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The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Vol. III): Century [the third installment of Moore's Victorian-sleuthing comic, due out in April 2009] certainly stokes the imagination. Why make it span three different eras — 1910, 1968, and the present?
ALAN MOORE: [Artist] Kevin O'Neill and I realized we had two or three powerful stories. It struck us that we might be able to link them together and make a three-part narrative, so that each would stand on it's own and thus relieve readers from any kind of painful cliffhanger between issues. And yet the three stories would link up into an overarching narrative involving the occult.
How do these three chapters split up?
The first book surrounds the coronation of King George, which was also the time The Threepenny Opera was set, a comet was passing overhead, and there was a general feeling of dread in the air. We're also focusing on the occult fictions written around the time...[like] Aleister Crowley's [1917] book, Moonchild, where the protagonists are attempting to create a magically produced child that is going to usher in a new era. [Protagonist] Mina and her associates are trying to stop this from happening. The second book [revolves around] that sort of peculiar 1960s melding of pop-star psychedelic lifestyles, fashionable interest in occultism, and to some degree, at least in London, crime. We've got it all centered around a big rock concert at Hyde Park. Running all the way through this is the continuing threat of the production of a magical child who, by this time, we are fairly certain, is the Antichrist. That second book ends very badly. And they're not having a lot of luck. The third part is set in 2008 when, basically, the League is in pieces — barely exists anymore — and this turns out to be the time at which the Antichrist project finally pays off, and this magical child finally manifests in quite a terrifying form.
You've moved publishers, from DC Comics to Top Shelf. Do you think that's going to affect your work?
I think it's already affecting it. Both me and Kevin have noticed that this third volume is very different from the first two [published by DC Comics]. It's almost as if, while we were working within the confines of mainstream comics, we were perhaps unconsciously following the basic formulae of mainstream comics. There's sort of an overall ethos in comics, in boys' adventure fiction, that you must keep the action moving, which is not really the standards of serious drama or literature. So for this third volume of League, we're pacing it differently. It's got a lot more depth and resonance, a lot more drama for the money. And I think that the payoff of this first volume is that it will be frightening enough to make the reader forget the slower pace of its opening pages. |
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