Currently fearful of the forthcoming film, "League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen". Or, "LXG" as the poster people like to annoyingly call it.
I’m an admirer of Mr Moore and Mr O’Neill’s comic, and indeed am currently digesting an excellent book about the comic, called <a href="http://www.monkeybrainbooks.com/Heroes_and_Monsters.html">"Heroes & Monsters"</a>. The comic, set as it is in an 1890s alternative universe where everything fictional is real, is full of references to Victorian literature, some of them so obscure that it takes this secondary work to collate them all.
For instance, this is what "Heroes and Monsters says" about one panel in LoEG Vol 2:
<img align=left src="http://www.thefourthrail.com/images/features/0902/loeg3panel2.jpg"></img>
"The giant beetle in the vacuum tube is the Beetle, from Richard Marsh's The Beetle (1897). In that novel, a shapechanging Egyptian princess, who can take the form of a giant, malign beetle, a beautiful androgyne, and an old woman or man, pursues a vendetta against a British M.P."
<p><p><p>So naturally, I had to track down that novel, with much thanks to Mr Amazon zShops.
The film version doesn't bode at all well. Not least because Eddie Izzard actually turned it down. Which must mean it's not as good as "The Avengers". Gulp!
Something that particularly vexes me is the inclusion of Dorian Gray, which is fair enough, but they've clearly tampered with the whole point of Mr Wilde's character. In the book, Mr Gray is blond and clean-shaven, a perpetually boyish Adonis.
So what do you reckon, Dear Reader? Will Hollywood be faithful to this description? Will they refrain from just sticking poor Mr Stuart "Queen Of The Turkeys" Townsend in a silly dark wig and goatee, in the hope cinekids won't notice it's not Johnny Depp?
<img src="http://images.zap2it.com/ltvimages/images/240/stuarttownsend_leagueofextraordinarygentlemen_240_001.jpg"></img>
No.
