League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 2009

Clearly not a regular customer of Daniel Antony: The Modern Barber of Northampton

a post from two years ago
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Alan Moore's new comic League of Extraordinary Gentlemen III Century 2009 is the third and final part of the third outing of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. In the comic book shop where I bought it, it was in a display right next to the DC Comics' Watchmen prequels which came out last week: Silk Spectre, Nite Owl, Minutemen & The Comedian. If Moore had seen that display it might have given him a stroke: his brand new creation donuted by DC's "hack work." Actually I've had mixed feelings about these prequels. Initially I was opposed, thinking them a creatively bankrupt way for DC to squeeze more money out of comic book nerds and Watchmen completists. But then as I saw the impressive cast of artists and writers involved I began to wonder if DC weren't just doing what Moore was doing by appropriating such iconic characters as Raffles, Malcolm Tucker, Jack Carter etc. (without compensating the copyright holders) for his comic; so I decided to give the Watchmen prequels the benefit of the doubt. But last week I finally read the first issues of the first four Watchmen prequels and I have to say that even in this disinterested neutral state of grace I found them pretty underwhelming. The artwork was better than the story, but really if this is the best that the mainstream comics industry can come up with in 2012 then probably the doomsayers are right and comic books are in for a very tough few years ahead. The Watchmen prequels are timid, clumsy and hamfistedly literal in their interpretations of these characters. They lack a cinematic vision and, so far, bring nothing new to the table in terms of mythology. My favourite was probably J Michael Straczynski's Nite Owl, but even that was just so darn...obvious. 
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Back to Century 2009: ok so whats it all about then? Well Century 2009 follows up on what we learned in Century 1969 where Jack Carter, looking a lot like Michael Caine, tracked down the cultists who killed Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones and brought East End gangland vengeance to an Aleister Crowley figure who was just about to jump into Mick Jagger's body at a free Stones festival in Hyde Park. The League of Gentlemen were also on the trail of the Crowley cultists because they feared the cult had a plan to bring forth a demonic child who would in turn somehow cause the apocalypse. In Century 2009 the demonic child has been born and he sounds an awful lot like Harry Potter something which I thought was pretty funny. Meanwhile Malcolm Tucker (from The Thick Of It), the Prime Minister's Press Secretary, is trying to defuse an out of control war in the country of Q'mar which got started under President Bartlett (from the West Wing). 
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The main delight in Century 2009 is spotting these borrowings because actually the story isn't that brilliant or exciting until the very end when the most powerful faery in the United Kingdom shows up to save the world from the Harry Potter Moonchild run amok. (Alan Moore and I am in complete agreement as to who this powerful faery might be.) As an intellectual game I think I enjoyed getting the insider refs more than I dug the actual narrative (an Andy Millman here, a James Bond there, a lovely Queequeg's chain of Coffee Shops) which, alas, is probably the weakest installment of League III. 
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So is it worth buying? Aye, I reckon so. In these times of tightened belts I'd suggest that you skip the Watchmen prequels entirely until they come out in graphic novel form to your local library (I believe DC when they say that viewed all together the prequels will form an impressive multi-arcing story) but if you're into British pop culture or Alan Moore or League I and II, then League III is worth getting, just don't expect transcendence. 

Harry Potter and The Chamber of Chavs

My eldest daughter has started reading Harry Potter and she loves the books. The Potter novels have opened an exciting, cool, imaginative world for her and for this I am grateful to JK Rowling. I am not that familiar with the Potterverse because as Richard Harris explained when asked why he hadn't read any Harry Potter novels in preparation for his role as Dumbledore "it just ain't my kind of reading". But that's ok - these are books for kids and kids love them. As my daughter has read me bits and pieces out of the novels I have become more aware of the characters and the plot and I can see that there are strong female role models which is a very good thing and I haven't come across any racist or bigoted stereotypes, also good.
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However there is one thing that worries me about JK Rowling's world and that boils down to class. It seems to me that whenever a muggle villain appears in the Harry Potter universe they are always fat, vulgar, blingy and common. In other words they're a chav. As I understand it the Potter novels are about a bunch of special children who go off to boarding school to learn arcane things that the poor unfortunate muggle children couldnt dream of. JK Rowling went to private school as did a very small, privileged 5% of the UK population. Prince Charles has endorsed the Harry Potter books and its no wonder. He took a steam train north to a drafty, rather dangerous boarding school in Scotland when he was a lad and he would have sent William and Harry there too but for Diana's insistence that they remain closer to home. It's interesting that in the clips I've seen of the Potter films all the children at Hogwarts speak in nice accents. Are there poor kids there? Do you have to board? What if you can't go because you have to help out in your parents' shop or look after your siblings because your mother goes to work?  I don't know...
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As an aside, I find it completely baffling that boarding schools still exist in the real world in 2011. Why have kids in the first place if all you want to do is send them away for their entire childhood? There's something very perverse, creepy and Dickensian about this whole idea and I can't help thinking that parents who send their children away are morally suspect. 
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But back to the chavs - Ms Rowling - who's as thin as a rake - seems to have a particular hatred for anyone who has let themselves go. She devotes quite a bit of  time describing the rolls of fat in Harry's uncle's neck and we are clearly meant to despise this vulgar chocolate biscuit eating oaf. We also are meant to hate anyone (like Harry's aunt) who's overly concerned with money - this, of course, is also a ghastly, vulgar pretension of the lower orders. And Harry's poor aunt makes things worse by her desperate and unintentionally funny attempts at social climbing. It seems to me that the worst thing you can be in the Potterverse is a chubby, state educated, commoner who has no interest in magic but who wants to earn a few quid and try to get ahead. I think Malfoy is supposed to be a spoiled rich kid looking down on Potter and his ilk, but Malfoy's only a strawman sort of villain and his problem seems to be is that he isn't an aristocrat - old money - but a jumped up nouveau riche type. What Rowling is telling us in these books is that 1) we should trust the true aristocracy and that 2) the lower classes shouldn't put on airs or attempt to rise above their station - if they're not special enough to get accepted to Hogwarts they should know their place and doff their caps to the privately educated elite who have been running England for the last two centuries and will almost certainly be running it two centuries from now. As anyone who has studied the Great Reform Act of 1832 will tell you the English rulling classes are past masters at maintaining their position through faux liberalism while not so secretely promoting a deeply conservative agenda. 
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Maybe I'm wrong about this. I certainly don't know the material well enough to justify my argument with more examples so perhaps you, gentle reader, could provide some counterfactuals to set me straight...If I'm wrong I'll do the decent thing and admit it.

Is The Harry Potter Thing Over Now?

I couple of days ago I read a review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Harrows, on my old pal Girish Shahane's blog. Now, if I recall correctly, Deathly Harrows is the last of the Potter books! So that's it then is it? This is the last Harry Potter film of the last Harry Potter book? Is it all over now? If so I must say I'm relieved. I've never gotten on board the Harry Potter train myself whether at Kings Cross station nor anywhere else. The books bored me silly and the clips of the films I've seen on TV looked pretty dire: a bunch of obnoxious English boarding school kids pointing magic wands at each other...Hmmm. I'm glad children seem to enjoy these novels and I hope it's got a lot of them reading, but I've never understood the appeal they have for adults. Still I'm not complaining at the moment, I'm just glad that after ten long years it's finally finished. Unless Ms Rowling writes another one of course.
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On another topic entirely...Girish also has an interesting post about an incident from our college days here.