http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2008/09/alan-moore-on-w.html
http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20213200_11,00.html
http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20213200_10,00.html
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20213004_3,00.html
http://forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/?p=7895
http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/word-march-issue-extended-edition-more-alan-moore
http://www.wizarduniverse.com/magazine/wizard/006924458.cfm
http://www.wizarduniverse.com/magazine/wizard/006367836.cfm
http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=12423
http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=12376
below as images -- I got fed up with the speed of loading the pdfs, so converted them into images
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20152452,00.html
http://watchmencomicmovie.com/092407-comics-britannia-alan-moore-video-03.php
There has been quite the fallout since last week's column broke the "League" story. DC responded releasing what must be their shortest press release ever, citing international copyright issues and "related issues" as to the book's limited distribution to the USA only.
There can be no more legal issues outside the USA than there were in the first two League volumes, which featured extensive characters from the library of HG Welles and others, out of copyright in the US but still in copyright in much of the rest of the world.
And there are plenty of other works that have taken classical in copyright characters and used them to their own ends without legal issues. "League's" reinterpretation and recontextualisation is both an artistic and legal defence.
In the recent Tripwire Annual, Alan Moore mentions that he is unsure if the solicited Tijuana Bible section will be published. May there be some customs considerations regarding this section?
Jess Nevins, author of "League" commentary works, wrote on the DC message boards "There's a lot more going on here than you know about…"
I understand that a number of UK shops have already been arranging their own personal deliveries for customers, and that international orders for the standard hardcover and next year's Absolute edition at Amazon.com have been rapidly rising.
I understand that the long awaited "The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier," described once by author Alan Moore in this column as "not my best comic ever, not the best comic ever, but the best thing ever," will not be published outside of the USA by America's Best Comics, an imprint of Wildstorm/DC Comics, or distributed in those territories by DC's distributor Diamond Comics.
DC sources inform me that the reasons for concern are over issues concerning copyright and trademark of certain literary characters referred to in the book, some that are public domain in the USA but not in other territories who have different copyright laws.
The US states that if a work was published before 1923, or it is 70 years since the death of the author, then it is in public domain. The UK has a similar rule, without the 1923 proviso, leading to a number of creations published before 1923 but not yet out of copyright. Canada, New Zealand and Australia also have no 1923-style ruling, but wait till 50 years after the author's demise, although Australia now has a 70 year policy for work created since 2005.
It was this difference that led to the suspension of the publication of "Lost Girls" until January 2008 in the UK, as only then will it be 70 years after the death of Peter Pan author Barrie.
However, previous "League" books have used characters and creations that are not yet in the UK public domain, such as HG Wells' Martians and The Invisible Man, and Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, Mycroft Holmes and Moriarty.
I understand that the new book goes at length to disguise or hide contentious characters, such as a British spy in the fifties who reports to "M" goes by the name "Jimmy."
However, just as with "Lost Girls," it is unlikely that the book will remain within the US shores, and that UK and other territories will be able to acquire copies through the "grey" market, distributed not illegally but not through official channels. Comic stores in the US will order on behalf of comic book stores in contested territories, even though this action is not permitted under Diamond's terms.
It is unlikely, however, that any of these copies will be distributed outside of the direct sales market, officially or otherwise. DC's redistributor to the UK bookstore market, Titan Books, will not be able to publish or distribute the book.
The book will be distributed in the USA as scheduled.
"Here's a listing of things I'm working on now — subject to change, of course. ."
http://kleinletters.com/CurrentProjects.html
http://www.comp.dit.ie/dgordon/League/loeg0029.html
with thanks to Steven Ford for pointing me to this page...
"Oh, I think you'll see something about the School of Night in the next League book..."
http://ratmmjess.livejournal.com/169583.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Night
Co-Published By Top Shelf Productions & Knockabout Beginning In 2008
The third volume detailing the exploits of Miss Wilhelmina Murray and her extraordinary colleagues is a 216-page epic spanning almost a hundred years and entitled Century. Divided into three 72-page chapters, each a self-contained narrative to avoid frustrating cliff-hanger delays between episodes, this monumental tale takes place in three distinct eras, building to an apocalyptic conclusion occurring in our own current twenty-first century.
