Product Description

The third volume detailing the exploits of Miss Wilhelmina Murray and her extraordinary colleagues, Century is a 216-page epic spanning almost 100 years. Chapter one is set against the backdrop of London in 1910, 12 years after the failed Martian invasion and nine years since England put a man on the moon. With Halley's Comet passing overhead, the nation prepares for the coronation of King George V, while far away on his South Atlantic island, the science-pirate Captain Nemo is dying.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2980 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 80 pages

Customer Reviews

Better on a second reading
On the first, I reacted pretty much the same as the other reviewers, dashing off a two-sentence synopsis to a friend and telling him not to bother.

On the second reading I began to appreciate it more though, although readable, it's actually less accessible than some of Moore's other works (the first two LOEG volumes for example). I can understand why other reviewers were disappointed because the League appears relatively ineffectual in the story which itself is very separate from the other plot strand until the very end. We expect our heroes to, if not always win, at least have a significant effect. Here they are misled and ineffective.

The other part of the story concerns what happens to Nemo's daughter in London's East End, and not very pretty it is either, told in the manner of Brecht's Threepenny Opera with her as Jenny Diver and Macheath as a returning Jack the Ripper.

Operas tend to have prologues and this LOEG volume is essentially the prologue to the new series. What happens here will resonate in later volumes later in the century so it's certainly unfair to dismiss future parts on the basis of the first. However I can understand people who didn't like The Black Dossier (I do, a lot), not liking this as it's more in keeping with TBD's tone than with the first two books.

I particularly liked the Prisoner of London, trapped in space but not in time.

There seems to be some confusion over the identity of Quartermain Jnr. As far as I am aware he is Allan Quatermain made immortal by going, with Mina Murray, through Ayesha's fire. Oliver Haddo is the equivalent of Aleister Crowley in a W. Somerset Maugham story.

Bit more intellectual than your average comic
-The most important thing to remember about this comic is that it's one of three, as in it's not a finished story. It's part one... of three.
And it's awesome. In scope and in content...

All of the negative feeling I got from the reviews on this page seemed to be some kind of backlash of Alan Moore's choice of content. Where 'The League' was originally praised for being complex, different, intelligent and actually required you to read - I know! Actual reading! - up on the subject if you wanted to get all of the jokes and references, now people seem to think that this is its downfall. That it's just too clever for its own good. Make up your minds people!

Personally I found it brilliant, elegant, brutal and it hints at a fantastic volume 3 (like I said this is just the first part). It also feels like Alan Moore is setting down a giant blueprint of the series by dabbling across time periods, that as this volume is a snapshot across three eras of the League you get the feeling he'll be filling in the missing years later (he gave us a broad outline in the black dossier). Or maybe he'll go back pre-mina and quartermain? Who knows, I'm just here for the ride. (I have only one question for Mr Moore, and that is will Sir Harry Flashman be making a cowardly appearence?)

If you want full page splashes of spandex clad super heros or eighty pages of fight scenes with dialogue amounting to four or maybe five words this simply isn't a comic for you. This is a comic for the more curious comic reader.
I say bring on the sixties League!

A clever idea, maybe a bit too clever?
It's a brave decision to write a story where the good guys fight the bad guys and have the bad guys maybe not be bad, not be dangerous or have not even done anything at all. I suspect Moore is trying to say something about our current climate of suspicion - he references the July 7th London bombings - where government agents rush around fighting a threat that may not really be there, all the while missing two very really threats. Unfortunately this dilutes the experience of the story. The characters don't really know what they are doing, so what chance the reader?

His choice of characters does need some fleshing out. Virginia Woolf's Orlando is an interesting choice he doesn't really explore and Mina Harker is fine. But even the best read reader will do well to recognise or place Thomas Carnacki, or Arthur J. Raffles. Placing Andrew Norton is just about impossible. And using a Quartermaine Jr. character is very Hollywood.

OK, the point of reading a Moore novel is not to be a literary detective and work out all the intertextuality, but any story needs characters the reader can buy into and without any background or context this is lost. (Its the sort of thing that he has done in other works with side stories or additional content for example).

Other than that, this is (as always) a beautifully illustrated book. Kevin O'Neill's style is very pleasing and suites these types of story well.

This book lacks some fleshing out and context. I agree with the other reviewer that some more editorial scrutiny might have helped. Not a bad book, not the best in the series it just slightly misses the mark.