Kevin O'Neill's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Century: 2009
All you need to know about Kevin O’Neill’s* THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN CENTURY: 2009 is what you see on the cover. CENTURY: 1910 showed a proud and still Victorian Mina Murray, the one we knew from the first two of O’Neill’s (and that Moore chap as well) LOEG books. CENTURY: 1969’s cover was trippy and brash, mirroring the drug experience that Mina herself experiences in the pages of the book. O’Neill’s covers reflect so much of his work in those books as we follow the adventures of Murray, her lover and legend Allan Quartermain and the sometimes male/sometimes female Orlando through the 20th century.
But the pride and the stoicism of the first two books have been replaced by something else on O’Neill’s third cover; they’ve been replaced by resignation and fear. For seemingly immortal characters such as Orlando, Quartermain and Murray, how long is too long? Orlando is centuries old, holding Excalibur on the cover amidst a fantasm of green disembodied eyes while Murray, only immortal for less than 100 years, stares off with heavy eyes. In the past two covers, O’Neill put the sword(s) in Murray’s hands. She’s the hero ready to strike if needed there but CENTURY: 2009 shows a different Murray, one worn down already by her own deathless life.
O’Neill carries the weight of immortality and age into the book, taking these character who have seen such wonderful and marvelous sites and thrusting them into an oppressive and dark world. The CENTURY books have been about the 20th century, where a large part of our dreams became reality. In the real world, so much changed between 1901 and 2000 that the world hardly looked the same by the end of the 20th century or even by the beginning of the 21st century. O’Neill’s artwork, full of that great linework and wonderful storytelling, is the same as we first saw in the first LOEG books and even in THE BLACK DOSSIER but there’s a joy in his world (but not his artwork) that is lost.
The wonders of the past now the decaying relics of the modern age
THE BLACK DOSSIER, a wonderful art book if only an appetizer of a story, attempts to be about the magic which exists in our stories. O’Neill visually takes us through an abridged history of stories and narrative while creating a 1950’s thriller/sci fi story for Murray and Quarterman. He creates a world where stories and fictions are as real as you and me. In the end of THE BLACK DOSSIER, the “real” world and this world of stories collide and dreams become real for Murray and Quartermain. The LOEG story which started out as this Victorian meeting-of-the-heroes becomes so much larger than life and the Victorian age as O’Neill shows us a world where all of our stories and so much more all exist in the same continuum.
Even as he visually created a grand narrative universe in THE BLACK DOSSIER, CENTURY: 2009 shows how the world has become this small and petty thing since the heyday of imagination. After exploring the secrets of everything, CENTURY: 2009 becomes this small story about three used-up people trying to fend off the 21st century monster-- a kid with all of that magic and none of the imagination. As the century wears on, O’Neill shows us a world that’s rotten and falling apart. From once magical schools and magical trains to Shakespeare’s Prospero, the world that O’Neill shows us feels like a great weight. He shows this as simply as having Orlando and Murray’s hair being flat and thin.
LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN has always been about showing us things that we’d never see. It’s been about the magic and wonder that exists in our stories. But something about the modern age in CENTURY: 2009 is different. Charting the world from 1910 to 2009, O’Neill shows us a world that has little place for the bright, colorful and psychedelic magic of an earlier age. There’s an innocence lost as our fictions start to look more and more like everyday life. That’s what happens to the characters in CENTURY: 2009 and that’s what happens for us, the readers of this comic book. The wonder of seeing a Victorian all-star team of heroes has been replaced by seeing our aged yet ageless “heroes” dragged into a time that isn’t their own.
Even as he visually created a grand narrative universe in THE BLACK DOSSIER, CENTURY: 2009 shows how the world has become this small and petty thing since the heyday of imagination. After exploring the secrets of everything, CENTURY: 2009 becomes this small story about three used-up people trying to fend off the 21st century monster-- a kid with all of that magic and none of the imagination. As the century wears on, O’Neill shows us a world that’s rotten and falling apart. From once magical schools and magical trains to Shakespeare’s Prospero, the world that O’Neill shows us feels like a great weight. He shows this as simply as having Orlando and Murray’s hair being flat and thin.
LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN has always been about showing us things that we’d never see. It’s been about the magic and wonder that exists in our stories. But something about the modern age in CENTURY: 2009 is different. Charting the world from 1910 to 2009, O’Neill shows us a world that has little place for the bright, colorful and psychedelic magic of an earlier age. There’s an innocence lost as our fictions start to look more and more like everyday life. That’s what happens to the characters in CENTURY: 2009 and that’s what happens for us, the readers of this comic book. The wonder of seeing a Victorian all-star team of heroes has been replaced by seeing our aged yet ageless “heroes” dragged into a time that isn’t their own.
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*Yes, yes, yes. Alan Moore is the writer and most likely the driving force behind most of what O’Neill draws but O’Neill still has to take Moore’s story and bring it to life. I mean, have you ever actually seen a Moore script? It’s like forgetting that Dave Gibbons, David Lloyd or Eddie Campbell actually had to make a comic out of Moore’s lovely words.
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All art by Kevin O’Neill
Cover images from Comics.org
Martian monument image from Top Shelf Comix’s website

