Wednesday, August 17, 2011
graphic novels Would Alan Moore's '1969' work without Wikipedia?
Posted by Curt Holman @Curt_Holman on Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 3:17 PM
- Top Shelf Productions
- YEAH, BABY, YEAH!
Nicknamed LXG by the misbegotten movie version, League didn't start as such a challenge. Initially, Moore envisioned a superhero team drawn from characters of Victorian literature, including Dracula's Mina Harker and fictional game hunter Alan Quartermain. Moore and O'Neill packed the first two volumes with literary in-jokes, but still delivered ripping yarns with the League fighting Fu Manchu and Professor Moriarty in the first half and H.G. Wells' Martian invaders in the second.
The Century trilogy, published by Marietta's Top Shelf Productions, leapfrogs from 1910 in the first volume to the newly-released 1969 and a planned culmination in 2009. Now partnered with Virginia Woolf's immortal Orlando, a similarly ageless Mina and Allan return to Swinging London to solve a mystery involving Oliver Haddo, a satanist they thwarted back in 1910, but has managed to remain alive. Haddo's scheme involves a pair of rock stars, one of whom is based on Mick Jagger's fictional singer from Nicolas Roeg's film Performance.
Since much of 1960s pop culture remains in common currency — from Marvel Comics superheroes to aging hippie musicians to even the Planet of the Apes — Moore draws his dramatis personae and other cameos from increasingly obscure corners. A relatively familiar one is Jack Carter, one of several cockney mob enforcers Michael Caine played in the movies of the era. At one point Mina mentions Haddo's recent, failed attempt to produce an antichrist: "Some poor girl — Rosemary something — was the mother." Later a character unstuck in time alludes to the incident and mentions The Dakota Building: "One more autograph, Mr. Lennon?" which connects the filming location of Rosemary's Baby to the site of John Lennon's assassination. A young character from a hugely popular contemporary fantasy franchise makes a cameo that sets up events for the final volume.
One suspects that many of 1969's more recondite details resonate with Moore's own teenage years in England. Readers baffled by such the book's literary puzzles can readily find reading aids thanks to the internet, including Newsarama's 1969 cheat sheet. Graphic novels like Century or television shows like "Lost" or "Game of Thrones" have more leeway to develop complicated mythologies, since fans can consult Wikipedia or on-line discussion groups if they want to clear up some of the finer points. As long as the heart of the story remains accessible, the internet can free up artists to be as complex as they wanna be.
It's hard to connect to 1969's characters, however, although Mina's difficulties adjusting to eternal life provide a fresh metaphor for the era's generational conflicts. The rather passive heroes seem to drift through crowds of Londoners dressed in Carnaby Street fashions, while Mina spends most the latter half of the book tripping her brains out. The books' hallucinogenic sequence leads O'Neill to render two-page psychedelic spreads that pay homage to Robert Crumb's experimental Zap Comix and include everything from a Dalek to the glove from Yellow Submarine. Moore's fascination with sexuality and mysticism comes at the expense of narrative simplicity, although O'Neill seems to love cramming the panels with extras, in the spirit of old newspaper comic strips.
Having changed audience's perception of superheroes in the 1980s, Moore uses Century to experiment with the relationship between popular fictions and music. 1910 featured several Kurt Weill pastiches, including a new version of "Mack the Knife," while 1969 culminates with a revised version of a controversial tune that topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. An epilogue marks the transition from the late 1960s' fascination with love songs and bright color schemes to the 1970s treatment of punk rock, raw sex and stark designs. One can only assume that the final volume, 2009, will feature a hip-hop musical number. But even if you don't get it, you'll be able to find the source at the click of a mouse.
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