I found ‘Century 1910′ confusing, but that’s to be expected as it’s the first part of a projected trilogy. I was a bit disapppointed that Moore had fallen back on the “rape revenge” trope, but if it gives us a new, more dangerous Nemo I’ll roll with it.

I actually loved ‘Black Dossier’, mostly for its sheer scope and the myriad throwaway references (how many picked up on “Glamcabs”?). Anything that can combine James Bond, Fireball XL5 and nymphomaniac wooden dolls has just got to be treasured!

I’m afraid that both the B.D. and 1910 leave me feeling either
not smart enough to understand them, or bored with the writer’s
(or the work’s?) utter self-indulgence. I loved the first two
LOEG’s. I was frustrated to buy both BD & 1910 and discover that
both are pretty boring and not really continuations of Moore’s original concept in the slightest. (As for Orlando, I WOULD buy ‘LOEG: The Swift and Permanent Death of Fucking Annoying Orlando’ it’s like an immortal Lady Gaga). Moore can write whatever he likes and owes me nothing.
But like Stephen King’s crap-fest of a pulpy true-crime book– (The excremental ‘Colorado Kid’) both BD and 1910 trade off on
the popularity of one product, leaving the buyer with something
else entirely. Finally,’1910′ is poorly written, makes no sense and is as boring as whale shit.

I think it’s worth noting that Century is obviously closer to the first two books in that this is volume 3. BD has been called vol 2.5 and was designed to expand the readers’ understanding of the League’s world, which was always more that “a Justice League of Victorian literature,” in an easy way that didn’t bog down another narrative. It showed the wide scope of this wold newton universe of all fictional works that went backwards and forwards hinting at what was coming next.

As for the formatting style that integrated text pages with the comic pages, this was not something new to the League, new to Alan Moore’s comics or new to comics in general. Remember that each previous issue of the League ended with four pages of text that expanded the scope of the stories (“Allan & the Sundered Veil” and “The New World Travelers Almanac”). And Century has six pages at the end as well (“Minions of The Moon”). I know that there are people who don’t read this, but it’s their loss. BD simply integrated the text into the story so that the reader read the book along with Mina & Allen.

And of course Alan Moore has used this style in the past, most obviously Watchmen, which had text pieces in the back of issues 1-11. And all comics have included text pages. At the start of the Golden Age comics included a few pages of short stories so that the comics could be classified as “magazines” and get a lower shipping rate. These were replaced with letters pages. Now there are recap pages at the front. Prose has always had a place in comics, but simply because no one tries to use it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be there. Conversely, most people get their comics in the middle of a newspaper.

As for Century itself, I think what’s important here is that the three stories (Haddo, Jenni and MacHeath) are all connected and work together to show new vulnerability in the League. Over the last two volumes the team has accomplished amazing feats and we’ve seen that they will continue far into the 50s, but here we see the vulnerability of the team and the danger of them splitting apart.

Carnacki’s visions at the start aren’t clear about what the danger is and the League ends up only making things worse. They get sidetracked by MacHeath and don’t recognize the danger in Jenni now and that she will represent to them in the future. And their investigations into Haddo only give him information he’ll use to bring his apocalyptic goal to fruition. Allan and Mina grow apart as he becomes less driven while she moves forward and they both come to grips with their new found immortality.

While I’m obviously a fan, I thought that Century: 1910 was great and served as a fantastic start of something new and big for the League in terms of scope, danger and storytelling possibilities. And I think Black Dossier is worth the trouble.

hopfully the moore hype will die down a bit now that the watchmen movie is over.