L

LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, THE. A comic series written by Alan

Moore and drawn by Kevin O’Neill, Th e League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was ini-
tially published by Wildstorm/DC Comics as part of the ABC line, which published
other comics by Moore, notably Promethea. Th e series began in 1999, moving to Top
Shelf/Knockabout Comics in 2009. Over the course of his career Moore had some of
his greatest successes re-interpreting existing characters, deconstructing and demysti-
fying them in the process, commenting on the clichés and conventions that underpin
popular genres. In creating a “Justice League of Victorian England” Moore took this
strategy beyond the superhero genre, where he had previously applied it to great eff ect,
as in Watchmen, and turned to one of the immediate precursors of comics, Victorian
popular and pulp fi ction. Th e story places various characters from diff erent works of
fi ction in the same universe, including Mina Murray from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Allan
Quatermain from H. Rider Haggard’s King Soloman’s Mines (1885), Hawley Griffi n,
otherwise known as the Invisible Man, from H. G. Wells’s 1897 story of the same name,
Henry Jekyll/Edward Hyde from Stevenson’s Th e Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde (1886), and Jules Verne’s enigmatic Captain Nemo, from 20,000 Leagues Under
the Sea (1870). Also featured over the course of the series are characters from Arthur
Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, Fu Manchu, the Martians from H. G. Wells’s
Th e War of the Worlds (1898), and characters from Edwin Lester Linden Arnold’s Gul-
liver of Mars (1905), and in later stories, James Bond, as well as a host of other cameos.
Th e series is often identifi ed as being part of the “steampunk” sub-genre of fantasy
and science fi ction. Th e fi rst volume tells the story of the league being gathered together
to protect the British Empire against a plot by Fu Manchu to create a deadly airship. Th e
second volume takes a more apocalyptic stance, being set during the Martian invasion