Chapter one is set against a backdrop of London, 1910, twelve years after the failed Martian invasion and nine years since England put a man upon the moon. With Halley's Comet passing overhead, the nation prepares for the coronation of King George V, and far away on his South Atlantic Island, the science-pirate Captain Nemo is dying. In the bowels of the British Museum, Carnacki the ghost-finder is plagued by visions of a shadowy occult order who are attempting to create something called a Moonchild, while on London's dockside the most notorious serial murderer of the previous century has returned to carry on his grisly trade. Working for Mycroft Holmes' British Intelligence alongside a rejuvenated Allan Quartermain, the reformed thief Anthony Raffles and the eternal warrior Orlando, Miss Murray is drawn into a brutal opera acted out upon the waterfront by players that include the furiously angry Pirate Jenny and the charismatic butcher known as Mac the Knife.
Chapter two takes place almost sixty years later in the psychedelic daze of Swinging London during 1968, a place where Tadukic Acid Diethylamide 26 is the drug of choice, and where different underworlds are starting to overlap dangerously to an accompaniment of sit-ins and sitars. The vicious gangster bosses of London's East End find themselves brought into contact with a counter-culture underground of mystical and medicated flower-children, or amoral pop-stars on the edge of psychological disintegration and developing a taste for Satanism. Alerted to a threat concerning the same magic order that she and her colleagues were investigating during 1910, a thoroughly modern Mina Murray and her dwindling league of comrades attempt to navigate the perilous rapids of London's hippy and criminal subculture, as well as the twilight world of its occultists. Starting to buckle from the pressures of the twentieth century and the weight of their own endless lives, Mina and her companions must nevertheless prevent the making of a Moonchild that might well turn out to be the antichrist.
In chapter three, the narrative draws to its cataclysmic close in London 2008. The magical child whose ominous coming has been foretold for the past hundred years has now been born and has grown up to claim his dreadful heritage. His promised aeon of unending terror can commence, the world can now be ended starting with North London, and there is no League, extraordinary or otherwise, that now stands in his way. The bitter, intractable war of attrition in Q'umar crawls bloodily to its fifth year, away in Kashmir a Sikh terrorist with a now-nuclear-armed submarine wages a holy war against Islam that might push the whole world into atomic holocaust, and in a London mental institution there's a patient who insists that she has all the answers.
Drawing from the fiction, theatre, film and television culture of the twentieth century as artfully as the preceding volumes drew upon the literature of the nineteenth, this first installment of the League's adventures to be co-published by Top Shelf Productions and Knockabout takes our familiar cast of characters … plus several previously unfamiliar … and propels them into a new age, a new world every bit as strange and savage as the colourful Victorian era they were born to. More than this, with its third volume the League's exploits move into a different realm of format, artistry and story-telling as this remarkable series sets out to explore the full limits of the vast fictional cosmos that it has marked as its territory. A unified field theory of fiction as much as a comic-book story, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Volume III): Century is sure to be like nothing you have ever read, and will be co-published in three lavish, full-color individual volumes by Top Shelf Productions and Knockabout, commencing in 2008.
Published as three deluxe, 72-page, full-color, perfect-bound graphic novellas, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill. SHIPPING IN 2008! ISBN 978-1-60309-000-1
http://www.topshelfcomix.com/catalog.php?type=13
Bill Baker: How would you describe The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier?
Alan Moore: Imagine a source book that has got lots of interesting snippets from here and there in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen's three or four hundred year history. But, these are presented in some unusual ways. For example, when we want to talk about the founding of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which involved Prospero, then we include a lost Shakespeare folio for a play called Fairy's Fortunes Founded, which Shakespeare commenced to write in 1616, which was the year of his death, and thus never completed. So we have got the opening scenes of Fairy's Fortunes Founded reproduced in the manner of a Shakespeare folio as part of The Black Dossier, fully illustrated and featuring some pretty good Shakespeare, if I say so myself.
