TW: This book discusses rape and sexual assault.
I heard of this book when I was younger, of course. There’s a movie based on it that came out in my childhood, but I never actually bothered to look into it beyond hearing about it in passing.
And then I saw the full volume set in a comic book store, and I knew I had to buy it.
Created by the man who brought us V for Vendetta and Watchmen, this graphic novel is not just a raunchy tale of mystery and action, but it is also an homage to some of the best characters literature has to offer.
Starting off in nineteenth century England, the story follows Mina Harker (Bram Stoker’s Dracula) as she’s tasked with finding a group of individuals who are to form a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Among them are Captain Nemo (Jules Vernes’s Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea), the Invisible Man (H G Wells’s The Invisible Man), Dr Jekyll (R L Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde), and Allan Quatermain (H Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines). Other characters also include some famous detectives written about by Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle, but I won’t go too much into that…
Once Mina gathers her team, they are sent on a few strange quests by a mysterious benefactor that lead to the (almost) destruction of the world, in a beautiful homage to H G Wells’s The War of the Worlds, with a guest appearance by other H G Wells characters from The Island of Dr Moreau.
Basically, if you love nineteenth to twentieth century literature and want to enjoy a story that incorporates some of the greatest characters we’ve all heard of, you should definitely read this book.
What I will tell you is this – while the characters are amazingly adapted into a dark fantastic version of our world, and there are some truly brilliantly written moments, this graphic novels also comes with a massive trigger warning for rape and very graphic sexual scenes (even when the sex is consensual), as well as body horror and gore. The art does not shy away from depicting some truly horrific stuff, even if it is just alluding to it sometimes. I would exercise caution because this graphic novel is not for anyone who isn’t mature enough to be seeing graphic stuff like what I’ve mentioned.
All in all, if you love fantasy, nineteenth century literature, and raunchy adventures, I definitely recommend this graphic novel. It’s a brilliant read and will take you at least three days to get through because there’s just so much to it that you can’t absorb it all in one sitting.
Of Scripted Shadows and Painted Words 