Review by Jay Pinkerton

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Back when I used to have more disposable income, I'd buy graphic novels all the time from this comic book shop across the street from my apartment. I've since learned from my mistakes, and now spend my money exclusively on clothes, dates, beer, rent and cigarettes. At the time though, I blew it exclusively on graphic novels; never really making that crucial connection between my refusal to spend this money on clothes and the decided lack of opportunity to spend it on women. (I've since corrected the problem, to a degree. Though I still haven't really learned a thing about clothing, I find walking into a clothes shop with a helpless look and simply throwing my wallet at any shop girl willing to pity me takes the fashion problem safely out of my hands, where I would otherwise do the most damage).

Those of you who enjoy the luxury of not wasting your money with the repetitive frenzy only the young, single and stupid tend to employ might well ask what a "graphic novel" even is. A graphic novel is a comic book that costs far more than any comic book has a right to. Whenever a comic writer takes a half-decent stab at creating something other than two big guys in tights pummeling the loving shit out of each other, it's hailed in the comics industry as something of a curious and celebrated anomaly. A stack of six or seven issues of this shit-pummelingless work are then collected, bound up attractively, and sold for the price of an excellent dinner at an upscale restaurant. Then guys like me fork over the larcenous amount, crack open the thing on the way out of the store, and are usually finished reading the damned thing before we get home. (As good as the best graphic novel can be, it's still just drawings and word balloons. If you can't whip through thirty pages with as many words on each page in less time than it takes to microwave popcorn, you're sadly in need of an addiction to phonics.) Then all my friends would borrow the graphic novels and not have to pay a dime. Come to think of it, I've yet to get many of them back.

The best of these "graphic novel" authors was and remains Alan Moore, comicdom's answer to Orson Welles. Moore pioneered the "comics as art" movement, putting out phone book-sized tomes like "Watchmen" and "From Hell". In 1999, Moore kept the streak alive with a neat little series called "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen". Due mainly to the disposable, poorly-directed incomes of confused bachelors like myself, it ended up being one of the best-selling comics of the year. If we'd only bothered to put it into RRSPs instead, there'd be a lot more senior citizens retiring in forty years with a sizeable nest egg to spend on Lord of the Rings DVDs.

The premise was a refreshingly comic booky one—your standard issue super-powered team of crimefighters—with an interesting little twist. Moore's heroes were culled from the fantasy of literature: Allen Quatermain; Captain Nemo; The Invisible Man; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; and Mina Harker of "Dracula" fame. He then re-imagined them as a collection of "extraordinary gentlemen" (a tip of the hat to the language of the time), fighting crime in the 1890's and locking horns with literary villains like Sherlock Holmes nemesis Moriarty. Moore's "League" stories were painstakingly researched and amusingly faithful to the time period, but with a modern satiric take on the many inequalities and now antiquated mores of that time period. Essentially, it was a neat idea, neatly told. It cost me more money to read than I'd like to admit. And that, it seemed, was that.

Then Spider-Man made all the money in the known universe, and Hollywood decided to grab every comic book property available in the hope of making it a blockbuster feature film. One of the properties grabbed up was Moore's "League". It's now been commoditized into palatable movie form, raped of all its neatness, and given an extreme name (LXG) that gives one the unfortunate image of Sean Connery making frantic crossing gestures over his crotch area.

The differences between Moore's geekily interesting "League" and Hollywood's explosion/breast/gunfight-driven LXG spectacle are, as far as I can see, worthy of every last bit of disdain we as North Americans are capable of conveying to its makers. Don't be stingy with that disdain, folks. Just wedge it in there, there's still room up in the upper right.

Though LXG's time period is still ostensibly 1899, the main characters now drive, against all reason, sporty convertible coupes. Villains shoot, against all reason, fully automatic weapons and rocket launchers. The character of Captain Nemo is now, against all reason, leaping into the air and spin-kicking opponents. The character of Mina Harker, whose role in the comic was that of a strong female leader fighting against Victorian sexism, is now (against all reason) a vampire kung fu master who wears hip-hugging pleather and fights in slow motion. Instead of four characters, we now (A.A.R.) have seven—three apparently added on the sole basis that the film should be infinitely more confusing than its source material.

I suppose I could get into a long clichéd rant about the ability of Hollywood to take absolutely anything intelligent and multi-layered and transform it into a blundering farce of vampire kung fu masters fighting in slow motion. To be completely honest, however, I don't have the energy. Is there anybody out there who's still in the dark about most Hollywood movies being idiotic dogshit?

Normally, this would be the part in the review where I tell you to avoid the film at all costs and simply go out and buy the source material on which it was based. Bearing in mind my earlier comments about graphic novels, though, I'll spare you.

I'm not suggesting you see the film, of course. It looks asinine, and any money sent its way would only be interpreted as encouragement for further installments in the franchise. The author's already been paid, so seeing the film won't make him any richer. Instead, I invite you to simply do what everyone else does; take advantage of the one-year period of my life where I blew all my money on graphic novels, pop down and borrow it off me, and then simply don't return it. I'll check to see if LXG: The Graphic Novel's been taken out of the lending library yet.