And when we're detailing the 18th century League, the Gulliver group, then this is done in the form of a sequel to John Cleland's Fanny Hill, it "Being the Further of the Adventures of a Woman of Pleasure," with lots of text and full page illustrations, like in the illustrated Fanny Hill that the Marquis Von Bayros illustrated. So, there're those things. And there's lots of things that you might expect in a source book, like a really neat double page cutaway of the Nautilus. There's a twenty-five page comic strip history done in the style of those great old full color English comic strips that we used to have in Boy's World, or things like that; stuff that was painted, like Dan Dare was painted.
This history is, essentially, a twenty-five page "Life of Orlando," which tells the entire life of Orlando from his birth in the City of Thebes in 1190 B.C. And then, basically in the life of Orlando, we give the timeline for the entire The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen's world, up to the Second World War. And we've got every famous fictional character and event that you've ever heard of in there.
It turns out that Orlando has slept with absolutely everybody. And the ones he hasn't slept with, he's waged terrible war upon. If he was a he at the time, you know? He's posed for the Mona Lisa, and he's fought at Troy. He was personally responsible for the Renaissance, he believes. That was a lot of fun. But, that was just twenty-five pages.
There's a Beat Generation novel, allegedly inspired by the activities of The League in America during the 1950s, as written by Sal Paradise, who was the surrogate for Jack Kerouac that appeared in On the Road. And it's a Beat novel called The Crazy Wide Forever, which has got The League teaming up with Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty against the villainous Dr. Sax, from another Kerouac book, as he was a kind of cross between Fu Manchu, The Shadow, and William Boroughs. So, yeah, we've got Dr. Sax in there.
There's an immense amount of stuff in the Dossier. A prospectus of London, features upon previous versions of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Les Hommes Mysterieux from France, and Der Zweilicht-helden from Germany. There's an account of The Surrogate League that British Intelligence tried to put together in the 1950s, and which was a complete disaster. There's everything that you could ever want to know about any incarnation of The League. And this is the source book material; this is the actual Black Dossier.
And, wrapped around that and running through that, there are these very lengthy sections of comic strip which tell the story of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, such as it is, basically retrieving the Black Dossier from British Intelligence in 1958. They basically steal the Black Dossier that has got all of these things that British Intelligence know about The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen contained in it. Members of The League break into British Intelligence in 1958, steal the Black Dossier, and then try to escape from the country while being pursued by a trio of deadly British agents, who are trying to get them and the Dossier back.
And, as you might expect with The League, there is nobody who appears anywhere in these books who is not somebody that you probably should have heard of or heard about from literature, or from films or comics or from some other cultural source.
But, I don't want to tell you who's in it. For one thing, as I'm sure you can imagine, the closer we get to the present day in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the more intricate the dance around the minor matters like copyright has to be. Victorian characters are fair game. They're all public domain. Even so, you occasionally get someone like Sax Rohmer who, I believe, didn't have the decency to die until sometime in the 1940s or 50s, which meant that we couldn't use Dr. Fu Manchu in The League. So we just used an oriental mastermind who was known as the Doctor, and who was controlling Limehouse, but everybody knew who it was.
And that's the technique that we're approaching some of the characters with in this Dossier. There are some very famous characters in there who we can't actually spell out who they are, but everybody will know who they're supposed to be, because we make it completely obvious. We do everything but spell it out.
And the actual material in that comic strip is much, much more interesting than the actual wonderful material in The Dossier itself. It's got this sort of fascinating flight across England, touching upon a number of interesting English fictional characters of the 1950s, and, it ends with probably the most spectacular sixteen pages you have ever seen in any comic. I'm saying this before Kevin's actually drawn them, but, I know what they're going to be like. There are a lot of little extras that we put in this, as well.
BB: How about the multi-media aspects of The Black Dossier?
AM: Well, part of the book, which is set in 1958, remember, deals with the residual influence of George Orwell's Big Brother Government. That book was originally set in 1948. But the publisher said, "Well, George, nobody's going to understand this. Let's change the last two numbers around, and we'll say it's happening in the future." And so, instead of being called 1948, it was called 1984. So, by the time our book opens in 1958, the Big Brother Government has already been over for a number of years. So we've got a lot of references to Orwell's world, and we tie that into our world in a way that makes perfect sense.
