Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier is not so much a sequel to the preceding two books, but a supplement, of sorts--and what a supplement it is! In many ways, it's completely, thoroughly different from what you might expect if you have followed the series, but on the other hand, if you have really read a lot, from different genres and ages, and love novelty--this work was right on, delivering a lot of cool tributes and parodies of familiar pieces, a lot of obscure and not so obscure references, and some really breathtaking artwork that adapts to a long continuum of times and styles.
I will say there are parts I did not cotton to--the beatnik homage by "Sal Paradyse" which kind of mangled language well beyond the ordinary irreverence found in Kerouac (who I've read, but not especially liked--only found more readable than this) or Burroughs, or...well, anyone, it's oddly rescued from awful by being in unreadable squinty type on paper tinted to look just like an aged cheap paperback that's been on the shelf, with a 1984 Tijuana-Bible like insert from "Pornsec" just in the way some cheap paperbacks in the 60's & 70's had advertisements (I recall a cigarette advert in a paperback of some kind of "Soldier of Fortune" jazz I had read as a hand-me-down--I think it was associated with Mack Bolan:The Executioner--but it's been a long damn time, and I can not say that's what it was.) For a better treatment of these guys, see DiFilippo's Lost Pages, for Instability.
And there were some parts I thought were utter brilliance: I loved the biography of Orlando. (guys--more Orlando!) He/She is awesome! And I thought Virginia Woolfe's Orlando was awesome! And I kind of liked the movie... but this Orlando is expanded to an amazing over three-thousand year old lover, warrior, survivor--but I guess I need to see Orlando in the LoEG dynamic to know more how she or he fits in, and how his n' her story belongs with the League.
I also thought the world of the Bertie Wooster "What Ho, Gods of the Abyss"--the best mash-up of P.G. Wodehouse and H.G. Lovecraft imaginable, with an impeccable mimic of style and and eldritch cognizance of the dreaded Old Ones--done in a wonderfully in-jokey way.
The narrative bit that kind of brackets the literary grab-bag of the "Black Dossier"--which is a document that Mina Harker and Allen Quatermain (ahem) Jr., are after, is about their history--the story of the League since it began under Queen Gloriana until just about the present. The two, without any other team-members, are in a dreary 1950's world that is possibly just post a 1984 reality. They contend with era spy types to get this document (Mina is now the blonde some Genetlemen would prefer, and Quatermain's youth is explained a bit obliqely in a postcard (a sumptous aside, graphically speaking--I like the way the postcards filled in little gaps.) The parody of "Jimmy Bond" reveals a lot of the violence and misogyny that is under the surface of that character.
I will say some of the references are even obscrure for the Eng. Lit. major and voracious reader. And the ending might be puzzling to some (although it reminded me a great deal of the end of Heinlein's Number of the Beast . I found the notion of the multiverse and the recognition, which we had to have had all along, that we were enjoying the exploits of literary creations, fun--especially since I was participating in that breaking of the 4th wall by wearing my three-D specs--)
I think this is a cool, awesome, artful work, showing the mastery of different period styles and giving the genre-fan something really good to chew over. Despite its flaws, I liked it. Oh, and if you fret over not getting all the jokes, you might want to check this site out .
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