Saturday, January 18, 2025

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 4: The Tempest #2 (August 2018)


How did anybody ever find every issue of this series when they all look like completely different serieses?!

That small blurb on the upper right about Alan and Kevin made me laugh out loud. I don't know what kind of device you're reading this on and I shudder to think it's a phone but I guess phones can magnify pictures pretty easily so that's cool but they can also allow people to constantly try to engage you in chat and I think that's not right and if it's not right you have to smash the patriarchy's phone and is there a gas leak in my house? What am I talking about? Um, so, this made me laugh:
Formerly respected funsters turned comic book cosh-boys in brutal attack on confused and elderly institution that loved them like a mother.

I just love Alan and Kevin for this series. Alan Moore can do no wrong in my eyes because he seduced me with a charm spell. Have you read Swamp Thing #50? Then you're charmed too because the spell was laid out in the words and pictures. In the comic, Alan Moore was saying, "You want to go to hell, buddy? Do you all want to go to hell? Well, I don't want you to! Read my magical nonsense and we'll beat the world back together! There are two things I believe: Magic is real, and art can redeem! Maybe there's a third thing in there about nostalgia not being as bad as everybody thinks it is when used for good because the power of what was is the potential energy of the kinetic present space. You don't make art or magic outside of time and existing in just the present moment. Spells and art are woven through time! They're made up of emotion and memory and loss and pain and love and all of those things need prologue to fully operate. The past is the fuse and the present is the fire and the future is the explosion and it'll happen, it'll all happen if you just remembered to light your fuse. Oh no. No! Don't tell me you didn't light your fuse! You've lost your prologue! Now you really are in hell!"

Yep, yep. Pretty sure there's a gas leak in here.


Al and Kev doing the Lord's work.

Why am I scanning pages full of text when there are pages full of boobies and naked men?! I forgot all about that but while scanning the inside cover, this is what I could see of the first page and it got me riled in the pants, I tell you what!


That's the real James Bond and the two secretaries he was threatening to fuck last issue after regaining his youth.

"Threatened" may be the wrong word since he just told the Movie James Bonds he wanted to bang the young girl and the old gal back at MI5. He didn't actually threaten the women. I think I just felt threatened by his confident manliness and swagger. Not once have I been, "I am going to go bang that woman and, by gum, it's gonna happen for sure!" Usually it was just me not realizing some woman was flirting with me at a party until she follows me into the bathroom and sticks her hand down my pants and I'm all, "I really gotta piss and now my dick is hard! Thanks a lot, lady!"

The new M, Bond James Bond, studies the old files on the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, files he took for balderdash and bullshit for years. But now that he's bathed in Ayesha's youth pool, he's beginning to believe the stories are true. He reads of five incarnations of the League: an 18th Century group led by Gulliver, the late 19th Century group led by Mina Murray (here he states it was the last competent group, largely because they defected from the government and the government could never get a good League going after that), the group in the '60s responsible for The 'Mass (the Seven Stars' rival group), a group in 1946 led by Warralson (I don't know about that one. Was it covered in a previous volume? I don't remember a hot shot female pilot character!), and the oldest: Prospero's Men, operating from 1610 to 1696 (as you can see on the file at M's feet in the scan of naked people). M hopes to discover awesome stuff like the youth pool that has been kept hidden from the "real" world all these centuries. He's about to find out reality and fiction are absolutely the same thing.

James never shows his pecker on panel, for those curious. But on the next page, in a little story from Utopia in 1919, some super powered guy's head explodes. That's almost like seeing M nut! If he had a prostate infection, I mean.


I don't know who these guy are but the dead one wanted to start Utopia until he went to war with Gulliver's Brobdingnags.

The quarter-god giant killing the super powered idiot might actually be from Brobdingnag. I wish he'd been one of the — pause as I do a search for the correct spelling — Houyhnhnms! Then we could have seen a horse head butt a man to death. Imagine how bit the Houyhnhnm's dicks were?

Me Watching Bojack with the Non-Certified Spouse: "I bet Bojack's a Hwinninem!"
Non-Certified Spouse: "You're going to bring up the size of Bojack's dick now, aren't you?"

