

PVS

p.s. the re-education of PVS continues apace...

[JamieB]

If League does ever get filmed, its fairly likely that Moore won't be very much involved - as with From Hell, when the movies get made, he more or less ignores them.

*J*

[Matt]

But Alan Moore is credited on the film credits to From Hell as having written the screenplay.

[Mk13]

He didn't though. ISTR the only thing he's written of that sort was some sort of play he did with Malcolm Maclaren, and tht was only because he wanted to hang around with Maclaren.

The actual screenplay for From Hell was written by Terry Hayes, writer of the last two Mad Max films and Payback, and Rafael Yglesias, who wrote Death and the Maiden, and not a lot else.

I imagine the confusion comes from the luxuriantly bearded one being given a writer credit for having written th eoriginal story.

[Mk13]

As far as I know, that's still the plan, and it's going to be horrible.

What's the point of shooting the film in the first place if your culturally illiterate target audience hasn't the faintest idea who any of the  classic literary heroes in the story are? I'd imagine that more Americans know Tom Sawyer from the TV series than have actually read the books, either.

[Mk13]

Hate to disappoint you about the Lost Girls, but you've still got a bit of a wait. There's an extract from a Top Shelf Comics Newsletter at the bottom of this mail...

(For those that don't know, Lost Girls is another story along (kind of) LOEG lines, cept this time, it takes Alice (as in Wonderland), Wendy from Peter Pan, and another classic character that escapes me right now, and describes what happens to them (especially sexually) after the tales which they're famed for).

From what Alan says about the story, it is going to be an excellent story purely aside from the pornographic element. Bear in mind, you will need to like Melinda Gebbie's artwork (she did Cobweb in Tomorrow Stories) to get into the Lost Girls.

*****************
LOST GIRLS UPDATE
*****************

Top Shelf, Alan Moore, and Melinda Gebbie have now decided to put out the entire three volumes of LOST GIRLS at the same time. This way everyone will get the completed version all at once. Melinda's about 20 pages
from completing the entire project, and then the massive production effort can get underway. It still looks to be a year out or so, but it'll definitely be worth the wait.  LOST GIRLS: In 1913, at a hotel not far
from Lake Constance, a liaison occurs between three different yet strangely familiar women. Between them, they conjure up an erotic dreamworld of childhood and fantasy, vivid and colorful, rising against the dark
storm clouds of European history. They are the Lost Girls, and their story attempts to reinvent pornography as something exquisite, thoughtful, and human. For women. For men. Written by Alan Moore and beautifully
painted by Melinda Gebbie.

[paulvonscott]

I remember reading something similar to your description of Lost Girls in Speakeasy (I had some reviews in that mag before they spazzed it up, what WAS Blast anyway?) about ten years ago round about the time of Big Numbers.

Is 2 a big number Alan?  Cos that's all the issues you did, can I have my fiver back?  Up until that point comics just seemed to be getting better exponentially then it all crashed.

On another note, Alan Moore writing porn was probably the ultimate fantasy for some fan boys back then (like the ones that used to follow him into toilets).  "It's... it's... like have sex in Alan Moore's mind!"

Oh well, thanks for all the info guys.  I can't wait to read some of this stuff.  Go Moore!

[Matt]

You could say "the Moore the merrier!".

MATT (promise I'll lay off the crap puns guys)

[nathan]

"Is 2 a big number Alan? Cos that's all the issues you did, can I have my fiver back?"

In fairness to the exalted one, the untimely demise of Big numbers was more to do with Bill Sienkiewicz and Al Columbia. Alan had it all worked out in advance, natch, but the pencil monkeys let him down. There was talk more recently of turning it into a TV series.

N