Comics

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Century: 1969 by Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill
2: Paint It Black
Minions of the Moon Chapter Two: The Distance From Tranquility

Despite being set 59 years later, Paint It Black picks up where What Keeps Mankind Alive? left off in the investigation of Oliver Haddo and his attempts to take over the world with a Moonchild. (Aside: it would be interesting to read the League in chronological order, as the main story part of Black Dossier takes place between the first two parts of Century.)

While the first part almost functioned as a standalone tale, this is very much the next instalment of a longer story -- an Empire Strikes Back, if you will, that does have its own contained narrative but also ends on a devastating cliffhanger. The League is all but gone as the book begins, and as it ends it's certainly destroyed, with one member completely missing (both to the characters and to the reader), so it'll be interesting to see where 2009 picks things up.

I didn't find it to be as satisfying a read as 1910, perhaps, though there's some very nice character stuff about how Mina is coping with immortality. O'Neill's art seems to be scratchier and rougher than usual to me, which is a shame -- it looks positively rushed in places, rendering things too cartoonish -- but he pulls off the crazy climax well nonetheless. Maybe it's excused by rendering the psychedelic world of the '60s, but the gangland stuff feels sketchy too. Hopefully he's returned to his usual level of preciseness on 2009.

Last time I forgot to discuss Minions of the Moon, the three-part prose story that closes every issue of Century. It's surprisingly followable. Not what one might call "readable" -- it's still prose by Moore, after all -- but it's far from his densest, most frustrating work. And it's another League-related story, set largely in the '60s, so that's a plus. Will it fill in any gaps from the main story? That remains to be seen...