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| 1999 |
In the original 6-issue series of League it becomes clear that Moor and O'Neill have a far more ambitious goal that simply having Captain Nemo, Allan Quatermain, the Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde and Mina Harker getting together and fighting Professor Moriarty. In the Moore-O'Neill scheme of thing, all fiction is true. Hence the incredible amount of details present in every single panel of the series. To such an extent that Jesse Nevins has dedicated himself to analyse the panels and detect references to other books, novels and short stories.
Things get even more complicated as the series move along. The second 6-issue mini-series, taking place during the 1898 Martian invasion, as depicted in H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, has a back-up feature chronicling every single imaginary islands, continents, towns and cites and otherwise faraway places featured in almost 500 years of fiction. Thus uniting the adventures of the League with a broader world-view. At the end of this second mini-series the league seems to unravel: the Invisible Man is killed by Mr. Hyde, who in turns sacrifices himself to save Earth. An enraged Captain Nemo returns to his hermit ways while Quatermain and Mina travel on.
Moore's ambition was always unbounded, which is why he remains one of the most extraordinary comic creator of the last thirty years. The next stop for the League, as it moves from the 19th to the 20th centuries, was to explain everything while moving the series forward. A topic I will discuss in part 2 of this post.
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| (L to R): Allan Quatermain, Mina Murray Harker, Dr. Henry Jekyll, Captain Nemo & Hawley Griffin (aka the Invisible Man) |
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