Back in 2010, the quarter-god giant's hair has gone gray and he's caught himself a submarine full of sexy vixens. He dumps them out on the beach next to the title of this chapter, "And an Age of Giants, Adieu". Is this entire series about the comic book industry? Why would I only read the inside cover and the letters page and the outside cover and the comments in the Who's Who portions and think they're criticizing the industry but not read the story as criticizing the industry?! I really am a long way outside of my college years, aren't I? I can no longer read as deeply as I once did. On the plus side, I'm no longer sneaking into factories at night in Los Banos and stealing fire extinguishers which I sprayed all over the street and my friends on the way back to the house where 18 other drunk motherfuckers were crashing for the weekend! Not that that wasn't a good time. But I think about it now and I just get sleepy.

The ladies soon introduce themselves to Mister Coghlan in a way that says, "We're not really sure we trust a big strange shirtless man who can hold his breath underwater for way too long and carry submarines around on his shoulder."


Dammit. Now I want a sub-aquatic stripogram.

Man, reading this just makes me want to drink a pint in a dark smoky pub with Alan Moore and bullshitting about everything. I wonder if he'd let me call him Dad?

Oh! The next page reveals the man is Hercules! Yeah, that tracks. Strong. Angry. Irish. Hmm. It also identifies him as a "third generation Celtic god-king." All of this information is from a sort of newspaper slash newsreel bit where the strong man throws the sub in the sea while the ladies sit by wondering if he's going to mash their heads into pink butter. So the information might not actually be true. Just performative bullshit to excite the daily readers and/or movie goers.

I desperately want to scan the page and share it because it's so well done but I can't just scan the entire comic book! This blog entry isn't even really about the comic book! It's about how much I miss breaking into factories and stealing fire extinguishers! It might also be about the gas leak. But it most certainly isn't about how tired I'm getting and how my head is throbbing and how my eye feels like it's about to pop out of the socket. And, as always, it definitely is a little bit about my relationship with my father.

The giant makes sure the women don't try to stick any more swords in him. He gets dressed while he waits for the others to arrive.


The others are The Pink Child, some Tank Girl side piece, and Orlando's nipples.

I probably shouldn't have moved past the 1910 battle so quickly. The super powered man battling "Hugo Hercules" mentions that his Utopia was destroyed by colonizers from Brobdingnag. But he mentions the name Gargantua and his son, two giants from satiric series of novels, Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais. Reading up on this work, it feels like the kind of serialized novel that would have worked well in comic book format, which might be why Moore references it. Also, it had art by Gustave Doré. So it was basically Cerebus in Hell?, I think. In the fifth installment of the series (which was published posthumously and so may not actually have been by Rabelais), the giant father and son travel by ship visiting a series of islands that all have names which identify the kinds of people or things happening on the islands. Just like the ladies experienced last issue! Fuck. Now I want to read that too!

The only thing I hate about reading works by geniuses is that they just remind me how much reading I didn't do while I was young. Sure, I read a lot! But Alan Moore probably read fucking everything. Reading Moore isn't quite as bad as reading Thomas Pynchon, especially Gravity's Rainbow which he wrote when he was 36. Thirty-fucking-six?! Are you kidding me? How did he know as much as he did about so many wide and varying subjects? Maybe that's just a lazy person's way of saying, "People actually go to libraries and do research?!", but it still boggles my mind. Not just because of how much he knew factually but how much he knew intuitively and perceptively and intelligently about the world and how the monsters running it were monsters. I don't know how many times I broke down crying while reading that fucking book. It's like Pynchon was given a backstage pass to reality and every observation he made came from the secret source of all knowledge. The best thing I ever did was own Gravity's Rainbow for 20 years before reading it. He wrote it at 36 but I don't think I was ready to read it then.

Meanwhile, Satin and Garath find their final non-Mina living member of the Seven Stars, Jim. He's in New York and they visit a super-powered old people's home with him.


See?! SEE?! This entire thing is about the comic book publishing industry! God, I'm so stupid sometimes.

