The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier
Encyclopedia
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier is an original graphic novel
in the comic book
series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
, written by Alan Moore
and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill
. It was the last volume of the series to be published by DC Comics
. Although the third book to be published, it was not intended to be the third volume in the series. Moore has stated that it was intended to be "a sort of ingenious sourcebook", and not a regular volume.
Black Dossier was released on November 14, 2007.
Originally referred to as The Dark Dossier during early announcements of its existence, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier differs from the other regular volumes, as it is a self-contained graphic novel
designed to be a "sourcebook" for the series. While the first two volumes included prose stories as backup features, the majority of Black Dossier is non-comic pieces, taking the form of prose stories, letters, maps, guidebooks, magazines and even a lost Shakespeare folio. Also included is a 'Tijuana Bible
' insert and a 3-D section complete with custom glasses. All illustrations are done by Kevin O'Neill, the artist on the first two volumes. Alan Moore also recorded a vinyl record
of him singing an original song that would be released with the book, but DC later made the decision to hold back on the vinyl and release it in a special Absolute Black Dossier edition
after the first release.
After many changed shipping dates, the Absolute Edition was released with no vinyl record, no script/sketch companion book (something that shipped with Absolute "League" vols. 1&2), and a price point of $99 - $24 higher than the two previous Absolute "League" volumes.
Bill Oakley
died halfway through designing the book, so the last half was designed by Todd Klein
. The book is dedicated to Oakley's memory.
Moore and O'Neill also took the main characters Mina Murray and Allan 60 years in the future out of fear that the Victorian Era was already waning in interest. Because many of the characters used in the Black Dossier are not in the Public Domain Moore became more creative in alluding to the characters identities but never directly revealing whom they were. For example the character of "Jimmy" is a thinly veiled James Bond; hints to this include owning Campion Bond's cigarette case and lighter, his preference for Vodka Martinis, having a scar from the novels, as well as owning James Bond trademark Walther PPK with 007 engraved on it. Other characters such as Mrs. Peel from the Avengers is using her maiden name throughout the graphic novel or Billy Bunter is only referred to by his first name.
A DC press release confirmed it would not be released outside the United States "due to international copyright concerns and related issues". This was not an issue with previous volumes, as the Victorian setting meant that the majority of characters that were used were from works no longer under copyright. It is well known by many that the Black Dossier was severely plagued with legal trouble and trouble from DC, that Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill have both stated that it is mainly due to Jim Lee
that the book ever saw print.
and Allan Quatermain
- now immortal after bathing in the fire of youth from She
- on their quest to recover the Black Dossier, which contains the secret history of the now-disbanded League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
Out to stop them is a trio of secret agents: inept, brutally womanizing Jimmy
, recently-orphaned Emma Night
, and aging thug Hugo Drummond
. The pursuit takes Mina and Allan from London to Scotland, and eventually to the magical Blazing World.
; a twenty-five page "Life of Orlando" comic strip which tells the entire life of Orlando from his birth in the City of Thebes
in 1260 B.C., up to the Second World War told in the style of a 1950s British comic called Trump.; a faux William Shakespeare
play detailing the foundation of the League by Prospero
from The Tempest
; an imaginary sequel to John Cleland
's Fanny Hill
with full-page illustrations akin to those the Marquis Von Bayros
illustrated for the book; a Bertie Wooster
and Jeeves
prose story involving one of Great Old Ones from the stories of H.P. Lovecraft; and "The Crazy Wide Forever," a short story written in the style of Jack Kerouac
. Other features include a picture map of the Blazing World and its location, a cut-away of Nemo's Nautilus Mark II submarine, a series of postcards Mina and Allan sent between the years 1899 and 1913, and profiles of the second 20th century leagues and the group's French and German counterparts.
magazine's Lev Grossman
named it one of the Top 10 Graphic Novels of 2007, ranking it at #2, and praising it as “effing genius.” Jesse Schedeen of IGN
gave Black Dossier a 9.5 rating praising the complex detail of Kevin O'Neil's artwork and the literary quality of Moore's writing, whilst criticising the quality of the paper and printing style of the hardcover version and some aspects of the storytelling.
Graphic novel
A graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art in either an experimental design or in a traditional comics format...
in the comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a comic book series written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill, publication of which began in 1999. The series spans two six-issue limited series and a graphic novel from the America's Best Comics imprint of Wildstorm/DC, and a third miniseries...
, written by Alan Moore
Alan Moore
Alan Oswald Moore is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books, a medium where he has produced a number of critically acclaimed and popular series, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell...
and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill
Kevin O'Neill (comics)
Kevin O'Neill is an English comic book illustrator best known as the co-creator of Nemesis the Warlock, Marshal Law , and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen .-Early career:...
. It was the last volume of the series to be published by DC Comics
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
. Although the third book to be published, it was not intended to be the third volume in the series. Moore has stated that it was intended to be "a sort of ingenious sourcebook", and not a regular volume.
Black Dossier was released on November 14, 2007.
