Brief Words on The Black Dossier

My copy of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier arrived yesterday and I finished it this evening. It's a fun read--well, fun in that weird English geek sort of way. The narrative is light, but it's still worth a look. Moore and O'Neill do some interesting things with the Dossier, jumping from style to style, giving a large picture that weaves in and out of various fictional and factual events to create a familiar yet different history. My only real complaint is the lack of long 'S's in the Shakespeare folio. It's supposed to be a reproduction and there's not a single long 'S' to be found? It's a minor quibble, I admit, but one that bothers me. Of course, I imagine some would probably complain had they included the long 'S' and I wouldn't mind because of the three years I spent transcribing texts from 1640-1660 England for an online database and am not slowed down by the long 'S' at all. I actually wish they'd even gone further and done some of the things that those old texts did like interchanged 'U' and 'V' or used two 'V's for 'W' sometimes. OR, used the italicised version of a letter if they had run out of the standard one.

Okay, I'm weird.

I was also bothered by the 3-D bit at the end, mostly because the point is pretty simple and it doesn't add a whole lot--beyond giving me a headache. Of course, I could have removed the glasses, because I wanted to do it proper and all.

The most interesting parts for me were the excerpts from Campion Bond's memoirs, which set up the first volume of the series, and the stories about the French and German versions of the League. Or or or, the wonderful bit in the Fanny Hill sequence where she recounts the story of being in the giantess' vagina and saved from certain death when her husband decided he was in the mood for anal instead. Alan Moore is a dirty, dirty man. I read that part aloud to my roommate and had a good laugh.

The Black Dossier is a fun, dense read that any fan of the series must get, literature fans will love, and newbies will... I don't know actually. I'm rather looking forward to Volume 3 of the series after this little taste.