I re-read Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (prior booklog entry) because of all the reviews trashing the movie version. In tallying up the ways the movie differs, I was reminded of what I did like about the book—pretty much everything they changed, apparently. In particular, I thought the best thing about the plot was the way that Mina Murray held the League together with noting more than the application of her iron will—over, inter alia, an ex-opium-addicted Alan Quatermain, a sociopathic Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll and (most impressively) Mr. Hyde. (Captain Nemo is, oddly, one of the saner members of the League.) The rest of the plot was not, in my opinion, a great strength of the novel, which I suppose was one thing that did transfer to screen. Anyway, I’ll look for the collection of the second volume, but I’m not holding my breath for it.
There are a couple of moments in there, particularly the scene near the end where Mina is inducing Jekyll to turn into Hyde, where I wonder how much of that is iron will, or whether there might be traces of mesmeric ability left in there from Mina’s past.
I’ve heard people cite that set of scenes as evidence that novel!Mina is actually a vampire, which theory I find distasteful because it seems to suggest that she couldn’t have done it on her own, she’d need supernatural powers to manage it.
I don’t know much about theories of vampirism in the source material, so I couldn’t say how plausible it is that she retains traces of vampiric abilities from those events.
Just to let you know, I’m enjoying LoEG II much more than I liked the first one. The attack-from-every-Mars-you-ever-knew thing is a hoot. But, I still need Jess Nevins to tell me what’s going on. 🙂
Kathy: Thanks, I’ll bump the collection up a notch on the priority list.
LoEG II is indeed much better than the first volume, start to finish, and it shouldn’t be missed. In particular, there’s one panel with Hyde that’s got the blackest piece of humor I’ve ever seen.
Chad ended up disliking it for reasons that are also likely to apply to me. But I appreciate the comment.