Alan Moore’s Black Dossier: Another Look

Alan Moore Is At It Again

by Dyfrig Jones of http://bloganswyddogol.blogspot.com

First of all, apologies for being late. This being the Internet, there’s no excuse for falling behind. And since League of Extraordinary Gentlemen : Black Dossier was originally published nearly four whole months ago, this piece is seriously behind schedule. But then I do have a defence – I’m British, and getting my hands on a copy isn’t as simple as walking in to your average neighbourhood comic store. Alleged copyright infringement by the author means that while the book has surfaced in the US, DC have decided not to run with it in the UK.

There has been a predictable amount of speculation and rumour-mongering regarding these legal wrangles. Some fans have questioned whether there is a genuine problem, while others have asked how the first two volumes managed to get around infringing the copyright of existing fictional characters while the third book failed. For what it’s worth, I think the answer to this second question is fairly straightforward. In the previous books, Moore chose to work with characters that were out of copyright, or with characters whose identities were tweaked sufficiently to separate them from their source material. Moore has taken a similar approach in the Black Dossier, but may have sailed a little close to the wind.

There can be little doubt that one of the main villains of the book is fairly closely modeled on England’s most famous secret agent. His surname is never mentioned, but there are plenty of heavy-handed hints to his identity, including a reference to a Jamaica based Asiatic super-criminal that was “No Doctor”. In and of itself, the publisher may have got away with it – as they did in volumes 1 and 2 – had “Jimmy” the spy been a slightly more sympathetic character. But making him a rapist might not have been the wisest way of currying favour with the copyright holders, and may be the reason for DC’s nervousness. Their legal counsel may have come to the conclusion that imitation may be permissible as long as it is flattering, rather than venomous, in tone.

Whatever the reason, the Black Dossier remains, officially, an exclusive treat for American readers. Which is a curious state of affairs, considering that this is a book that exists, essentially, as a compendium of mid-20^th century British popular culture. This is not, after all, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume 3. It is, to borrow a wholly anachronistic classification, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Version 2.1 – a strange combination of graphic novel and background source book.

Set in England in a post-Nineteen Eighty-Four 1958 (if that makes any sense) the narrative follows Mina Murray and a rejuvenated Allan Quartermain as they steal the eponymous Black Dossier. The book, which details the history of the many incarnations of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (among other things), is in the possession of the British government, who have recently ousted Big Brother’s Ingsoc tyranny. As our two heroes make their escape, they frequently pause to read extracts from the dossier, re-prints of which make up the majority of this book – a combination of prose, retro comic book pastiche, and literary ventriloquism.

So far, so Alan Moore. Mixing media has always been a hallmark of Moore’s work, and part of what gave Watchmen it’s appeal was the back and forth between the main plot, the “source material” – Hollis Mason’s Under the Hood, pages from the New Frontiersman – and the secondary narrative, Tales of the Black Freighter. To be fair, the same device was present in the first two volumes of League as well, in the form of the story Allan and the Sundered Veil and the mock travelogue The New Traveller’s Almanac.

Now this is where I make my confession. Until recently –until I sat down to write this piece, in fact –I had never read The New Traveller’s Almanac from beginning to end. Neither did I bother with Allan and the Sundered Veil. I began to read both of them, but found that they lacked the interest of the main narrative. Unlike the prose section in Watchmen, they seemed supplementary, appendices that – like their anatomical equivalents – weren’t really necessary. If you wanted to write an academic paper about Alan Moore, you’d need to read them. But for the general reader’s convenience, they were tucked away in the back of the book, to be ignored.

The problem with Black Dossier is that the same sections are no longer tidied away neatly. While the first few page of main narrative is classic Moore, once our heroes get their hands on the book itself, it simply becomes a device for getting us from one piece of source material to the next. If you start skipping them, you miss the point of Black Dossier. To do so would be like watching commercials on TV and then fast-forwarding through the programme itself. Now this wouldn’t be a problem, if the source material was any good. But the sorry fact is that it doesn’t make for very interesting reading. And it illustrates a central point about Moore as an author.

Moore’s problem is that while his work is always well written, it isn’t always enjoyable. Now a statement like this raises a point about writing in general. Does “good writing” exist, or is anything you enjoy reading, by definition, good writing? I would argue that there are certain criteria that mark out good or bad writers. Originality is certainly one, but the ability to structure a story well; to ensure that characters act in a way that is consistent with their motives; to string words together in a coherent and stylistically interesting manner; to explore themes in an implicit, subtle, manner; and to weave together disparate storylines are all necessary skills for a good writer.

The problem is that a book can contain none of these elements – it can be predictable, ridden with clichéd language and characters, and lack any narrative unity – and people will still enjoy it. Bad writers produce books that people like –the enduring career of Frank Miller is testament to this fact. And likewise, good writers can produce books that contain every element of great literature, and be phenomenally dull to read.

Perhaps the central problem of Black Dossier is that it is the work of a man who is determined to prove what a good writer he is. Moore’s most disappointing work often feels as if it is trying to make a point. Reading Supreme or Tom Strong , you feel that you’re watching a man desperately trying to answer his imagined critics, a man who is screaming at them – “Look at how clever comic books can be. Notice the post-modern intertextuality. Bow down before the deconstructive knowingness.” And like the super-villain of old, he becomes crazed by his power, and it destroys him.

Black Dossier falls firmly into this category of Moore book. It is heavily inter-textual, and stultifying dull; as much of a puzzle book as a story. It contains well observed pastiches in many literary styles – from Shakespeare to Jack Kerouac – and is engorged with tiny references to 1950’s British pop culture. But how many of Moore’s readership are sufficiently familiar with either Shakespeare or Kerouac to truly appreciate how well Moore has managed to mimic their voices? How many of his readers will recognise one percent of the supporting characters? Some may argue that the fun is in the finding out, but I suspect that the answer is much simpler, and more disappointing. The fun of Black Dossier was probably in the writing. It’s only a pity that there’s none left for the reader.