The Tempest (Alan Moore)

 

Among the practitioners of constructed languages, there is a concept of “kitchen-sinking,” in which too many details are added to a project that is otherwise complicated but carefully balanced. This tendency is a stereotypical feature of novitiates, but (much like the blissful second childhood under the western waves of Kauai) it can manifest at the other end of life. The novice has not yet learned how to balance the elements; the elder has removed the restraints due to the new restraint of encroaching time.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series is predicated on continuity and reference, but The Tempest, the last entry in the series, suffers from a surfeit of those tragic flaws; the less said about Miss Upton’s creation and Moore’s “improvement” of him, the better. The anger displayed throughout this volume is nothing new for Moore, whose bitterness over Marvelman knows no bounds. The story involves multiple time periods, although a minimum of time travel. The League in this case is Mina, Orlando (currently a woman), and Emma Knight, fresh from saving the world from the 2010 apocalypse, while the new characters are various heroes from British comics, however minimal their original appearances were, as well as an actual advertising mascot. The primary antagonist is MI6, run by “Jimmy” and his clones. The passage of time has led to many of the league’s allies who do not have the advantage of immortality being replaced by their descendants. The violence reaches an atomic crescendo, which is surprisingly and slowly reversed by the true villain, who unleashes a worse catastrophe upon the mortal plane. There is a happy ending for some protagonists, but the Tempest suffers all at once from the self-loathing and negation of wonder of Albion, the apocalypticism of Promethea, and the misogynist violence of From Hell. The lesbian eroticism of Lost Girls and the cosmic contemplation of Swamp Thing do not contribute sufficiently to make up the loss. A complicated tale cannot accommodate every story. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series would have been better served if it had ended with the death of the pop culture Anti-Christ and the cosmic nanny, if not the retreat to the Blazing World in the second volume. The Tempest is a final volume which weakens the effect of the series.