Nemesis the Warlock Vol.2: 2000AD Definitive Edition

Pat Mills
Kevin O'Neill 
Bryan Talbot 
2000AD / Rebellion

The Definitive series of the Nemesis the Warlock saga continues as Torquemada’s crusade to destroy all alien life reaches the planet of the Goths, a species of alien which has modelled their culture on early twentieth-century Britain. Nemesis must team up with the Goth leader, the Ion Duke, to stop them being eradicated by Torquemada's army of Terminators.
Collecting the entire series in order, with the colour centre-spread pages reproduced in their original form, the Definitive collection of Nemesis the Warlock is the ultimate way to read one of the most important sci-fi sagas published in the pages of 2000 AD.
Written by Pat Mills (Marshal Law) and drawn by Kevin O'Neill (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and Bryan Talbot (Sandman, The Adventures of Luther Arkwright), this definitive series is a collection of the complete storyline in order.

 As I said in my write-up of Volume 1, I was never a Nemesis reader as a young lad.  Being an irregular reader of 2000AD meant I rarely got to maintain a rhythm on any strips, so I always preferred the one-off stories.  These definitive editions are allowing me the opportunity to rectify that and finally get to appreciate a cornerstone 2000AD series.

Young me was always far more interested in story than art, which was always a distant second, but the one major thing I've noticed on my journey back into these older series is that while the stories have often aged poorly the artwork remains sublime.

Mills, as I wished for in my earlier review, has here got a firmer grip on his strip, and the stories are tighter with a more deeply developed lore and are far more entertaining.  They don't all work as well as they could, the final arc of the Torquemada story was a jarring shift that also contains a 'joke' that I would have thought well below Mills' personal standards.

The art is wonderful,  two of my favourites at the top of their games and complementing each other perfectly.  Talbot was made to draw the goth empire storyline and his art, and the setting brought me right back to the worlds of 'Luther Awkright' and of the anthropomorphic steampunk series, 'Grandville'.

O'Neill was simply born to draw.  I adore his work and pour over every panel at every twistedly beautiful line.

Previously, I'd hoped that Volume 2 was going to be a more cohesive and developed read, and it absolutely was, and so I'm genuinely excited to pull Volume 3 off the shelf.

..........................................................................................

If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue, then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Affiliate links are provided for your convenience and to help mitigate running costs.

Nemesis the Warlock Vol.1: 2000AD Definitive Edition

Pat Mills (writer)
Kevin O'Neill (artist)

Jesus Redondo (artist)
Rebellion

Long regarded as one of the crown-jewel epics from the pages of 2000 AD, at long last Nemesis the Warlock is back in print and better than ever in a brand-new series of definitive editions.
Termight is the ruling planet of a cruel galactic empire led by the diabolical Torquemada, a twisted human despot intent on purging all alien life from the galaxy and punishing the deviants. His motto: Be pure! Be vigilant! Behave! Against his tyrannical rule, resistance rises in the form of devilish-looking alien warlock Nemesis, who represents everything that Torquemada hates and fears. Together, Nemesis and Torquemada are locked in a duel which will affect their fate and the fate of humanity itself as their conflict spans time and space!

Limited pocket money meant I was a pretty occasional 2000AD reader back when these stories were first published and beyond admiring the art, I never really read Nemesis but when Rebellion announced these large-format editions of the full story, the chance to add some more Kev O'Neill to my shelves was too good an opportunity to miss.

Now, the problem I've found with a lot of these older strips is that those telling a longer story can often feel a tad over-stretched.  The peril of publishing a story 5 pages a week means it can become an exhausting barrage of cliffhangers when read en masse.  I grew up loving comics - I worked for years in the late 80s and early 90s in a comic shop in Cardiff - but was never much of a fan of serialised storytelling and immediately stopped buying individual issues when trade paperbacks / graphic novels arrived on the scene and I could read the whole story in one sitting.  Some old strips work better than others in the collected format, and this one - plot wise - suffers a little as it feels stuttery.  Don't get me wrong, I love the ideas, the dark humour, the satire and I'm well aware that this is book one and Mills is taking his first steps with his new creation but, that formatting issue that I mentioned does become tiring and the story-telling is at it's strongest on the self-contained tales where his vision is at its keenest.

Now, onto the art.  This is perhaps O'Neill's defining work here in the UK, and it's a thing of absolute beauty, maniacal, anarchic, and utterly wonderful.  There's a lot of debate over the quintessential 2000AD artist and whether you were to name Brian Bolland, Carlos Ezquerra, Dave Gibbons, Alan Davis, Mike McMahon, Ian Gibson - I could go on - you'll get no push back from me, and I'll join in singing their praises but for me, it's always been O'Neill.  

