Alan Moore

[Brightonian]

So I've been trying to identify the various literary references in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comics and was wondering if any of you kind folks could help. Here are some of the more obvious sources:

Dracula (Bram Stoker)
Sherlock Holmes stories, esp The Final Problem (Conan Doyle)
20,000 Leagues under the Sea, Mysterious Island (Verne)
Invisible Man, War of the Worlds, Island of Dr Moreau, First Men in the Moon (Wells)
Murders in the Rue Morgue (Poe)
Mars novels - Edgar Rice Burroughs
Gullivar in Mars (Edwin L. Arnold - OK, I googled that one)
Out of the Silent Planet (CS Lewis)
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Stevenson)
Fu Manchu stories (Sax Rohmer)
Allan Quatermain novels (Haggard)
David Copperfield, Bleak House (Dickens)

What have I missed?

[admin]

I think I remember references to Alice in Wonderland and to Jane Eyre.

Another interesting place to hunt references is Alan Moore's Top Ten. Just spotted Herbie Popnecker.

[jdalton]

I also remember Rupert the Bear (by Mary Tourtel originally).

Depends whether or not you include the appendix at the end of book 2. He crammed in references to just about every book imaginable in that appendix (including Narnia and Santa Claus!)

[Brightonian]

I learned at my local comix shop this week that volume 3 of League has been "indefinitely postponed", having originally been scheduled for UK release on Oct 20th.

Anyone know any background to this?

[hegemon]

The number of "references" in League is nothing compared to the number of references in Top 10, where we see everybody from Will Robinson to Herbie Popnecker!

[Brightonian]

Just acquired LOEG Century 1910. As usual it's a highly entertaining ride with much enjoyment to be derived from spotting references, from Brecht to Raffles via Crowley and William Hope Hodgson - the prose appendix even has a nod to Pauline Reage's Story of O.

But, for the first time I found an Alan Moore plotline predictable - as soon as Janni's name was written down as Jenny I just knew she was going to assume the role of Pirate Jenny, with the Nautilus as the sinister ship that rescues her from drudgery.

[admin]

I also enjoyed the new League. However, while Moore's Brechtian song lyrics start well, he seems to loose his once powerful ability to write lyrics that scan later in the book. Maybe, under pressure from a deadline long past, he rushed.

I wonder what readers unfamiliar with Brecht will make of it.

Do you have the Lotte Lenya album with Pirate Jenny on it?

[Brightonian]

Strangely enough I don't have any Lotte Lenya, I really should remedy that. I have a few CDs of Brecht/Weil/Eisler songs by the likes of Dagmar Krause, Gisela May and Ernst Busch. Back in the 80s I was a great fan of a ramshackle big band called the Happy End who specialised in Berlin cabaret songs, Spanish Civil War anthems and the like, and Pirate Jenny was one of their staples.

[Brightonian]

I wonder what readers unfamiliar with Brecht will make of it.

I've just recommended it to someone who knows a lot about Brecht - in fact she has sung Pirate Jenny many times - but nothing about comics, in fact she never heard of Alan Moore. I'm wondering what she will make of it.