A century long epic that is just as messy as its source material…

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume III: Century by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill is the third true volume of the long running series. The black dossier was more of an anthology.

Featuring dozens of characters and hundreds of cultural references, the story follows a century long effort to summon the antichrist…or essentially a British occult antichrist…

This series is much harder to get into if you have only read the first two. It’s dependent on you knowing the deeper lore that can be discovered in the backmatter of the first two volumes and the black dossier, as characters that were previously only footnotes in prose travel guides become vital leads without warning.

I loved it, and I imagine Alan Moore fans would enjoy the deep crazy references, but or a casual reader or someone who only read the main comics, it’s probably pretty confusing.

The narrative hops across 3 main time periods from the shaky origins of the Moonchipd conspiracy to the final evolution of the grim project of madmen and their followers.

You even get a cameo of God…or at least the British literary God as envisioned by Alan Moore (and the character makes sense at least to me).

Even though it’s messy, it’s still fun to take a dip into this world regardless as each volume also contains fake ads, back matter, and pop art related to the period.

And if a reference turns you on to reading some new story or whatever, then that’s even better…