4 out of 5

Sort of The Traveler’s Almanac part 2, what worked against (for me) that text-only piece – Moore diving head first into a list of endless references, at the expense of narrative, and reader interest – is completely righted by Black Dossier’s ‘mixed’ approach: comic sections featuring a 50s incarnation of Allan and Mina, seeking out the titular Dossier, which is then excerpted throughout.  Said Dossier, rescued from the League’s remnants former employers, is needed for unclear means, but its contents track different mentions and appearances of our League over the years, across comics, in plays, in stories, all presented in styles fitting to their genres.  So, for example, Orlando’s life can be retold in daily newspaper strip-style comics; an ‘unpublished’ Shakespeare play is appropriately written in verse; a Kerouac-era pulp novel mimics the writer’s stream of consciousness; and the rest of the various ephemera follows suit.  While Moore’s dedication to detail can again make some of this stuff tough to read – that Kerouac bit is nearly intolerable, for example – since it’s presented in short clips (3-5 pages) and mixed in with so many other offerings, it allows the Dossier (the OGN) to function as a source book for the League, as intended, and not just an exercise in gleeful name dropping.  This makes it easier to appreciate the cleverness of it all (accepting that Moore isn’t / wasn’t the first to blend different fictions together, in general or down to some of the specific worlds he combines), although the shift into a more surreal mash-up that extends beyond literary and mythological allusions to comparatively modern TV / cartoon / comic book ones ends up feeling a bit odd…  Then again, that section of the book is presented in full-on 3D (don’t worry, glasses are included), and Moore lampshades it with a grand ole speech on the influencing circle of fiction and reality, one informing the other, informing the other, so the sudden scope expansion would seem to be by design.

O’Neill takes up as much of the referential work as Alan does through his words, stuffing so, so many nods to so, so many things in each panel (feel free to browse through Jess Nevins’ collected annotations and curse with disbelief at just how many nods), and while this is, essentially, only a framing story for the Dossier’s contents – which are also illustrated, where appropriate, by Kevin – the work is still enjoyable without having to know much about all the background stuff: unlike the Almanac, in which your only choice is to read through the text and accept you have no idea what Alan is referencing, here, O’Neill’s light hand (and the book’s design) makes it easy to enjoy the spectacle itself, knowing there’s plenty of extra stuff to look up if you want to.

Make sure to bring an extra pair of 3D glasses if you don’t want to punch out the provided ones.