Backing up O'Neill here is Spanish artist Jesus Redondo whose art I've always had a soft spot for from reading 'Mind Wars' in Starlord and 'The Mind of Wolfie Smith' in 2000AD, and here he doesn't disappoint, but his issues lack the manic brilliance of O'Neill's.

Rebellion have done a beautiful job here and the book is a thing of real joy.  Volumes 2 & 3 are already out and on my shelves - there'll be five in total - and I'm very much looking forward to watching how Mills masters his story and, of course, getting more Kev O'Neill eye-candy.

..........................................................................................

If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue, then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Affiliate links are provided for your convenience and to help mitigate running costs.

Hardware

I can't really remember when I first saw 'Hardware' but it was fairly soon after it's 1990 release but what I do remember was sitting there in amazement wondering how I could have missed the news that 2000AD had made a movie of one of my favourite stories, 'Shok!' from a treasured Judge Dredd annual (1981) and then scouring the credits wondering why there was no mention of writer Steve MacManus or artist Kevin O'Neill or even of 2000AD who subsequently sued for plagiarism and won.

Hardware is a post-apocalyptic tale of mechanical mayhem triggered by the discovery of the dismembered remains of a prototype murder robot out in the desert wastelands by Nomad, played by Fields of the Nephilim singer Carl McCoy,  the first of three rock star cameos in the opening 20 minutes and who is presumably just wearing his own clothes.  The second cameo soon comes in the form of Iggy Pop's radio DJ Angry Bob, who gives us some background info on the world we're in before Lemmy ferries two of our stars across the river to the sounds of 'Ace of Spades'.

Thanks to Shades (John Lynch) and Moses (Dylan McDermott - perhaps the most recognisable non musician here thanks to roles in various series of American Horror Story) the robot's head soon finds itself part of an industrial sculpture made by Stacey Travis' Jill before it starts drawing the power needed to start itself up and murder everyone in sight except for Jill because in the grand tradition of the slasher there needs to be a last woman standing.

Working on a small budget director Richard Stanley has made a real go of it and parts of it look pretty nice but the limitations do shine through.  Most filming took place inside the then disused Roundhouse so everything has a nicely grimy, derelict feel but poor soundproofing meant all dialogue needed to be re-recorded giving the film the look of a poorly dubbed foreign language film. 'Based' as it was on a 7 page 2000AD short what little story there is can only be stretched so far and patience is stretched thin as the robot repeatedly revives itself for yet another bout of murderdeathkill.  In amongst this the cast deal competently with a hammy script with Stacey holding the centre stage well and earning her scream queen stripes and William Hootkins as creepy, peepy neighbour Lincoln Wineberg Jr making a memorable cameo.

Truthfully you can't fault Stanley's ambition (you can definitely fault his ethics) and he made a gritty, hissing clanging post-industrial slasher with it's toes in the same fetish club aesthetic that spawned Clive Barker's Hellraiser but like it's tin man antagonist it's lacking heart and is essentially a mish mash of Terminator, Blade Runner and Soylent Green, occasional spaghetti western tropes and a thousand no-budget Italian grindhouse post-apocalypse schlockers all wrapped around a plagiarised core.

 

.......................................................................................... 

 

If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain 

 Any affiliate links are provided for your convenience and to help mitigate running costs.

Kevin O'Neill

Remembering legendary comic artist Kevin O'Neill on what would have been his 70th birthday with this fascinating two part interview where the artist talks about his long career in both British and American comics.

An early job as an office boy at IPC led to him being one of the original staffers on a new science fiction comic being developed at the company called 2000AD.  For the new comic he drew covers and posters and occasional Future Shocks before he became a regular artist on the Ro-Busters strip working with writer Pat Mills with whom he would have a long and productive association on strips and titles such as Nemesis the Warlock, ABC Warriors, Metalzoic and Marshal Law.

O'Neill's other collaborator of note would be another 2000AD alumni, the grand wizard of comics, Alan Moore with whom he enjoyed a 20 year collaboration on The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen having also, in 1986, collaborated on Tales of the Green Lantern Corps Annual No. 2 for DC Comics which contributed to the downfall of the censorious Comics Code Authority who objected wholesale to O'Neill's entire art style much, I imagine, to his delight.