As one of the little extra giveaways, we've got a book produced by Pornsec, which, in Orwell's book, they're working for the Ministry of Truth, the Ministry of Propaganda, and they produce these little pornographic comics. And so, one of the giveaways is an eight-page Tijuana Bible, as dreamed up by Orwell's Thought Police. So it's Thought Police pornography. And that is something that will fall into your lap like subscription cards when you open the book.
There is a pair of 3-D goggles that will be included as well, that will be necessary for one section of the book--quite an important section of the book, actually.
And there is a 45 [RPM] vinyl single that is supposedly by a 1950s band on a 1950s American record label, both of which are fictitious, but which are taken from other sources. That's part of the fun of The League, you know? The band is called "Eddie Enrico and His Hawaiian Hotshots," which, I believe, were mentioned very briefly by Thomas Pynchon in his excellent The Crying of Lot 49. But it's double-sided, it's a single with two sides. One side of which is "Immortal Love," and the other side of which is "Home with You," which are kind of League-themed 1950s pop songs. And so, yeah, there'll be a lot of little extras in this. It's going to be a very handsomely produced volume....
BB: Just out of curiosity, who did the music?
AM: Who did the music? It was me and Tim Perkins, pretending to be a 50s American rock and roll band. I've discovered, at this late stage in my life, that I am, in fact, an Elvis impersonator. But you'll have to wait and listen for yourself, you know? [His voice assumes an Elvis Presley-like drawl] "Uh huh, thank you very much."
So there'll be a lot of little goodies, because me and Kevin like that. We like having lots of nice little things in there. It reminds us of British comics of our youth, where there were always these kind of cheap giveaways included. But we've got some quite expensive giveaways in this one.
BB: And porn, too!
AM: Absolutely. It is 1984 Newspeak totalitarian porn, so it's kind of depressing, but also kind of funny. [Laughter] It's George Orwell's 1984, told as an 8-page tale in a Tijuana Bible pornographic comic strip, which is kind of funny and dreadful at the same time. But that's just a minor bauble to fall into the reader's lap.
http://www.worldfamouscomics.com/bakersdozen/back20070103.shtml
The book is finished on Moore & O'Neill's end, and is in DC's hands, but they have to do production on the 3D chapter.
So the publication date remains unknown, but at the least it will be the October date Amazon and DC are providing, if not sooner.
Also--it's looking like the vinyl single will only be a part of the Absolute edition, not the first trade.
http://ratmmjess.livejournal.com/
"We commenced in prehistoric, pre-human times and talk about the Great Old Ones and the various gods - Crom and Cthulhu and various other ones"
"Then you've got a 25-page comic which tells the story of the mythical Orlando from his/her birth in about 1100 B.C., and it brings you up to through every major event in fictional history up to the Second World War. And you've got what Orlando was doing at Troy, or at Camelot"
"We detail Prospero's Group - that was the first League of Extraordinary Gentlemen"
"There's a sequel to Fanny Hill that's in a special sealed section, so it doesn't fall into the wrong hands, detailing the Gulliver group."
"Then we talk about Miss Murray's team and what they did before, during and after [volumes one and two]"
"We've got a couple of pages detailing the pathetic, failed surrogate League that was set up in the '50s, and it's a complete disaster."
"And we detail the various foreign groups that are set up as counterparts to the League, like the French version, Les Hommes Mysterieux, and also the German counterpart Die Zwielichthelder, the Twilight Heroes"
"We've got a character who...his name is...Jimmy. And he does seem to be carrying that cigarette case that Campion Bond had"
We have an update; DC has decided to resolicit the book at a later date and it will now include a recording with Alan Moore involved in some capacity.
http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/rage/index1.htm
What does the success of "Lost Girls" mean for your first "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" book, which I don't even believe you have scheduled yet?
We don't have it quite scheduled yet, but I did talk to Alan last week about it and he's started writing the script and he's very happy with the way the story is coming along. We're probably looking at a 2008 release on that, more than likely. Obviously "League 3" is going to be a really big release for us and another big release for Alan and Kevin O'Neill as well. We're gonna just get behind that one in a big way. DC recently announced they'll be pushing their final volume "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier" back to 2007, when it was originally scheduled for release at the end of this year.
