3 out of 5

I would say “setting aside The Traveler’s Almanac” – the text pieces collected at the back of this trade, which appeared in slivers at the end of each individual issue and total 45 pages – and review just the comic, but you can’t set aside the Almanac, because it’s wholly representative of the very Moore-sy whimsy he got up to with volume 2 of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.  And, you know, I have set aside reading the TA on previous gothroughs of this book, and found that I didn’t quite enjoy it as much as volume 1, despite there being some undeniably great moments, with another (mostly) rousing go on art from Kevin O’Neill, letterer Bill Oakley, and colorist Ben Dimagmaliw.

Volume 2 is a take on War Of The Worlds.  Alien ships crash down; London responds with force and gets summarily wiped out; The League (or Quatermain and Mina, at least) are assigned to go pick up something that the League’s taskmasters are sure will resolve things; cue a very brilliant spin on the usual War Of The Worlds / alien invasion conclusion.  The Traveler’s Almanac, meanwhile, is what it sounds like: instead of functioning as a sort-of connected lead-in as with the Alan text adventure story in the previous volume, Moore decides to script an issue-by-issue travelogue, uniting a billion pieces of fantasy and sci-fi fiction as ‘sites to see’ in the LXG world.  It’s a cool idea, but it’s exhausting to read, and tracking down every little reference is interesting but kind of worthless except for maybe giving you some further reading options; the general joy of the series, thus far, had been that you didn’t quite need to get every little wink in order to have fun, and the Almanac – excepting some more stirring and amusing portions for Ms. Murray narrates – switches that for full on, sentence-by-sentence references.  This isn’t lazy work, mind you, as Moore often puts it into his own words (or admittedly comes up with some hilarious parodies, such as the Coca-Cola polar bears…), but it’s dry as all get-out.  It’s full indulgence, and maybe also functions as Moore making sure he chases away any lay, hanger-on readers before he would depart from the Wildstorm / DC comics umbrella.

The comic pages aren’t dry by any means, but there is a similar indulgence there.  We open with a rather confusing (and maybe ultimately pointless…?) Mars introduction, which isn’t an “easy” in to the book, especially if you’re expecting your experiences with The League from previous issues to be rewarded with familiarity.  We are seeing the opening instances of the war that will spread to Earth – and roping some characters from the text pages into the illustrated bits – but it still feels like a strange, purposefully oblique place to start.

This sensation continues: we’re rarely “on mission” as we were before, and instead find the crew sort of bumbling around and waiting to see what happens.  Moore dangles his own unfortunate trope of assault on a female character at us before violently flipping the tables; there are some elongated sex scenes between two characters; in both cases, I sense a bit of Moore the trickster, pushing what he could do in a Wildstorm book and avoiding offering up easily entertaining antics.  But it all feels besides the point, to a certain degree.

O’Neill’s character moments in the art again shine, and Dimagmaliw gives us a huge workout on colors across various locales.  The war against the aliens has its highs, but Moore makes you sweat a bit to get there.  Overall, it’s worth it, it just makes you less likely do take the trek again in the near future…