O'Neill died on 3rd November 2022 leaving a gaping, lurid, flamboyant, spectacular hole in the world of comics having forged a singular path through the industry by producing some of the most memorable work in the field.  For me as a young kid discovering comics in the 1970s and 80s it was always his art that shone through, that unmistakable air of the macabre, the underlying violence, the explosive dynamism, the irresistable humour and, above all, the incomparable character of this quintessential artist and storyteller.

.......................................................................................... 

If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain 

 Affiliate links are provided for your convenience and to help mitigate running costs.

The City of Dreadful Night

image by Kevin O'Neill 

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: All was black,

In heaven no single star, on earth no track;

A brooding hush without a stir or note,

The air so thick it clotted in my throat;

And thus for hours; then some enormous things

Swooped past with savage cries and clanking wings:

      But I strode on austere;

      No hope could have no fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: Eyes of fire

Glared at me throbbing with a starved desire;

The hoarse and heavy and carnivorous breath

Was hot upon me from deep jaws of death;

Sharp claws, swift talons, fleshless fingers cold

Plucked at me from the bushes, tried to hold:

      But I strode on austere;

      No hope could have no fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: Lo you, there,

That hillock burning with a brazen glare;

Those myriad dusky flames with points a-glow

Which writhed and hissed and darted to and fro;

A Sabbath of the Serpents, heaped pell-mell

For Devil's roll-call and some fête of Hell:

      Yet I strode on austere;

      No hope could have no fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: Meteors ran

And crossed their javelins on the black sky-span;

The zenith opened to a gulf of flame,

The dreadful thunderbolts jarred earth's fixed frame:

The ground all heaved in waves of fire that surged

And weltered round me sole there unsubmerged:

      Yet I strode on austere;

      No hope could have no fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: Air once more,

And I was close upon a wild sea-shore;

Enormous cliffs arose on either hand,

The deep tide thundered up a league-broad strand;

White foambelts seethed there, wan spray swept and flew;

The sky broke, moon and stars and clouds and blue:

      And I strode on austere;

      No hope could have no fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: On the left

The sun arose and crowned a broad crag-cleft;

There stopped and burned out black, except a rim,

A bleeding eyeless socket, red and dim;

Whereon the moon fell suddenly south-west,

And stood above the right-hand cliffs at rest:

      Still I strode on austere;

      No hope could have no fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: From the right

A shape came slowly with a ruddy light;

A woman with a red lamp in her hand,

Bareheaded and barefooted on that strand;

O desolation moving with such grace!

O anguish with such beauty in thy face.

      I fell as on my bier,

      Hope travailed with such fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: I was twain,

Two selves distinct that cannot join again;

One stood apart and knew but could not stir,

And watched the other stark in swoon and her;

And she came on, and never turned aside,

Between such sun and moon and roaring tide:

      And as she came more near

      My soul grew mad with fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: Hell is mild

And piteous matched with that accursèd wild;

A large black sign was on her breast that bowed,

A broad black band ran down her snow-white shroud;

That lamp she held was her own burning heart,

Whose blood-drops trickled step by step apart;

      The mystery was clear;

      Mad rage had swallowed fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: By the sea

She knelt and bent above that senseless me;

Those lamp-drops fell upon my white brow there,

She tried to cleanse them with her tears and hair;

She murmured words of pity, love, and woe,

She heeded not the level rushing flow:

      And mad with rage and fear,

      I stood stonebound so near.

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: When the tide

Swept up to her there kneeling by my side,

She clasped that corpse-like me, and they were borne

Away, and this vile me was left forlorn;

I know the whole sea cannot quench that heart,

Or cleanse that brow, or wash those two apart:

      They love; their doom is drear,

      Yet they nor hope nor fear;

But I, what do I here?

By James Thomson (1834 - 1882)

..........................................................................................

If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Affiliate links are provided for your convenience and to help mitigate running costs.

The Sinister Ducks

In 1983 a trio of unsavoury miscreants by the names of Max Akropolis, Capt. José Da Silva and Translucia Baboon, known collectively as 'The Sinister Ducks', decided to warn the world about their nefarious namesakes by releasing an obscure 7" single which is of course the perfect vehicle for doing so.

It is only after undertaking extensive research - i.e. typing the band's name into google - and some 35 years after they were already widely known - can the true identities of these campaigning troubadours finally be revealed as itinerant saxophonist Alex Green, guitarist David J (bassist with popular musical combo of a 'gothic' persuasion Bauhaus) and purveyor of menacing magical missives Alan Moore.