Al and Kev put it right out there on the inside front cover: "The comic book industry scams the people who make it what it is! The bastards!" And then they print letters on the back cover: "The fans are obnoxious assholes who don't fucking understand art and expression!" But somehow, I was all, "The middle is just pure wacky fun with no subtext! Subtext is woke!" But here I am! Reading another woke comic book!

You know what "woke" actually means in the case of comic books? It means somebody somehow slipped past the superficial surface level of the story where their stupid fucking brain that can't comprehend the world around them usually reads and they caught a little subtext. And usually that subtext is simply, "These are the things that dicks do and you shouldn't do them. Don't be a dick." And they look up from the book and think, "Hey! I like doing those things! How dare they judge me! I am not a bad guy! Well, if they're going to call me bad because I like doing that one small thing they just told me not to do, Heil Hitler!"


Holy shit that news guy. Is Moore also a precog?!

I love the older lady's line in response to being called a sexpot. Classic old ladyism.

Jim, Captain Universe, waxes nostalgic on the days when superhero stories were wondrous and exciting because of the rarity of them, but now they're pablum published and produced for the Status Quo, just more slop for the FOMOans' need to be in on what's hot. Money is in the saddle and rides storymakerkind.

Hmm. The gas must be clearing up. I'm starting to badly quote Emerson. You don't badly quote Emerson unless your senses are fully functional. Maybe if I'd quoted Whitman, I could say I was still feeling a little light-headed. Maybe something about young money glistened with wet and an unseen hand passing over money's stately images down to its hidden triangle. Goddamn, Walt was a thirsty boy!

And then just before we get to the exact middle of this story (which, remember, always means something even if I always forget to identify it! Or if the book is written by some hack schlub who doesn't even know how to write anything symmetrically (like, really! It's so important! Like the exact middle of Gravity's Rainbow, you find Slothrop (dressed as a superhero) crossing the Autobahn and he's found himself stuck smack dab in the median between the two opposite traffic lanes. It's like, "Hey, reader! Don't get fucking killed! You've still got another half of this thing to get through, dodging cars and reading about the Hereros trying get their birth rate below the zero because the Germans destroyed their culture and their people, and how about that story about the guy on the island with the dodos, hunh? Yeah, yeah! You're gonna get more tear producing shit like that no cap baby!), we get our first story about Prospero's League done in rhyming couplets! Because it takes place in the 17th century! Yay!

Orlando was on Prosper's team, back when she was a man. Prospero's destination the Blazing World, an island where fables live out the rest of their lives outside of their stories. Orlando and the other crew (Don Quixote and Amber St. Clair (who was written in the '40s but since it was about her sexed up life in the 17th Century, she gets to exist in the time she was written)) try to stop Prospero from throwing himself into the sea but it's no use. His elementals, Caliban and Ariel, lead him safely to shore across the water to the fairy tales he, um, I guess, uh, wants to fuck? Isn't that his quote? "A brave new world that has such sexy people and their orifices in it!"?

The reader gets the story as M Bond M reads it from the files. So now he's discovered where the League goes to hide away from the world: the Blazing World! Now he just has four and a half more issues to find it. That half is important because we have now come to . . . THE MIDDLE OF THE CHAPTER!


It's a cutaway view of Nemo's hideaway! His safe space! His home!

This is the center because the center is home; it's the place you know, the place you wander away from and the place you (try) to return. It's comfort and a rest stop for life. An oasis. The benches at the center of a hedgerow labyrinth. Just like last issue's center was knowledge and illumination and the comfort of seeing an old friend, this issue we get a safe place which is also a map with a key describing the locations. A key to unlock the knowledge that the person who lives here already knows. But we're being let in! We're being welcomed into the Sanctum. For us, this becomes an imitation of our center, far out in the wobbly orbit of our own center, we find this doppelgänger of safety and we embrace it and take a moment to reset our perceptions, maybe integrate things we've learned, map out what was and where we're going.

You know, it's the place where the ends of the staples are found! But not really in this book. This is the center of the story and not the center of the comic book. It's a decentered center which, let's face it, are the only kinds of centers that exist. I'm sure Derrida could explain it better.

