Surprise!

[pyat]

I hate League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and have for a long time.

The comic, I mean. I've never seen the movie.

Comments

[zenten.livejournal.com]

Well, then based on the fans of the comic you should love the movie then, because all of them seem to have hated it.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

No, I suspect I'd hate it even more. The comic has good points, which is why it took me so long to realize I actually didn't like it at all. The movie, by all accounts, is the comic minus any intelligence.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

I found it to be a fun little action flick.

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

Hssssssssss!

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Minus any intelligence -- but PLUS a Whole Lotta Fun. It's campy, over-the-top, visually lush, frequently absurd -- and, frankly, much more what I expected from the premise than the comics were.

Honestly, I think you'd love it, if only for the scathing review that Prof. Von Boots would inevitably write.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Maybe! After all, I still like Hudson Hawk...

[pvenables.livejournal.com]

You hate the concept, the writing, the art, the execution or a combination of above?

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I hate the clumsy pastiche of characters from sources spread out over 80 years, all of whom have horrible things happen to them. It's like this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.html?curid=2619246) crossed with this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(film)).

I liked the first couple of issues, but it seemed to stray very quickly into "How many 19th century fictional characters can we cram into this thing?" By the time they recruited the Invisible Man, I was sort of... meh.

I bought the whole second series, too, and didn't like it either.

Also, the Electric Negro was never funny.

[pvenables.livejournal.com]

I had read the first collection into TPB and enjoyed it but perhaps not enough to nab the second one. I found a lot to enjoy about it, I can see how the ongoing execution of that concept could lead to a less enjoyable read. If presented with the opportunity to read the second volume I probably would but I'm not chasing it down with undue effort.

I found the movie fun but, like most adaptations, not equal to the better points of the book. I enjoyed in the book, for example, that Mina was the functional leader of the group while Quartermain was troubled by substance abuse and a real trainwreck overall. In the movie, of course, Connery plays himself as quartermain and Mina gives up all power and control she had in the book. That was a pity.

[iamradar.livejournal.com]

Sean Connery reportedly refused to take the role unless his character could be the one in charge, rather than a woman.

[pvenables.livejournal.com]

I heard that was standard verbiage in all his contracts...

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I actually enjoyed the first series in several spots, but by the end of it I was disappointed. The 2nd started promising, but the good parts seemed further and further apart.

[brand-of-amber.livejournal.com]

Oh man, those links are brilliant.

I agree, btw, and despite the majority finding Planetary different, I more or less found Planetary pretty much the same.

But then maybe I'm just not pop enough.

[cargoweasel.livejournal.com]

Have you read the other Alan Moore projects from that same "Americas Best Comics" era, like Tom Strong? You might like them more.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I've heard good things about them!

[seritaph.livejournal.com]

The movie was a ball of crud with few redeeming features. Some action sequences were nice, but that's hardly a film saver.

[lee-in-limbo.livejournal.com]

I'm a fan of the series, but the first two volumes are not examples of Alan Moore's best work. They're riddled with obscure references that a lot of trainspotters (like Jess Nevins) have made a game of figuring out. Personally, I only recongnize one in ten references, so I just read it for the stories, the dialogue and the fairly unique artwork. He's just playing with ideas there.

His best works in comic form are still Watchmen, V for Vendetta, From Hell, Lost Girls, Promethea, and Top Ten. Miracle Man is an interesting if weird read, his take on Swamp Thing was seminal (but I don't own any), and his Captain Britain set the tone for most of what Chris Claremont and Alan Davis did with him later. I think my favourite of these is Promethea, but that's a very strange piece, too.

You might also like pulp action hero Tom Strong, which I enjoyed, but found a little light and sparse on ideas at times. The first few issues were brilliant. Some of the guest artist spots were also very cool. I think my favourite was issue three with the techno-Aztecs. that was the issue that got me collecting the series, but I was rarely as blown away. Chris Sprouse did his best work there.

But yeah, LoEG is an odd read, and I suppose if you can't get behind Alan Moore's Grand Unified Field Theory of Fiction, the point is entirely moot. I'm sad that it doesn't work for you, because that's probably the most obvious of his works for you to read, given your penchant for Victorian tropes. I rather like it, but it's kind of a light read, if you don't get all the sub-references.

And the movie is a total travesty, which Sean Connery couldn't even save. No excuse at all. Any and all of the other movie adaptations of his work stand miles above it.

Lee.

[lee-in-limbo.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, I also have a series by writer Warren Ellis that plays a little bit with fiction tropes, called Planetary, which I happen to like a lot better than League. If you ever want to see that, or Promethea or some of the other Alan Moore stuff I mentioned, drop me a note.

Lee.

[seritaph.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, I am suddenly curious as to what Pyat's take on Planetary might be!

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I completely agree. I like LoEG, but consider it to be quite flawed for what seem to be various standard Alan Moore quirks (including an obsession with brutalizing characters created by other people). However Planetary takes on the same territory, and while it has much grimness in it, the essential optimism of Ellis' work again reveals itself. Also, Ellis' approach to adding kitchen sink's worth of media references is both considerably more restrained and (IMHO at least) far less clumsy than Moore's.

[taluagel.livejournal.com]

The movie was amungst my top 5 worst movies of all time.

[relee.livejournal.com]

Oh! What about The Amazing Screw-on Head?

[pxtl.livejournal.com]

Ahh, the Harry Turtledove effect? Yeah, not fond of it myself. League seemed to be a hold-over of Moore's '90s work... perverting things and turning them upside down and making them _dark_. Which was cool and all, but it had already become rather tired by then.

Then again, League does have its moments. The whole Mina/Quartermain thing was rather well done throughout the first book, and Hyde's uncharacteristic chivalry was a high point.

But the whole series was gratuitous fan-service "oooh, let's make the story DARK by making him a rapist!" "ooh, let's have Moriarty's army fight Fu Manchu's army! Oooh, moar sex scene!"

Still, the first volume at least has a coherent story-arc. The second volume was something of a let-down, and I've heard that the 3rd volume is really just a vessel for Moore to experiment with historic meta-fiction.

Basically, Moore once said that works like "The Killing Joke" really ended up just giving cartoon characters chainsaws. Adding brutality to boyish subjects where it never should exist... which is why League is so confusing. While he spent half his career complaining about this effect, League seems to be about embracing it to a degree that very few others ever did.

[circuit-four.livejournal.com]

Yes, but the important thing is, what did you think of the League of Ordinary Gentlemen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_League_of_Gentlemen_(comedy))?

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I've only seen promo spots for it, which were both amusing and perplexing. I suspect it'd be something I'd like in small doses - like Little Britain.

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

Even the one on Mars?

[neosis.livejournal.com]

I like the concept and found various parts interesting. The movie is terrible. It's up the viewer whether it's brilliantly terrible or just terrible.