Page 45 Review by Stephen
1958, and Britain has only just rid itself of Big Brother (booting it back to the Netherlands after 43 increasingly excruciating series).
Mina Murray and Allan Quartermain have severed their ties with MI5 and are currently considered rogue agents. Now they are back, sent to steal the Black Dossier secretly stashed in MI5's Military Intelligence Vauxhall HQ. The Black Dossier, compiled from intelligence records and fragments of fiction, contains every known record of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen's various incarnations and its constituent members across the centuries.
Disguised as actress Oodles O'Quim, Miss Murray plays on the vanity of a womanising Secret Service agent licensed to thrill, who can't keeps his hands off her. Snatch it they do, and from that moment on it's one long chase up the Thirty-Nine Steps to Greyfriars, the boarded-up boarding school cared for by one William Bunter, then onto Birmingham's spaceport where Roger The Robot awaits. Unfortunately so do the agents dispatched by the mysterious M. Will you recognise them before they recognise Mina? And what national secrets can the Dossier possibly contain that MI5 is so desperate for it back?
As you've probably inferred, like all the other LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN books, everything here is a cut-and-paste collage of previously published fiction, and half the fun is spotting the references. No one other than Alan can be expected to get them all, but merely catching a nod to one of your favourite books like Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies is quite the fuzzy thrill. What is utterly mind-boggling is not only Uncle Alan's breadth and depth of cultural knowledge, but the ingenuity with which he's reweaved his unpicked threads into a brand new tapestry which holds so well together. Also, Moore's ability as a literary chameleon and mimic.
For within THE BLACK DOSSIER lies The Black Dossier containing, amongst many gems, part of a previously undiscovered piece of Shakespearian bawdiness called 'Faerie's Fortunes Founded' starring Masters Shytte and Pysse; 'What Ho, Gods Of The Abyss' by Bertie Wooster; the erotic 'New Adventures of Fanny Hill'; and 'A Prospectus Of London (1901)' from which this description of Freemasons Hall, Vauxhall made me laugh:
"While architecturally an acquired taste, this riverside landmark is an undoubted benefit to the community, as the worthy fraternity within are believed to occupy themselves mainly with organising charitable jumble-sales and similar altruistic activities."
Naturally Orlando is as ubiquitous as he always claimed!
Also included is a set of 3-D glasses for when Alan and Mina reach Ye Blazing Worlde with its extra dimension, and at this point we really do doff our battered top hats to artist Kevin O'Neill whose art on this series has always been riddled with detail worthy of what must be the most gargantuan scripts imaginable. The 3-D sequences, however, with the like of the Effervator (an effervescent elevator travelled on via bubbles) is a triumph on another level entirely.
Finally, big love to Knockabout who finally published this in the UK after DC's Paul Levitz banned it from our shores to spite Alan Moore, thereby rewarding all DC's loyal readers - and their loved ones buying presents - with petulant contempt, and depriving Page 45 alone of thousands of pounds worth of Christmas revenue. Oh yes. The book gets pretty pugnacious too:
"What's that he's wrestling with?
"I - I think it's poetry. They must be rehearsing for later. Ooh, look at that! It dazzled him with imagery, then beat him over the head with a blunt metaphor!"
Hmmm... looks like we can now access the DC edition. Here it is!