Back in New York to see what Jim, Satin, and Garath are up to, we get a fun little Easter egg since I'd already mentioned Thomas Pynchon.


A W.A.S.T.E. drop-off box from Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49.

Also in that picture? A restaurant analogy of the conflict of the Middle East masquerading as a reference to Do the Right Thing.

Jim doesn't know how to find Vull but he does have a special film he wants them to watch. It's some research he's done on his own in the old timey version of YouTube: an 8 mm film!


What?! They faked the Superman landing?!

Is Moore saying American comic books are a big stupid knock-off on the awesome British comic books?! Those would be fighting words if I cared! Or if I'd noticed earlier how the battle between the United Nations backed Seven Stars who are an insert for American super heroes were taking the spotlight over the government sanctioned British super heroes and how that's the real commentary of the back-up story! The American comics were all flash and spectacle and everybody wanted to read them. And the British heroes just seemed like lousy knock-offs or outright rip-offs. The Seven Stars episode this month makes this point!

Back on Lincoln Island, we get some paper dolls of the ladies that I haven't cut out because I'm a comic book nerd and couldn't bear to destroy this comic book. Orlando's figure isn't wearing anything on her top and you can see EVERYTHING. It's possible the real reason I didn't cut out the paper dolls and their clothes is I wanted an excuse not to cover up Orlando's boobers. She has to stay topless. For the sake of keeping my book mint!

Jack Nemo introduces the ladies to Professor August S.F.X. Dusen, his computer pal, aka the Thinking Machine. This guy's another character from some early 20th Century series of adventure novels. The computer program for the Thinking Machine was created by Professor August way before the technology to read the punch cards which he apparently transferred his mind into. You know, that idea that's been around forever. How do we, as humans, maintain our ego and personality past death? Currently, it's the idea of putting our brains into virtual space. But in the past, we would have put our minds on disc. Or cassette tape. Or vinyl. Or punch cards! Like August here! August the Computer keeps an eye on the world for security reasons and not because it's a little gossipy bitch. It knew Emma and Orlando and Mina were on the way to find Jack Nemo not because it was spying on them bathing nude in Uganda but because, um, security reason! And now it also knows that Jimmy Bond (whom the Thinking Machine wasn't watching just because he was banging two hot chicks in his motel room in London) has taken a nuclear submarine on a trip to the Arctic to nuke the Blazing Worlds. Which is exactly what he does for the finale of the story. Way to end a story, right? The ultimate ending of everything! Or at least of all those stupid fairy tales. Good riddance, three little pigs! Eat shit, Cinderella! Suck my dick, Prince Charming!

In the Seven Stars back-up story, the Stars go to confront Britain's group, the Vanguard, and tell them they don't like being threatened. But the guy who threatened them, who they killed, greets them and is all, "What?! I totally admire you guys! Why would we threaten you?!" That's because he time traveled to stop them from starting this shit and got killed in his future but their past. They don't warn him not because they're afraid of creating a time paradox but because they're embarrassed they killed such a huge fan. One of the other members of Britain's Vanguard is being sued by an American company for being a near exact replica of an American hero. So they're having their own problems when they're attacked by Toby the Fat Schoolboy.


I'm pretty sure Moore mentions this Toby kid from the comics of his youth in Jerusalem.

The Vanguard eventually turn Toby into the not-fat schoolboy and he calms the fuck down. The Seven Stars head home having done nothing to help because the Vanguard insisted on stopping Toby themselves. But the press ignores the Vanguard and acts like the Stars are the heroes! Eww! Those bloody Americans! The secret cabal of British agents trying to make their government group popular come up with a new plan: hire as many heroes as possible so they can't be ignored! And also have them save the world against their bioengineered Black 'Mass in an upcoming installment which we already know winds up being a huge black eye for everybody.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 4: The Tempest #2 Rating: A+. The reason I've never done blog entries on these before is not just because Moore is too smart for me but also because I just really enjoy reading them and don't want to be distracted by my stupid brain thinking stupid thoughts while I stupid read. Plus I'm so busy looking at all the boobies, I don't have any hands to type!


Electrogirl!

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