3 out of 5

Twenty-one years ago, Alan Moore took the concept of a super team and gave his particular literary spin on it, teaming up various fictional characters – Mr. Hyde, Mina Harker, Allan Quatermain, and more – and having them operate as an M.I.5 crew, mismatched abilities and personas eventually combining to stop evil, London-crushing plans.

Since then, the series has taken an interesting trajectory: volume 2 expanded on the idea of mingling fictions into one cohesive universe and went deep into the kind of references that are likely better appreciated with annotations in hand, unfortunately relegating the actual story bringing everyone together into background.  The original graphic novel Black Dossier found a much better approach to this, though, making the collection and reporting of the info part of the story itself, and its presentation in various styles (as Shakespearean prose; as Tijuana Bible-esque strips; etc.) worked within this context to make both the framing story it told and its gleeful presentation of uncountable references darned entertaining.  Volume 3 and a Nemo mini-series then kicked over into overdrive with the where’s Waldo approach, sucking in an impressive amount of media into its universe, but the narrative fronting this either because too silly or unimportant to carry much impact, somewhat repeating the volume 2 problem but being a bit more open with the sensibility that it’s all for yuks, for better or worse.

The Tempest, volume 4, arrives with dual conclusions: to The League, and to, for now, the comic writing of Alan Moore.  As such, there is a finality fueling its story, which once again sees our league – now drastically morphed from the ‘classic’ one, fretting in order to stop first a plot against them directly – by James Bonds (plural), of course) – and then another world-ending machination.  The former isn’t very serious, and Moore and artist Kevin O’Neill have a good time blending spy movie references into the particular comic book genres to which each issue is a tribute, but the latter brings back some of that old Moore magic, giving a sense of the larger import and interconnectedness of his story and stories.  When Tempest is told in a more straight-forward format – particularly the last issue, for example – it’s equal to volume one or Black Dossier in its brilliance in visual and written storytelling.  But this last chance to combine every bit of fiction under one set of covers also means our creator duo want one more stab at sprinkling the thing with enough spot-the-references to fuel extra readthroughs; The Tempest accomplishes this via (as mentioned) mimicking different comic genres, like horror books, or even 2000 AD, switching artistic styles page by page to match different versions of or strips from each of those.  As such, the reading experience is pretty fractured; this isn’t woven into the story like it was in Black Dossier – it’s just a visual layer.  An entertaining one, but distracting from the narrative nonetheless.

There’s the usual mix of snubbing superheroes and fandom with Alan’s self depreciative humor, and then extra layers of meta humor with a completely made up letters page that’s answered by ‘Al and Kev,’ who completely cop to making everything up.

The League wasn’t necessarily a story I ever assumed needed a conclusion, and indeed, there’s still room for more at the end, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t a satisfying addition, and end, if it turns out to actually be the final appearance of The League.  If you were on board with Century and Nemo, then I think Tempest offers up the same joys while refocusing, to a degree, on story; if, like me, you didn’t prefer those, volume 4 is a much smoother and more grabbing read.  Either way, the amount of research that goes into this is undeniable, as is the skill O’Neill displays when putting it all together, with colorist Ben Dimagmaliw and letterer Todd Klein matching him panel for panel in flip-flopping between styles.