Here we'll ask mind-bending minstrel PK Chown to take up the tale of how these reprehensible rapscallions initiated their furore against the feathery fiends...

"They formed spontaneously at an event I used to organise in Northampton called the Deadly Fun Hippodrome. I'd booked some god-awful band called the Bishops to play and when they arrived they turned their noses up at our old wooden stage and refused to play. So Alan,Dave and Alex stepped up and did a completely improvised set, which of course most of the punters hated because they weren't famous then and it was pretty off the wall.....But thus were born the Sinster Ducks."

The artwork for this timely warning against these malcontented mallards was provided by regular Moore henchman, Kevin O'Neill and perfectly encapsulates their perfidy and who also provided a comic strip to further illustrate the degenerate deeds of the gangsters that graced the records flip side.

As governmental and social outcry with regard to these felonious fowl has been lacking of late Wyrd Britain feels that the time is right to revive this rallying cry against them.

Here are the lyrics so you can sing along with the video below...

Everyone thinks they're such sweet little things
Ducks, Ducks! Quack, Quack! Quack, Quack!
Soft downy feathers and nice little wings
Ducks, Ducks! Quack, Quack! Quack, Quack!
But there's a poison I'd like to administer,
You think they're cuddly but I think they're sinister.
Ducks, Ducks! Quack, Quack! Quack, Quack!
Ducks, Ducks! Quack, Quack! Quack, Quack!

What are they doing at night in the park?
Ducks, Ducks! Quack, Quack! Quack, Quack!
Think of them waddling about in the dark.
Ducks, Ducks! Quack, Quack! Quack, Quack!
Sneering and whispering and stealing your cars,
Reading pornography, smoking cigars.
Ducks, Ducks! Quack, Quack! Quack, Quack!
Ducks, Ducks! Quack, Quack! Quack, Quack!

Nasty and small undeserving of life.
Ducks, Ducks! Quack, Quack! Quack, Quack!
They smirk at your hairstyle and sleep with your wife.
Ducks, Ducks! Quack, Quack! Quack, Quack!
Dressed in black jackets and horrible shoes,
Getting divorces and turning to booze.
Ducks, Ducks! Quack, Quack! Quack, Quack!
Ducks, Ducks! Quack, Quack! Quack, Quack!

Forcing old ladies to throw them some bread.
Ducks, Ducks! Quack, Quack! Quack, Quack!
Who could deny they'd be better off dead?
Ducks, Ducks! Quack, Quack! Quack, Quack!
Look closer and you may recoil in surprise,
At web-footed fascists with mad little eyes.
Ducks, Ducks! Quack, Quack! Quack, Quack!
Ducks, Ducks! Quack, Quack! Quack, Quack!
Ducks, Ducks! Quack, Quack! Quack, Quack!
Ducks, Ducks! Quack, Quack! Quack, Quack!

(lyrics copyright to whomever owns them, presumably Translucia Baboon)



The flip side of this masterpiece of audio alarum tells a tale of the human equivalents of those avian anarchists in the shape of the late night jazz of 'Old Gangsters Never Die'.

..........................................................................................

If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century

Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill
Knockabout

A round up of the three 'Century' books that took the League through the 20th Century and into the 21st.
.......................................................................................................

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1910

The new volume detailing the exploits of Miss Wilhelmina Murray and her extraordinary colleagues, Century is a 240-page epic spanning almost a hundred years. Divided into three 80-page chapters - each a self-contained narrative to avoid frustrating cliff-hanger delays between episodes - this monumental tale takes place in three distinct eras, building to an apocalyptic conclusion occurring in our own, current, twenty-first century. 
Chapter one is set against the backdrop of London, 1910, twelve years after the failed Martian invasion and nine years since England put a man upon the moon. In the bowels of the British Museum, Carnacki the ghost-finder is plagued by visions of a shadowy occult order who are attempting to create something called a Moonchild, while on London's dockside the most notorious serial murderer of the previous century has returned to carry on his grisly trade. Working for Mycroft Holmes' British Intelligence alongside a rejuvenated Allan Quartermain, the reformed thief Anthony Raffles and the eternal warrior Orlando, Miss Murray is drawn into a brutal opera acted out upon the waterfront by players that include the furiously angry Pirate Jenny and the charismatic butcher known as Mac the Knife

In this first book of the new LOEG series we return to the League some years after the adventures of the first two series but some time before the adventures of the Black Dossier with the League still working for the British Government.  

