The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Century- 1910 by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neil

In 1910, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is headed by Mina Murray, and Thomas Carnacki, A.J. Raffles, Alan Quatermain and Orlando, a figure who shifts from male to female and back over time or is a hermaphrodite- it's hard to tell.

Carnacki is dreaming of a sinister cult bringing forth a special child, and a special stone- a moonstone and a moon child. He also dreams of a young woman swimming naked under the moon. He awakens in his bed with a shout.

That girl is Janni, the daughter of Captain Nemo. He wishes her to take over his place as head of the crew of the Nautilus, as he is dying, but she does not wish to do so. Instead, she swims out to a passing boat in the moonlight...

Back in England, Carnacki awakes from the dream and warns the other members of the League. But he's recognized one of the men from his dream- who seems oddly familliar, and Carnacki says he's an occultist, so he, Mina, Alan and Orlando go to an occultist gathering to look for the man Simon Iff while Raffles steals his file from the club.

Meanwhile, Janni arrives in London and takes a job in a low-class dive as a waitress. On his island, her father dies, and passes on the Nautilus and his legacy to her through his second-in-command, Ishmael. He tracks her to London and offers her the Nautilus and command of it and the men aboard her, but she says she doesn't want it. To do that, she must be a fanatic, and she isn't a fanatic.

As Mina and her team track down Simon Iff, Janni is assaulted in the tavern and raped by several of the patrons there who are infuriated by her refusal to make extra money by catering to their sexual needs, and she determines on a bloody revenge to assuage her pain and anger. And when Mina and her group track down Iff and his disciples, he says he has no idea what Carnacki's dream is about, and he is patently telling the truth. But after they leave, he is intrigued by the idea. What has the fledgling League set in motion, and where will it end?

This is a comic both like and unlike the other league comics- for one thing, it's a much shorter story in this graphic novel. But this is only the first of three planned series under this title, and the next one is set to take place in the 1960's or so I hear.

This takes place between the second League of Extraordinary Gentlemen book and the stand-alone 'Black Dossier'. Since BD was only published in America, some of the information given in that series is recapped here. Such as, the man that Mina is with is given out to be the Son of Allan/Alan Quatermain, but he is actually Alan Quatermain himself, who bathed with Mina in the pool of Ayesha/She and brought back to the prime of his life, and made immortal. Mina is now also immortal. We also get to meet Orlando again, the person who switches between male and female gender slowly over time (or at least that's how I read it).

But here we also get to see the introduction of new characters, from Jack MacHeath (descendant of "Mack the Knife" who is also "Jack the Ripper"), and Janni, Captain Nemo's daughter and the source of the song "Pirate Jenny" (at least, according to this universe).

This does tell a self-contained tale about the Whitechapel Ripper, along with the two continuing stories, and in the back of the book are some vignettes in which how Mina and Allan becane immortal, in which Mina encounters the frozen body of Moriarty, her one-time foe, floating in space, and another story in which it is implied that Orlando is O, from "The Story of O."

The story wasn't that long, but it sets the seeds for the story yet to come, filling it out with a story of Jack the Ripper/Mack the Knife. I can't wait to see what happens next- but I hear that by the third and last installment, The League will be down to one person- Orlando, who will be a soldier in a war. I'm not sure if I'll like it, but it Will be interesting. Recommended.