The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Tempest #6 - "Then, the Immortal Blue..." [series finale]

[laughing_tree]

I would also observe that it is, potentially, culturally catastrophic to have the ephemera of a previous century squatting possessively on the cultural stage and refusing to allow this surely unprecedented era to develop a culture of its own, relevant and sufficient to its times. -- Alan Moore

Comments

[lordultimus]

It wouldn't be the last Alan Moore comic if there wasn't an "incidentally" on the last page.

[alicemacher]

The Tempest has been a considerable improvement over the previous LoEG volume (Century). Moore's kept his "offence for offence's sake" impulses mostly in check, and the humour and playfulness are back. And the good guys get a happy ending! (I still think it's a shame about Allan Quartermain's fate in Century, but we can't have everything, I guess.)

It's safe to say history won't rank this concluding volume alongside such Moore masterpieces as Watchmen, V for Vendetta, From Hell, Marvelman/Miracleman or his Swamp Thing run. Even so, if this does indeed turn out to be his last long-form work in the comics medium, it's one he can and should be proud of.

Thank you, Moore, O'Neill, and Moore's many many other co-creators over the decades for helping to make the English-language comic field, at its best, as sophisticated, enriching and enjoyable as great prose literature, poetry, theatre or film.

[lego_joker]

Sorry to inform you, Alan, but this surely unprecedented era has, first and foremost, surely unprecedented technologies to preserve - and in many cases, resurrect - the works of past eras. The Nostalgia Train rolls on, and it's all we can do to keep inside the cars instead of falling beneath the wheels.

[ozaline]

Also I think it's even more disastrous that that the culture of past millennia won't just give up and die already. How many movies and TV shows have there been about a the Trojan War, or Hercules?


We need to move on, and get rid of that ephemera.

[superboyprime]

To be fair to Moore, I don't think he takes issue with using old characters and ideas in and of itself. It's what he's done with large parts of his career, after all. His issue seems to be more that people are not doing anything NEW with those old properties, just re-hashing the past.

Here's a relevant quote from him:

"I may be missing something, but I don’t see things like Dr. Who, or the plethora of recycled 60s and 70s music that we seem to have endured since the mid 90s, or the slew of contemporary superhero films, or the various reincarnations of Sherlock Holmes, as being revisions in the sense that I understand the term. What, in most if not all of these cases, has been revised? What, beyond the special effects budget and the self-aware nods to the nostalgic adults who now appear to be the show’s main audience, has changed about Doctor Who? What’s changed about the riffs and the sleuths and the supermen other than some new window-dressing here and a new medium or two there? It seems to me that these are more re-brandings, for obvious commercial purposes, rather than any kind of intelligent and purposeful revisions, for creative purposes."

[ozaline]

Yeah, i figured there might be more to it than that. And I don't totally disagree there. Though I do think that companies do change these properties with the times, jut because the creators working on them do bring their own ideas which are products of their time.

DC Superhero Girls couldn't have been made in the 40s for example.

However I do think copyright being as long as it is is a problem. It's a relatively recent invention and and previously people were free to remix properties that were created in their life time when it last 28 years (or 56 with extension), or even shorter previous. It's gone from something to protect authors throughout the majority of their own life, to something to protect corporations who are profiting off the works of the long since dead.

[palgrave_goldenrod]

FWIW I'd suggest that the new Doctor Who at least actually does revise and explore the concept of the show, at least in a better way than Moore's claiming here. It's far from perfect -- cards on the table, I'll admit that I prefer the old series overall -- and I can see why it wouldn't stand up to Moore's (rather lofty at times) standards of creativity, but it's a lot more willing to interrogate and critique the character and tropes of the old show than Moore's giving it credit for here. At very least, I think it's unfair to dismiss it as just a nostalgia cash-grab in the way Moore is here.

In fact, given his previously-expressed antipathy towards the show, I have to admit that I suspect that Moore doesn't really know what he's talking about on this one.

[deh_tommy]

I strongly disagree. The Trojan War and Hercules are stuff that have lasted for way longer than just the past thousand years, and with good reason – they’re great stories! More importantly than that, they’re stories! If we forget or don’t bother to tell them anymore, they’ll be gone forever. And, just because you and I might be familiar with them, others might not have: each retelling is someone’s first telling. How would you feel if someone told you your culture or their stories should just “give up and die”?

Plus, you’re talking about how we should ditch that ephemera... on a site dedicated to people’s passion for said ephemera.

And culture “of the past millennia”? Culture can and has changed in a matter of decades! What was widespread in 1520 might not exactly be widespread today. Heck, that was only less than ten years ago that gay was a casual insult, and just 20 years ago radical was a good thing.

If you don’t mind, may I ask you to tell me a myth or legend from your culture?