Does that delay affect your publishing plans at all?
Not at all. Our production will be independent of that. Right now Alan is writing the script, and once that's done it'll be passed on to Kevin O'Neill to illustrate.
Has the success of the "Lost Girls" format got you thinking of different formatting or anything like that for your first "League?"
What Alan wants to do is release League Vol. 3 as three, 72-page prestige format comics and then collect it as a trade paperback afterwards. So we're going to release "League" in somewhat of a traditional format to be consistent with the other "Leagues" in the past.
http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=8374
In another news revealed at DC's retailer presentation, Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier graphic novel, which was solicited for an October release, has been delayed indefinitely. According to DC, a new in-store date will be announced as soon as possible. As a result of the delay, the book will be made returnable for retailers at a later date. The will be the last League of Extraordinary Gentlemen project publish through DC/Wildstorm/ABC before Moore moves the property to Top Shelf, publisher of his current Lost Girls graphic novel.
"With Black Dossier Kevin O'Neill is producing the work of his career," Wildstorm's Scott Dunbier told Newsarama in response to the news. "Unfortunately, due to his intense eye for detail and the complex nature of the book, it is also turning out to be the slowest project he has ever done. Wildstorm, through its ABC imprint, will be publishing the book in 2007. Alan and Kevin hope readers who have waited so patiently will feel it's worth the wait, I know I do."
http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=83723
The Black Dossier is not going to be on sale on Oct. 25. It may be on sale *by* Christmas, but more likely it will be on the shelves sometime early next year. Impossible Territories is now slated for an August 2007 release, with advance copies still on sale at San Diego next year.
http://ratmmjess.livejournal.com/
"The working title of my next League companion is:
"Impossible Territories: An Unofficial Companion to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen."
http://ratmmjess.livejournal.com/
Did you know that in Dymchurch we have a "Day of Syn" over the August Bank holiday reinacting Dr Syn every two years
This year we have a talk on Dr Syn at the Anglican church at 6.30pm On Sunday at 3pm we have a church service where Dr Syn and the cast appear in period costume On Monday starting at the Bowery Hall we reinact scenes from Dr Syn and during the day along th Dymchurch shoreline and in the Ocean pub.
http://www.comp.dit.ie/dgordon/League/OtherLeagues/1780s/synweekend/
Alan Moore interview:
JPK:The idea of using famous literary characters is something you've done before in The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Which came first, Lost Girls or that?
AM: "The three Lost Girls are actually, in a way, the parents of The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I'd been having such a lot of fun with these three public-domain characters in a pornography — it was making all sorts of things possible in the storytelling and it was so rich that it occurred to me that "Hey, maybe you could do this with a bunch of adventure characters as well.'"
JPK: Are there any other characters in the public domain that have caught your fancy?
AM: "The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen does actually touch on all of my requirements in that area. In the forthcoming Black Dossier, we give a timeline to the world of fiction included in the almanac in the second volume. There's a 25-page comic strip done in the old British quality boys' comics style, one of those posh painted bookish comic strips from the 50's which is just the life of Orlando - in which we've created a life and timeline for him which includes the Virginia Wolff version of the character, but the one created by (Italian poet Ludovico) Ariosto in the 15th century. So we'll have a timeline, which reaches from 1189 BC to, the present day and then that can continue into the future. "And actually, whether characters are in the public domain or not is becoming less and less of a problem as we become more skillful at just making allusions and relying upon the readership's vast knowledge of these characters and all the trivia surrounding them. "This proves very useful in the Black Dossier where the overarching story into which the dossier is sighted is in 1958 and we've used a lot of the characters from specifically British literature and television and movies that seem to belong in 1958. That creates copyright problems, but there are ways around these things. Any character that seems interesting, there's probably a way that I could fit it into The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen without too much difficulty."
JPK: What's next for you after the Black Dossier?
