Connected universes are really big right now, where once a movie or story had to stand alone, now, it’s all the rage to make a massive connected continuity. Before it was the norm, there was the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a world where literary figures are real and interacting with one another, sometimes working together or fighting and opposing each other. How did this order begin? Let’s find out!
During the reign of Queen Gloriana I of England, she would bring together a mighty league under the command of Prospero, a powerful wizard. His team, which included an individual named Orlando who would become a frequent member of future teams as well, would go on several adventures in the seventeenth century around Europe. The team would continue operating throughout the 1600s for decades under the name of Prospero’s Men.
In the mid-eighteenth century, Lemuel Gulliver would begin his own team to do similar adventures. Orlando returns to joining Gulliver’s Fellowship, this time in the form of a woman. Orlando has the ability to take on the form of a man or a woman and live forever. Several of their adventures had them returning to lands Gulliver had experienced on his own travels. In the penultimate year of the century, the team would disperse with the death, from old age, of Gulliver.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the most famous team of what had become known as the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen would form. Lead by Mina Murray, she would gather her team, just as much to handle missions for the crown as to also corral such dangerous minds and bodies. Mina would find love with teammate, Alan Quartermaine, a love that would last over a century. The team’s fame came from helping stop the Martian invasion, thanks to Mr. Hyde sacrificing himself against an attacking force and the hybrid creation of Doctor Moreau.
Mina and Alan would go on to find a fountain that allowed eternal youth for those who bathed in it and would continue leading teams into the twentieth century. They would even meet former member Orlando and begin a long running companionship with them. Times would get weirder and weirder for the League as masked heroes would rise as well as a dark government regime. It would be a period of missing teammates and facists ruling over.
Then came the Antichrist’s looming threat that was predicted by Prospero and warned of to Mina, Alan, and Orlando. The fight with the Antichrist, a wizard boy named Potter, would lead to the death of Quartermaine and the arrival of divine intervention in the one called Poppins to stop the end of the world. By the twenty-second century, Mina Murray and Orlando are joined by one Emma Knight to live out their own adventures.
There you have it! The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen took a simple, yet fun, concept and really went all out by the end of it. Literary characters uniting to explore and protect the world is a great idea then going even further into just all British media and getting even weirder. The series was adapted into a film that was a disaster behind the scenes. Who knows if we’ll ever see the League again now that its creators have claimed retirement. See you next time!
Suggested Reading
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The Nemo Trilogy
Dr. Bustos
drbustos@comicattack.net