[ozaline]

I think this is an example of sarcasm not coming through on the internet. If you saw my bookshelf you'd know I have no issue with Greek myth being maintained, and adapted.

My point is that I don't think "the ephemera," from the past century is retarding culture the way Moore thinks it is. While I think Disney's early works and even Star Wars should be in the public domain by now... there's no doubt that they've changed with the times. A young woman crushing on Ahsoka in her book wouldn't have been possible when a New Hope came out, and the recent webtoons of Mickey Mouse are definitely a product of their time.

I also am trying to develop a comic series based on L Frank Baum's Oz books...

For the example of the Trojan War look at Eric Shanower's Age of Bronze where he goes back to ancient (or classical sources) for every element, but also made the choice to push the gods off stage as a commentary on how politicians and the like divorce themselves from consequences by claiming they are carrying out the will of God.

A myth from my culture? Well my heritage is Scandinavian did you ever hear the one about Utgard Loki? Or maybe Frozen works better as a pseudo-Scandinavian North American work.

[deh_tommy]

I think I completely misinterpreted your comment. My sincerest apologies!

I bring up native legends because I was going to go on about old Irish myths we grew up with that might not be too well known overseas but (as far as I know) still hold prevalence where I live, and then I would have tried to tie that in to the importance of passing down and retelling stories, but you already seem to know that. In any case, no, I’m not aware of Utgard Loki, but now I’m curious about him since you bring him up (and thus the story lives on!).

[ozaline]

No worries. I edited in a video link on Utgard-Loki above, love that channel's quick takes on myth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9I5bYOJlvI

[locuatico]

I don't think the real problem is Nostalgia, but the grip companies have on what is culturally relevant.
It's Disney who has been steadily been focusing on repacking the same movie with only a new coat of paint. It's Warner who refuses to let Harry Potter and LOTR pass on as their time of cultural relevance came and went.
Companies don't like new, untested stories and preffer to make people spend money on old franchises.

And sure, there is a problem of people going to pay to see this nostalgia trips like The Lion King, but I do think it is unfair to expect better from them when these companies have used their money to overshadow pretty much any other movie that comes out.

[lordultimus]

This seems like an odd thing to complain about on a site dedicated to superhero comic books.

[locuatico]

Is it? Superhero books are a pretty good example of the people in charge vehemently fighting newer stuff in favor of the old, and plenty of fans complaining over it.

[lordultimus]

Yes, but at the same time fans frequently defend the characters role in popular consciousness and desire continuous stories with them specifically. Just look at the Spider-Man debacle going on right now with Sony and Disney; with many fans declaring that they don't care which company wins as long as Spidey stays in the MCU.

[rainspirit]

Aww. Hyde and Murray dancing together at the end makes me happy.

[tcampbell1000]

I'll second everything Alice has to say here. Moore's brilliance and passion are beyond question, and even when he has failed, he has failed while daring greatly.

As I said elsewhere, this series finished up solidly in Alan's middle range. A concluding work on the level of Watchmen or From Hell would've been far too much to hope for, but it avoids as well as it can the problems that weighed down LoEG 3, to say nothing of the excesses of Jerusalem and Lost Girls. The concluding arc has real emotion behind it, real wonder and pain and anger that the reader can readily share even if they don't know all the names being dropped. And in the end, what endures is love.

The comics-format work, which I admit I thought derivative of his other work at first, turned out to be a delight. The commentary, well, at least it's got a sense of humor about itself. But I do have to focus on that quotation at the top of the webpage.

Alan has always been better at dramatizing his cultural ideas than presenting them as criticism, because criticism requires one clear voice whereas fiction is often driven by conflicting ones, and Moore is a creature of conflicts. I know I'm not the first to say this, but it's a rather strange look for someone to rail against our obsesion with "the cultural ephemera of earlier centuries" while writing Mina Murray/Edward Hyde slashfic. If the point is to make way for a new century and its new ideas, shouldn't Mina and the Nemo dynasty have died, recognizing that they had outlived their time?

The ominous musings of Holmes, which are closest to Moore's quote above, don't really seem to go anywhere, unless we're meant to read Hyde's clone as a sign of cultural decadence: even ideas thought dead are dragged back into existence to squat in the places that should be occupied by something new. Maybe that was even Alan's intent... but if so, it hardly reads that way. Mina doesn't come off as a cultural tyrant; she doesn't even come off as morally ambiguous like Miracleman or Ozymandias. She just comes off as a woman who's living life to the fullest despite the terrors and tragedy she's known, getting for herself and giving to others the happiest endings possible.

Ultimately, we give the world what we're most qualified to give it, and it's up to others to decide whether it was worth it. LoEG may have little to say about unboxing videos, No Man's Sky and other truly modern forms of entertainment, but it's all right to be a little old-fashioned sometimes. Let the new be new and the old be old, and the net result will be a richer cultural landscape.