AM: "The Black Dossier will be my last comic work that comes out from ABC/Wildstorm/DC Comics. The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen will, however, is continuing. Kevin and I will be producing it for Top Shelf, simply because it's such a good idea and it can run forever — or at least as long as we're interested in it. "There's just so many ways we can change the settings, the characters, the theories, that I can imagine we'll be interested in it for a while yet. "We've got the fourth volume already planned. At the moment it looks like it's going to be three 72-page books so that each one will fit in to a broader complete story arc, they will all be very self-contained stories. This should help to ease the readers' torment at long gaps between issues."
JPK: What's the timeframe for this next League project?
AM: "The first story will be set in 1910, the second story will be set in 1968 and the third will probably be set in 2007 or 2008. We'll get started on that as soon as Kevin is finished with the Black Dossier."
http://www.metronews.ca/column.aspx?id=5028
There have been enquiries as to the status of the audio element to "League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier" that had previously been discussed but not on the solicitation. I understand that due to size constraints and Moore not wanting the product on CD, it will be released on vinyl as part of the "Absolute" edition next summer.
http://www.comicbookresources.com/columns/index.cgi?column=litg
Alan Moore said about The Black Dossier:
"Kevin is putting the last few touches to it at the moment. It's got none of the things in it that anyone would ask for, but after they've seen it, it will have been all of the things that they secretly wanted. It's this wonderful compendium of stuff, and there's all kinds of cute give-away things including a 7-inch vinyl single and a 3-D section at the end, which I think will hopefully astound people. You not going to believe this, this has got everyone in it. It's not Book 3 of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen; we've yet to start that, but that will be coming out sometime next year from our new publisher Top Shelf."
THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN: THE BLACK DOSSIER
http://www.dccomics.com/comics/?cm=5977
Written by Alan Moore; Art and Cover by Kevin O'Neill
Acclaimed writer Alan Moore once again joins forces with artist Kevin O'Neill for THE BLACK DOSSIER — a stunning original hardcover graphic novel that is the next chapter in the fantastic saga of THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN!
England in the mid-1950s is not the same as it was. The powers that be have instituted some changes. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen have been disbanded and disavowed, and the country is under the control of an iron-fisted regime. Now, after many years, the still youthful Mina Murray and a rejuvenated Allan Quatermain return in search of some answers — answers that can only be found in a book buried deep in the vaults of their old headquarters — a book that holds the key to the hidden history of the League throughout the ages: The Black Dossier. As Allan and Mina delve into the details of their precursors, some dating back centuries, they must elude their dangerous pursuers who are hellbent on retrieving the lost manuscript…and ending the League once and for all.
THE BLACK DOSSIER is an elaborately designed, cutting-edge volume that includes a "Tijuana Bible" insert and a 3-D section complete with custom glasses, as well as additional text pieces, maps, and a stunning cutaway double-page spread of Captain Nemo's Nautilus submarine by Kevin O'Neill. Don't miss what's sure to be one of the most talked-about books of 2006!
America's Best Comics | 208pg. | Color | Hardcover | $29.99 US | ISBN 140120306X | Mature Readers On Sale October 25, 2006
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier (Hardcover) Americas Best Comics
Release Date moved to Oct 25th 2006.
Absolute League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier (Absolute) Americas Best Comics
Release Date moved to Jan 30th 2007.
On the Wildstorm Message Board Jess Nevins said "It's definitely not coming out this month--I think I can say that without betraying any secrets"
http://dcboards.warnerbros.com/web/thread.jspa?threadID=2000041171&tstart=0
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier is due for the fall and covers the entire secret history of the LoEG. It starts with the first League, goes into the 1950’s, and right now looks to be about 185 pages of story.
http://www.newsarama.com/WonderCon2006/wildstorm/building.htm
The "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Black Dossier" by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill. It's an original hardcover and "one of the more revolutionary books the industry has ever seen," said Dunbier The book follows the history of the group from its "very early" origins to the 1950s. Having 185 pages of actual story, it's larger than either of the original miniseries. "Kevin has been doing a fantastic job," said Dunbier. The book will use different types of paper for different sections and 3-D effects. While 3-D "normally (consists of) throwing balls at the camera; this one has real meaning and is incredibly complex. The way Alan wrote it and Kevin draws it is unique and fantastic. Alan has called it 'the most fabulous book in the history of the universe,' and he isn't far wrong."
