Tor.com comics blogger Tim Callahan has dedicated the next twelve monthsmore than a year to a reread of all of the major Alan Moore comics(and plenty of minor ones as well). Each week he will provide commentary on what he’s been reading. Welcome to the 59th installment.
Originally planned as a sourcebook like 1982’s Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, or 1984’s Who’s Who in the DC Universe, or 1994’s The Wildstorm Swimsuit Special (okay, maybe not that last one), full of text-heavy informational pages about the world of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the project that was finally released as the Black Dossier was something far more ambitious: an assembly of multiple styles in multiple parodic modes covering the entire history of the League in all its incarnations and providing far more in the way of discursive storytelling than anything in the way of traditional exposition about who the League is and how it came to be.
I recall the project being the most divisive release from the Alan Moore/Kevin O’Neill team, with the widespread opinion that the project was alternately pretentious and self-indulgent balanced out by a powerful minority of voices thrilled by the depth of allusion in every chapter and the exciting eclecticism of the Black Dossier’s influences.
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