Background and format
Graphic novel
A graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art in either an experimental design or in a traditional comics format...
designed to be a "sourcebook" for the series. While the first two volumes included prose stories as backup features, the majority of Black Dossier is non-comic pieces, taking the form of prose stories, letters, maps, guidebooks, magazines and even a lost Shakespeare folio. Also included is a 'Tijuana Bible
Tijuana bible
Tijuana bibles were pornographic comic books produced in the United States from the 1920s to the early 1960s. Their popularity peaked during the Great Depression era...
' insert and a 3-D section complete with custom glasses. All illustrations are done by Kevin O'Neill, the artist on the first two volumes. Alan Moore also recorded a vinyl record
Gramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...
of him singing an original song that would be released with the book, but DC later made the decision to hold back on the vinyl and release it in a special Absolute Black Dossier edition
DC Comics Absolute Editions
DC Comics Absolute Edition is a series of archival quality printings of graphic novels published by DC Comics and its imprints WildStorm Productions and Vertigo...
after the first release.
After many changed shipping dates, the Absolute Edition was released with no vinyl record, no script/sketch companion book (something that shipped with Absolute "League" vols. 1&2), and a price point of $99 - $24 higher than the two previous Absolute "League" volumes.
Bill Oakley
Bill Oakley (artist)
William Douglas Oakley was a letterer for numerous comic books from Marvel, DC, and other companies. His most prominent works include the first two volumes of Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Batman: Gotham Knights #1-11, #15-37.-Biography:Oakley attended...
died halfway through designing the book, so the last half was designed by Todd Klein
Todd Klein
Todd Klein is an American comic book letterer, logo designer, and occasional writer, primarily for DC Comics.- Early career:Todd Klein broke into comics in the summer of 1977, hired by DC Comics as a staff production worker...
. The book is dedicated to Oakley's memory.
Development
According to Moore the Black Dossier was created because Moore was uncomfortable with the idea of O'Neill being unemployed in-between the hiatus Moore was going into before writing Volume III of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Wanting to do a source book for the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Moore began writing the Black Dossier. Expanding the original idea to including numerous different prose sections of different styles from a Fanny Hill "sequel" to a beatnik style story and a comic narrative that frames the Dossier sections.Moore and O'Neill also took the main characters Mina Murray and Allan 60 years in the future out of fear that the Victorian Era was already waning in interest. Because many of the characters used in the Black Dossier are not in the Public Domain Moore became more creative in alluding to the characters identities but never directly revealing whom they were. For example the character of "Jimmy" is a thinly veiled James Bond; hints to this include owning Campion Bond's cigarette case and lighter, his preference for Vodka Martinis, having a scar from the novels, as well as owning James Bond trademark Walther PPK with 007 engraved on it. Other characters such as Mrs. Peel from the Avengers is using her maiden name throughout the graphic novel or Billy Bunter is only referred to by his first name.
A DC press release confirmed it would not be released outside the United States "due to international copyright concerns and related issues". This was not an issue with previous volumes, as the Victorian setting meant that the majority of characters that were used were from works no longer under copyright. It is well known by many that the Black Dossier was severely plagued with legal trouble and trouble from DC, that Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill have both stated that it is mainly due to Jim Lee
Jim Lee
Jim Lee is a Korean-American comic book artist, writer, editor and publisher. He first broke into the industry in 1987 as an artist for Marvel Comics, illustrating titles such as Alpha Flight and Punisher War Journal, before gaining a great deal of popularity on The Uncanny X-Men...
that the book ever saw print.
Plot
Unlike earlier volumes, the comic book portions of Black Dossier are not set in the Victorian era; rather, they are set in 1958, after the fall of the Big Brother government from Nineteen Eighty Four (the chronological explanation for this is that Orwell's book was originally set in 1948, but the dates were changed by the publisher). The story itself sees Mina HarkerMina Harker
Wilhelmina "Mina" Harker is a fictional character in Bram Stoker's 1897 horror novel Dracula.- In the novel :She begins the story as Miss Mina Murray, a young school mistress who is engaged to Jonathan Harker, and best friends with Lucy Westenra...
and Allan Quatermain
Allan Quatermain
Allan Quatermain is the protagonist of H. Rider Haggard's 1885 novel King Solomon's Mines and its various prequels and sequels. Allan Quatermain was also the title of a book in this sequence.- History :...
- now immortal after bathing in the fire of youth from She
She (novel)
She, subtitled A History of Adventure, is a novel by Henry Rider Haggard, first serialized in The Graphic magazine from October 1886 to January 1887. She is one of the classics of imaginative literature, and with over 83 million copies sold in 44 different languages, one of the best-selling books...
- on their quest to recover the Black Dossier, which contains the secret history of the now-disbanded League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
Out to stop them is a trio of secret agents: inept, brutally womanizing Jimmy
James Bond (character)
Royal Navy Commander James Bond, CMG, RNVR is a fictional character created by journalist and novelist Ian Fleming in 1953. He is the main protagonist of the James Bond series of novels, films, comics and video games...
, recently-orphaned Emma Night
Emma Peel
Emma Peel was a fictional spy played by Diana Rigg in the British 1960s adventure television series The Avengers. She was born Emma Knight, the daughter of an industrialist, Sir John Knight.-Casting:...