http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=6651
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier (Hardcover) Americas Best Comics (May 30, 2006)
Absolute League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier (Absolute) Americas Best Comics (September 30, 2006)
"The final Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neil’s LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN will be a hardcover book entitled THE BLACK DOSSIER. It is rumored to have a 3-D segment to the book. "
http://www.cosmiccomix.com/news/120505/
"I've just talked with Kevin O'Neill about the new LoEG, "Dark Dossier", which will be a big story jumping all over the place from the dawn of time to the 50's. Remember the first "new" LoEG announcement where Moore mentioned he was going in a recording studio? It's for a record which will be sold with the book, including songs performed by (50's) characters of the book, Moore does the singing, à la Roy Orbson, american accent and all"
http://www.millarworld.net/index.php?showtopic=51308&hl=dossier
Alan Moore, co-creator of the "V For Vendetta" comic, has publicly disassociated himself from the upcoming Warner Brothers movie project based on the comic book and written and produced by the Wachowski Brothers.
And as a result, he has cut his remaining ties with DC Comics, including future volumes of the "League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen." Moore has promised future "League" comics will be published by a US/UK collaboration between Top Shelf and Knockabout.
Moore's last remaining "League" for DC is all but completed and due this year. This is "The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Dark Dossier," a hardcover graphic novel coming from Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill later this year from ABC/Wildstorm/DC Comics. Moore tells me this "will slip in between volumes two and three" of the "League." Moore described it to me as "not my best comic ever, not the best comic ever, but the best thing ever. Better than the Roman civilisation, penicillin..." The human brain? "Yes and the human nervous system. Better than creation. Better than the big bang. It's quite good."
He continues, "It will be nothing anyone expects, but everything everyone secretly wanted." It's unusual to hear such hyperbole from one more commonly associated with self-deprecation. It's nearing completion and Moore tells me he was in a recording studio last week, working on part of it. Yes, that intrigued me too, though Moore refused to be drawn past the tantalising glimpse he'd deliberately dropped. Then after that, volume three of the "League" will be published by Top Shelf/Knockabout a year to eighteen months later, in a totally new format. And future volumes will continue from this publisher collaboration
http://www.comicbookresources.com/columns/index.cgi?column=litg&article=2153
"Moore and O'Neill are at work on The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen volume 3, with an eye on a 2006 release."
"Also from Moore…or technically, Moore and offspring, the veteran writer joins with his daughter Leah and John Reppion for the debut of Albion 1 in June."
"As Newsarama has reported, the miniseries will feature many of the classic IPC characters in a Moore-plotted revival. The six issue miniseries will be illustrated by Shane Oakley with covers by Dave Gibbons, and feature the likes of Robot Archie, Steel Claw, Captain Hurricane and the Spider."
"The press release is wrong on just about every count. Best to ignore it and act like it never appeared. "
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Dark Dossier is a hardcover graphic novel from Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neil due in late 2005. The story is set primarily in the 1950s when the League and the British government no longer see eye to eye. Surviving League members infiltrate MI:5 to steal a closely guarded book, the Dark Dossier compiled by MI:5 over hundreds of years, detailing the League, who the members are, what they do, what they've done, everything about them. As the story unfolds in 1950's London, the main characters - whose identities are a closely guarded mystery - peruse the Dark Dossier while eluding the agents of MI:5. The story takes place in the 1950s, the teens (1911 - 1919), in the 1800s, 1600s, and possibly one story is set in 2000 BC.
"I had a really perverse idea the other day ... it would be funny to have one series set in the 1950s where you have Sal Paradise from Jack Kerouac's On The Road and his crazy wired-up driver friend, Dean Moriarty, who of course is the great grandson of James Moriarty, or I could say that he is. Then there'd be Doctor Sax, a Kerouac character based on William Burroughs and The Shadow but who owes a lot Fu Manchu. You could set it in Interzone with the Burroughs centipede people appearing all over the place. You could even have a couple of members of the Victorian League still around."