regretted preference:Melvin ...

Check it out here: http://tinyurl.com/3625hk

Glad to hear you enjoyed it.

I'm frustrated by that you can't see the problem with your own labelling of the female characters as "heartless", "evil" and "bitches" and that those are your chief evidence for your serious charge of misogyny against Powell. Those labels are *yours*. You want to make them Powell's, but they are not supported by the material in the book. If Powell himself had plainly cast the female characters as being without remorse and with willful cruelty you'd have a case for those labels, but he didn't.

But because of the detailed description of the events it seems Moore only wants this as backstory for his future League stories. Much like the Almanac in the back of Volume 2. I did enjoy it though and thought it was entertaining. But like others have said it's basically a sourcebook. Just a very nicely packaged one. Though I'd argue a more complicated narrative would have detracted from the other elements which is basically the meat of the book. League III on the other hand sounds like a much stronger work.

Not sure what to make of Chinatown. As someone who enjoys the Goon for it's humor (though Satans Sodomy Baby was such a major letdown... how could it not be though) it was hard for me to get into and I kind of wondered if a straight up serious Goon story just can't work because of the inherent silliness of the property. I do think the sequence with Goon looking in the mirror was pretty impressive.

Need to purchase Short Comings.

Honestly, it just seems like you guys weren't willing to take the book on its own terms. If you thought it was a failure in that context, that's one thing, but you keep saying things like "It didn't have enough story" and "it's just pastiche" as if those inherently devalued it. Which I don't get. People who claim that LoEG is just an elaborate bit of fanfic are absolutely right, and also completely missing the point. What's wrong with fanfic, if it's done well?

And I fail to see what the $30 price tag has to do with narrative, unless you felt that last set of encyclopedias you bought had an anticlimactic resolution.

Does anyone have a link to one of these interviews where Moore talks about how brilliant he is (other than that "It's the greatest thing since oxygen" quote, which was obviously intended as joking hyperbole)?

To illuminate my point about the Wodehouse pastiche and extend it to other parts of the book: I enjoyed it very much and thought it was well-done...but *because* it was a well-done pastiche, I found myself thinking "This is an entertaining and well-done Wodehouse pastiche" rather than simply reading it as a story. In previous LoEG volumes, Moore has used characters and plots from other works; in this one he's using their form, as well, and that changes how one approaches it.

"At any rate, Moore’s goal with The Black Dossier is simply to provide a backdrop for future adventures; it’s a sourcebook, but one that he’s decided to give a narrative. That’s the irony here. This is the equivalent of “The Handbook of the Marvel Universe”, but because it strives for something a lot more elaborate, people are misreading it and coming away disappointed."

Perhaps because one expects form to follow function to some extent? The Marvel Universe handbook is written in a straightforward manner because that's the best way to convey information efficiently. The ABC-Z book had an overview of "Top Ten" in comic form, but it took the form of a straightforward tour and character introduction, and by being in comics form, it was able to take advantage of the strengths of that form (a picture being worth a thousand words, and being able to use text to convey what a picture can't). On the other hand, by hybridizing an entertainment form with an informational purpose, the Black Dossier has to live up to both expectations. That's not misreading; that's expecting the work to live up to the implicit promise the author makes when choosing the tools with which to create his work.

The contents of the Dossier reach both extremes: the 1984-style Tijuana Bible doesn't really convey any information but is entertaining (in no small part because the mismatch between form and function makes it funny); the section on the French and German Leagues isn't especially entertaining but is informative (much like the travelogue in the back of volume 2, although that did have its moments). The Wodehouse pastiche was entertaining but took four pages to convey information that could have been stated in one sentence (and had already been referenced earlier in the book). "The Crazy Wide Forever" isn't really either; it's written in a form that isn't all that popular *and* is the antithesis of clearly conveying information.

What it comes down to is that the form in which a creator chooses to present their work is a key element of that work (arguably one of the most important), and while it's valid for the artist to choose whatever form they wish, it's equally valid for the audience to take it into account when responding to the work. (That's one of the reasons why I quit reading Cerebus around the "Reads" storyline: as an artist Sim had the right to hijack his narrative into a commentary on the state of the comics industry at the time, and as a reader I had the right not to care.)

Yes, but it also means that Greg's point is to criticize the book for something it wasn't particularly trying to do but that he wanted it to do.

Like, "Man, Frank Miller doesn't draw people the way they look;" it would be an accurate criticism, but it would also completely miss the point of the art.

Many of the things Moore does do in this book are truly, almost undeniably brilliant. Unfortunately, the story is not one of them, but to just focus on it when it was an afterthought to all the other work seems reductive.

ditto Black Dossier... of course, i was going to buy it on general principle, but i wasn't sure whether i needed to get it now or if i could just wait for the softcover.

think i might wait.

At any rate, Moore’s goal with The Black Dossier is simply to provide a backdrop for future adventures; it’s a sourcebook, but one that he’s decided to give a narrative.

I don't want to put words in his mouth and I haven't read the book yet myself (it's not available here in Europe) but it seems to me that pretty much confirms Greg's point; It has lots of interesting bits and pieces but fails as a story.

As for Mirna, as I mentioned, the Goon apologizes to her, and I get the sense that we're supposed to side with him and see her reaction as unreasonable, as far as I can tell. I certainly think that Mirna's reaction is justified, but again, I got the feeling from the way Powell presents it that we're supposed to be angry at her. But that's just my interpretation.

Moore does imply that his work is so much better than everyone else's, and ties it to the culture dying. I'm just not sure how aping past styles makes his point. People are reacting negatively to some of the stuff in the Black Dossier because it's boring, not because it's done in a style they can't handle.