I was reading The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Century 2009 recently, and there were a few panels of Mina and Orlando waiting to meet Norton, the Prisoner of London and the background displays some highly-militarised Bobbies that looked so familiar that I just knew I'd seen them elsewhere. Now, almost everything in the Century books is a reference to something, so that's not really a huge revelation, but this one twigged something deep in my memory, so I had to go digging. I'd been on a bit of an Alan Moore kick lately, so thankfully I didn't have to go through much to find what I was looking for, a bound edition of Marvel UK's Captain Britain. Without going into a major history of Marvel UK and the stuff they were doing in the 1970s and '80s, whilst many of the stories published are considered to be canonical with the 616 Universe, being a smaller and semi-independent operation, they were able to get away with quite a bit. For example, did you know that in the 616 universe, Great Britain entered a fascist dictatorship for a little bit in the 1980s, where mutants and superheroes were put in concentration camps, but no one other than the victims remember it?
Not only was that a thing that happened in the pages of Captain Britain, and was the origin of his future wife Meggan, but there were some distinctive Dystopian Militarised Bobbies pushing mutants and other "undesirables" around. Ok, so 1984(ish) and 2009 are a little far apart, and Moore is famous for nothing if not using other people's ideas in new and interesting ways, but it got me thinking how "linked" Moore's work may actually be. A lot can be discounted quickly, like V for Vendetta, Watchmen and even From Hell (in the LXG books, Jack the Ripper is also Mac the Knife), also probably anything that happened in the DCU, although I love the idea of Swamp Thing being part of the Blazing World. Moore got his start in comics writing Doctor Who for Radio Comics, writing adventures for the First Doctor, who also appears in Century 2009, in the same scene as the armoured police, so it's possible that there is a cannonical link there, in the same way the Marvel UK comics from the 1980s are connected to the Transformers comics as well as the broader Marvel 616 continuity.
Much like my previous, "Crafting the Hellboy Cinematic Universe" article, this isn't so much about solid links across diverse media as it is just taking a look at what the options are and having a bit of a think about it. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series is already awash in crossovers and references to anything and everything that engages Moore's interests (24, Little Britain and Harry Potter being some of the more unexpected ones), so cramming more in there is probably a waste of time, but it's kind of my thing and I can't help myself. I haven't read Lost Girls yet, does that work? I'm pretty sure half of those girls died in LXG, but it may be worth a look. Alan Moore himself appeared as an "Anarchist Wizard" in a Hellblazer comic, so does he exist somewhere, probably in a pub? Man, now I want an Alan Moore mini for my modern horror/urban fantasy/superheroes stuff, that would be cool. Something else I need to hunt down, I guess, so look out for that at some stage.
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