, and aging thug Hugo Drummond
Bulldog Drummond
Bulldog Drummond is a British fictional character, created by "Sapper", a pseudonym of Herman Cyril McNeile , and the hero of a series of novels published from 1920 to 1954.- Drummond :...
. The pursuit takes Mina and Allan from London to Scotland, and eventually to the magical Blazing World.
The Black Dossier
As Murray and Quatermain read the dossier, the contents of the dossier interrupt the narrative in different sections. Stories include "On the Descent of the Gods" an account of the Gods of the League universe, as written by Oliver HaddoThe Magician (Maugham novel)
The Magician is a novel by British author W. Somerset Maugham, originally published in 1908. In this tale, the magician Oliver Haddo, a caricature of Aleister Crowley, attempts to create life...
; a twenty-five page "Life of Orlando" comic strip which tells the entire life of Orlando from his birth in the City of Thebes
Thebes, Greece
Thebes is a city in Greece, situated to the north of the Cithaeron range, which divides Boeotia from Attica, and on the southern edge of the Boeotian plain. It played an important role in Greek myth, as the site of the stories of Cadmus, Oedipus, Dionysus and others...
in 1260 B.C., up to the Second World War told in the style of a 1950s British comic called Trump.; a faux William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
play detailing the foundation of the League by Prospero
Prospero
Prospero is the protagonist in The Tempest, a play by William Shakespeare.- The Tempest :Prospero is the rightful Duke of Milan, who was put to sea on "a rotten carcass of a butt [boat]" to die by his usurping brother, Antonio, twelve years before the play begins. Prospero and Miranda survived,...
from The Tempest
The Tempest
The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...
; an imaginary sequel to John Cleland
John Cleland
John Cleland was an English novelist most famous and infamous as the author of Fanny Hill: or, the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure....
's Fanny Hill
Fanny Hill
Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure is an erotic novel by John Cleland first published in England in 1748...
with full-page illustrations akin to those the Marquis Von Bayros
Franz von Bayros
Franz von Bayros was an Austrian commercial artist, illustrator, and painter best known for his controversial "Tales at the Dressing Table" portfolio. Von Bayros belonged to the Decadent movement in art, often relying on erotic themes and phantasmagoric imagery.Von Bayros was born in Zagreb, in...
illustrated for the book; a Bertie Wooster
Bertie Wooster
Bertram Wilberforce "Bertie" Wooster is a recurring fictional character in the Jeeves novels of British author P. G. Wodehouse. An English gentleman, one of the "idle rich" and a member of the Drones Club, he appears alongside his valet, Jeeves, whose genius manages to extricate Bertie or one of...
and Jeeves
Jeeves
Reginald Jeeves is a fictional character in the short stories and novels of P. G. Wodehouse, being the valet of Bertie Wooster . Created in 1915, Jeeves would continue to appear in Wodehouse's works until his final, completed, novel Aunts Aren't Gentlemen in 1974, making him Wodehouse's most famous...
prose story involving one of Great Old Ones from the stories of H.P. Lovecraft; and "The Crazy Wide Forever," a short story written in the style of Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...
. Other features include a picture map of the Blazing World and its location, a cut-away of Nemo's Nautilus Mark II submarine, a series of postcards Mina and Allan sent between the years 1899 and 1913, and profiles of the second 20th century leagues and the group's French and German counterparts.
Reception
TimeTime (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine's Lev Grossman
Lev Grossman
Lev Grossman is an American novelist and journalist, notably the author of the novels Warp , Codex , The Magicians and The Magician King...
named it one of the Top 10 Graphic Novels of 2007, ranking it at #2, and praising it as “effing genius.” Jesse Schedeen of IGN
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
gave Black Dossier a 9.5 rating praising the complex detail of Kevin O'Neil's artwork and the literary quality of Moore's writing, whilst criticising the quality of the paper and printing style of the hardcover version and some aspects of the storytelling.
Awards
- 20072007 in comics-January:*January 10: Superman & Batman vs. Aliens & Predator released.*January 24: The Boys is canceled with issue #6.-February:*February 2: Newsarama reports that The Boys has been picked up by Dynamite Entertainment....
: Won the "Favourite Original Graphic Novel" Eagle Award
External links
- About Black Dossier
- The DC Comics Message Board for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
- Preview of Black Dossier, Entertainment WeeklyEntertainment WeeklyEntertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
Interviews
- Alan Moore: Inside "The Black Dossier", Comic Book ResourcesComic Book ResourcesComic Book Resources, also known as CBR is a website dedicated to the coverage of comic book-related news and discussion.-History:Comic Book Resources was founded by Jonah Weiland in 1996 as a development of the Kingdom Come Message Board, a message forum that Weiland had created to discuss DC...
, November 14, 2007 - Kevin O'Neill Talks "The Black Dossier", Comic Book ResourcesComic Book ResourcesComic Book Resources, also known as CBR is a website dedicated to the coverage of comic book-related news and discussion.-History:Comic Book Resources was founded by Jonah Weiland in 1996 as a development of the Kingdom Come Message Board, a message forum that Weiland had created to discuss DC...
, November 20, 2007