The team now consisting of the youthful and now immortal Mina Murray and Allan Quatermain along with Orlando, ghost hunter Thomas Carnacki and, gentleman thief, Raffles are drawn into investigating the occult underworld they suspect of trying to bring forth the Moonchild (whatever that is).

Nemo’s daughter Janni meanwhile has run away to London where the patrons of the depraved little dive that she finds work at eventually attack her in the most vile manner leading her to summon the Nautilus, of which she is now the captain, and exact her revenge.

I like this book a lot. It’s blatantly only a third of a story and I much prefer to read my books fully formed so this was slightly frustrating. The next volume is going to be the same but hey ho, some LOEG is better than no LOEG.

.......................................................................................................

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1969

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century: 1969 Volume III, Number 2 Chapter two takes place in the psychedelic daze of swinging London during 1969, a place where Tadukic Acid Diethylamide 26 is the drug of choice, and where different underworlds are starting to overlap dangerously. The vicious gangster bosses of London's East End find themselves brought into contact with a counter-culture underground of mystical and medicated flower-children, or amoral pop-stars.

This was excellent. It’s been a long time coming but well worth the wait.

Our three heroes wash up on the coast of England courtesy of a much older and mellower Janni and the Nautilus. Making their way to London they begin once more to investigate Oliver Hado and his Moonchild.

Swinging London was always going to fire up Mr. Moore and what we get is a massive mash-up of the era with Haddo jumping from body to body and trying to find his way into the lead singer of the Stones analogue, The Purple Orchestra.

The three mains are looser and more in touch with each other but Mina is struggling to incorporate herself and as such has leaped into the requisite personality with almost unseemly alacrity.

Once more the story leaves us hanging. This time on a monstrous cliffhanger and it’ll probably be several years before the final part. I can hardly wait.

.......................................................................................................

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 2009
In Chapter Three, the narrative draws to its cataclysmic close in London 2008. The magical child whose ominous coming has been foretold for the past hundred years has now been born and has grown up to claim his dreadful heritage. His promised aeon of unending terror can commence, the world can now be ended starting with North London, and there is no League, extraordinary or otherwise, that now stands in his way. The bitter, intractable war of attrition in Q'umar crawls bloodily to its fifth year, away in Kashmir a Sikh terrorist with a now-nuclear-armed submarine wages a holy war against Islam that might push the whole world into atomic holocaust, and in a London mental institution there's a patient who insists that she has all the answers.

And so the League's century comes to an end. And what an end it is. 

This final volume picks up 30 years on from the previous. Alan is a homeless addict, Mina is hospitalised and heavily sedated and Orlando is back from fighting a war overseas to find the UK a dystopian mess and himself once more swapping gender.

Upon arrival at the the Leagues old haunt Orlando is contacted by Prospero and tasked with dealing with the now imminent arrival of the Antichrist.  In her attempts to locate her fellow League members she is forced to travel to various locations familiar to lovers of teenage wizardry in order to locate the Moonchild / Antichrist before the final battle wherein one beloved character is destroyed and nanny punishes a very naughty boy.

It's a glorious and melancholy end to a key chapter in this fabulous series.  With each issue of the League they release Moore and O'Neill drag me further and further into a world that I don't want to see end.  Luckily it seems they don't either and the books keep coming.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Nemo

Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill - Nemo: Heart of Ice

(Knockabout / Top Shelf)

In the grim cold of February surfaces a thrilling new League of Extraordinary Gentlemen book - Nemo: Heart of Ice, a full-color 48-page adventure in the classic pulp tradition by the inestimable Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill. It's 1925, fifteen long years since Janni Dakkar first tried to escape the legacy of her dying science-pirate father, only to accept her destiny as the new Nemo, captain of the legendary Nautilus. Now, tired of her unending spree of plunder and destruction, Janni launches a grand expedition to surpass her father's greatest failure: the exploration of Antarctica. Hot on her frozen trail are a trio of genius inventors, hired by the megalomaniacal Charles Foster Kane to retrieve the plundered valuables of an African queen. It's a deadly race to the bottom of the world - an uncharted land of wonder and horror where time is broken and the mountains bring madness.

A very unexpected surprise when this appeared.  I'd heard that they were going to do these spin-offs but I wasn't expecting one to turn up this soon.

What we have is a missing tale of the second Captain Nemo and her attempt to traverse Antarctica in the footsteps of her father.  In pursuit of her and her crew is a trio of American adventurers in the employ of Charles Foster Kane and Ayesha (the Queen from 'She').  On their disastrous journey they discover various Lovecraftian locations and creatures.

