About The Black Dossier:
LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN: The Black
Dossier
CHAPTERS INCLUDE:
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A True and Faithful Mappe of Ye Blazing
Worlds
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The Nautilus, A Cutaway Schematic
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A Prospectus of London Bulletins from Beyond
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What Ho, Gods of the Abyss by the Rt. Hon.
Bertram Wooster
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When they Sound the Last All Clear
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Director's Summary
On the Descent of the Gods by Oliver
Haddo
- "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"
TRUMP featuring The Life of Orlando
- "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."
- "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."
Faerie's Fortunes Founded
by William Shakespeare
- "We detail Prospero's Group - that was the first League of Extraordinary
Gentlemen"
- "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."
- Prospero's Men:
consisting of Prospero, Ariel, Caliban, Christian and Robert Owe-Much.
The Queen will be Gloriana
The New Adventures of Fanny Hill
by John Cleland
Gulliver's Travails
- "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."
- "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"
- Gulliver's Group : consisting
of Lemuel Gulliver, Marguerite Blakeney, Percy Blakeney, The Scarecrow,
Fanny Hill and Natty Bumpo. A chronology of their adventures can
be found here.
Shadows in the Steam by Campion
Bond
- "Then we talk about Miss Murray's team and what they did before, during
and after [volumes one and two]" Mina's
Second League. A chronology of their adventures can be found here.
The Warralson Team
- "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."
- "There's an account of The Surrogate League that British Intelligence
tried to put together in the 1950s, and which was a complete disaster."
- The Surrogate League.
The Crazy Wide Forever by Sal
Paradyse
- "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."
- The USA 1950s League.
The Sincerest Form of Flattery
- "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"
- "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"
Main Story
- "The Dossier is sighted 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." "We've got a character who...his name is...Jimmy. And
he does seem to be carrying that cigarette case that Campion Bond had"
- "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."
- "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.
- "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."
- 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."
- "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.""
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