Thursday, February 8, 2007

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vols. 1&2

I just finished reading both volumes and posted two reviews over at Borders.com (should be up within 24 hours barring acceptance/clearance). I thought I'd share the reviews here:

VOLUME ONE
5/5 stars
"Huge Fan of the Founding Fathers of Sci-Fi & Action/Adventure" February 8, 2007
Reviewer: LordShen (Cimmeria)

And Moore does absolute justice to those early days. The writing is strong, the illustrations new with a flair of the Victorian (well suited for Victorian-aged writers and their created characters), the dialogue doesn't mince and the action is fast-paced.

Anyone who enjoys literature like Burroughs' John Carter of Mars, the early Sci-Fi writers like Wells and Verne and Gothic tales of visceral violence like Dracula or even R. E. Howard's Conan would do themselves a favor to read this! it is a definitive homage, imho, to all those who came before as well as a tip-of-the-hat to the early days of pulp and comics.

This is some of the best in the comics industry to date.



VOLUME TWO
4/5 stars
I was semi-disappointed by The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume 2 ONLY (and please note that I said ONLY) in that it didn't fully live up to the tight writing and fast-paced action of LoXG Volume 1.

At times I felt that I was, rather than reading a continued fictional history of classic characters, re-reading War of the Worlds itself. Not much truly happens within the first half of Volume 2 with the exception of the alien forces landing and the appearance at the beginning of John Carter. The dialogue wasn't as tight as in the first, either.

But those are only two complaints and they're all in relation to the first volume. If I review Volume 2 as a stand-alone (the validity of which could be argued either way), I'd have to say it stands very strong.

This collection of 6 comics is still far superior to most comics and graphic novels put out there these days. I was a bit thrown off by the interaction between Quartermain and Mina, it seemed all from out of left field imho.

But all in all the pace eventually picks up, the characters are strong and more deeply explored and some logical ends come about. I certainly cannot say I wasn't entertained.

Not as good as the first, but a decent follow-up and better than most of what's going on out there in comics.

3 comments:

J.Ho said...

if you get a chance, you should try "planetary" and "authority" next... "planetary" deals with characters based on the pulp era, and "authority" moves it forward into the age of superheroes.

Atomic Swan Serials and If - E - Zine said...

are those still within the LoXg line?

J.Ho said...

"planetary" and "authority" take place in the same universe, but NOT in the LoEG universe. all three titles were published by wildstorm/DC, but LoEG is now published by topshelf.