When Your Humble Blogger is disappointed by a book, it seems important to attempt to assess whether the disappointment is due to unreasonable expectations or to actual stinkage. In the case of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II, I suspect that the culprit is a third one, an unwillingness on my part to put in the requisite effort. I did not read the comic with the annotations close to hand. I did not re-read any of the various source texts. I didn’t scour the panels for incidental jokes and references. I did not read the huge block of text at the end.
Oddly enough, despite the letdown, I am still interested in the league’s Black Dossier, and the third volume, and whatnot. I mean, not interested enough to purchase such a thing, but still.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
I loved that it began with John Carter and ended with Doctor Moreau. That was enough for me to recommend Book II. Still, there’s more than a whiff of fan fiction to the series, even if it’s very elegant fan fiction, so I can see where it’d be hard to get into it if you didn’t have a certain level of background info in mind as you read it. LOST GIRLS was Moore’s porno equivalent of LXG, and that contained some references that had me puzzled.