It's a fairly slight (by Moore's terms) little romp but one that adds layers to the character of Janni (Nemo) and very nicely bridges the gap between the vengeful Janni of the first volume of 'Century' and the mellower mature one that turned up later.

I've loved all the League stories and this one was no exception.

(Jess Nevins' annotations to this volume can be found here)

.........................................................................................................

Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill - Nemo: The Roses of Berlin

(Knockabout / Top Shelf)

Sixteen years ago, notorious science-brigand Janni Nemo journeyed into the frozen reaches of Antarctica to resolve her father's weighty legacy in a storm of madness and loss, barely escaping with her Nautilus and her life.
Now it is 1941, and with her daughter strategically married into the family of aerial warlord Jean Robur, Janni's raiders have only limited contact with the military might of the clownish German-Tomanian dictator Adenoid Hynkel. But when the pirate queen learns that her loved ones are held hostage in the nightmarish Berlin, she has no choice save to intervene directly, travelling with her ageing lover Broad Arrow Jack into the belly of the beastly metropolis. Within that alienated city await monsters, criminals and legends, including the remaining vestiges of Germany’s notorious ‘Twilight Heroes’, a dark Teutonic counterpart to Mina Murray’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. And waiting at the far end of this gauntlet of alarming adversaries there is something much, much worse.
Continuing in the thrilling tradition of Heart of Ice, Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill rampage through twentieth-century culture in a blazing new adventure, set in a city of totalitarian shadows and mechanical nightmares. Cultures clash and lives are lost in the explosive collision of four unforgettable women, lost in the black and bloody alleyways where thrive THE ROSES OF BERLIN. 

This is the second League of Extraordinary Gentleman spinoff books to feature the exploits of everyone's favourite sub aquatic pirate goes off to Germany to rescue her daughter and her son in law, the air pirate Robur.

The book mixes in The Great Dictator, Metropolis, Cabinet of Doctor Cagliari, She and more to great effect. I've got to say though that if it wasn't for the majesty of Jess Nevins and his explanatory website - http://jessnevins.com/annotations/rosesofberlin.html - much of it would have been incomprehensible to me as it was written in German and I don't currently have a friendly German to hand..

It's a quest book (of sorts) and as such is a little thin on plot but what there is is typical Moore and there is plenty of distraction in the always beautiful art from O'Neill who as ever brings the most absurd worlds to life in stunning, awe inspiring and eye popping glory.

Not the best of them but still wonderful.

.................................................................................................

Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill - Nemo: River of Ghosts
(Knockabout / Top Shelf)

In a world where all the fictions ever written coalesce into a rich mosaic, it’s 1975. Janni Dakkar, pirate queen of Lincoln Island and head of the fabled Nemo family, is eighty years old and beginning to display a tenuous grasp on reality. Pursuing shadows from her past — or her imagination — she embarks on what may be a final voyage down the vastness of the Amazon, a last attempt to put to rest the blood-drenched spectres of old. With allies and adversaries old and new, we accompany an aging predator on her obsessive trek into the cultural landscape of a strange new continent, from the ruined city of Yu-Atlanchi to the fabulous plateau of Maple White Land. As the dark threads in her narrative are drawn into an inescapable web, Captain Nemo leads her hearse-black Nautilus in a desperate raid on horrors believed dead for decades. Through the exotic spectacle of an imagined South America, Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill steer their fifty-year-long Nemo trilogy to its remarkable conclusion, borne upon a River of Ghosts. 

And with this volume - the third - the story of Janni Nemo comes to a close and the next inheritor of the mantle takes their place.

This time out  it's a much more straight forward read - particularly in comparison to it's immediate predecessor for which you needed a handy German to translate large swathes of the dialogue.  Here, the aged and dying Nemo sets out on one last adventure to investigate the apparent reappearance of Ayesha despite having killed her in the previous volume's Germany of Adenoid Hynkel.

As ever the references abound and as ever I'm missing loads of them but a few of the more obvious ones include The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Stepford Wives, Desperate Dan and The Lost World.

This isn't Moore at his most engrossing it's simply Moore cutting loose and letting the grand lady have the blood and fire send off and decisive conclusion she deserves (and desires).  O'Neill is, as ever, flawless.

An explosive final chapter to an excellent series.  Hopefully not the last we'll see of the League though as it's easily one of my favourite things.

(Jess Nevins' annotations to this volume can be found here)