Imagine you are a civilian, who has known nothing more than reality as you have seen it so far. Perhaps you have read some interesting stories, if any of these stories have survived or if you've been privy to them. Now, imagine someone hands you a book. It is hard-bound, but not heavy at all. There is a long cloth strip of a bookmark in it. It appears to be some kind of log, or journal.
You open this black-covered book and find yourself sifting through a whole variety of ephemera -- from the 1600s all the way to the late 1940s or 50s. In it, you find accounts from various "unpersons," or "fictional characters" or beings and people with special abilities do simply do not exist. You know that this information, and everything in there is top secret and was meant to be only viewed by a select few. Even the writing on the margins of the articles is not meant for "prole" eyes.
And yet this is being shared with you. Everything is being shared with you -- from journal accounts of sorcerers and paramours, to designs, to reports on strange eldritch activities all the way to a "lost" first folio of Shakespeare and even a Beatnik narrative. There is a wide gamut of narratives in different forms which all seem to say the same thing: that there has been a group that has done extraordinary things, and extraordinary things are therefore revealed about them.
The narratives revealed are not simply "told," as opposed to "shown" -- that is an old fallacy that must always be questioned and never taken for granted with regards to creative writing. You as the reader are included in this world that Moore creates, let in on some very fabulous secret that temporal powers want to be kept. And what is this secret? Without spoiling the particulars for you, the secret is that these figures and fiction inspire us, are no less real than our personas and will live as long as the human imagination.
This is what The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier means to me as a reader -- something participatory, novel and fun. All I will add to this statement is please, look at the title of the work, read it, and then come to your conclusion. You are looking at a "secret book" that really isn't and shouldn't be one.
That is what a Black Dossier is to me.
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4.3 out of 5
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Reviews with images
The Crazy Wide Forever
This is the third released The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novel by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill. Unlike the first two volumes, which were originally released as comic book mini-series, this is a self-contained graphic novel. The story takes place in the England of 1958, where the ageless Mina Murray and Allan Quatermain steal "The Black Dossier", which is a file containing documents relating to the various permutations of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The contents of The Black Dossier are printed in this book, interrupted periodically by comics portraying what Mina and Allan are up to (or is it the other way around?). The contents of the Dossier are in various formats; including comics, book excerpts, plays and many others. This material is very well produced, but it is difficult at times, particularly when it references some obscure characters the reader may not be familiar with. This book is a remarkable achievement, but it is considerably less enjoyable than the previous League graphic novels.
Top reviews from other countries
Michauux
Nowhere to be found in EU bookstores except here...
Reviewed in the Netherlands on May 25, 2023
