Judging a work of art is virtually the same mental operation as judging human beings, and requires the same aptitudes: first, a real love of works of art, an inclination to praise rather than blame, and regret when a complete rejection is required; second, a vast experience of all artistic activities; and last, an awareness, openly and happily accepted, of one’s own prejudices. Some critics fail because they are pedants whose ideal of perfection is always offended by a concrete realization. Others fail because they are insular and hostile to what is alien to them; these critics, yielding to their prejudices without knowing they have them and sincerely offering judgments they believe to be objective, are more excusable than those who, aware of their prejudices, lack the courage to enter the lists to defend their personal tastes.

I'm surprised no British readers have commented that this doubles as a very contemporary reference, like the surveillance cameras/telescreens referred to later.  Currently there is an ongoing campaign by the Labour government to bring in Identity Cards, supposedly as a counter-terrorism measure - though this argument has essentially bitten the dust and the government are pressing on with the argument that it's all to save the people from the scourge of Identity Theft.  Either way, ID Cards are enormously controversial in Britain right now, especially as, once introduced, it would in theory be a legal requirement to carry them at all times (a measure popularly cited as part of the progress toward a 'Big Brother state').  Britain previously had ID cards during the Second World War, and afterwards, but they were finally withdrawn in the 1950s, somewhat consistent with the fall of the IngSoc regime depicted in this comic.  An additional irony worth considering is that 'George Orwell', the famous British socialist who envisioned the tyranny of 1984, of course was a pseudonym for a man named 'Blair'...

Anyway, the ID card is in keeping with Orwell, but I'd say it's also a contemporary reference, without question.

Many of these are clearly riffs on actual underground stations (while Pen Stroke Newington and Ink Staines allude to the areas of London named Stoke Newington and Staines respectively). Some of these include:
Maida Jump (Maida Vale),
(Earl's) Court Short,
Dunbiers Wood (Colliers Wood),
Tooting Bottom (Tooting Bec)
Parsons Nose (Parsons Green)
Eating Broadly (Fulham Broadway)
Rothernot (Rotherhithe),
Finner (Pinner),
Faxbridge (Uxbridge),
East Team (East Ham),
Arson Elbow (Arsenal),
Barking (Barking),
Whiteout City (White City),
Very Cross (Charing/New Cross).
More subtlely, 'Umber' could play on "Burnt Oak" and 'Chin Topiary' allude to the "Barbican". (Interesting that "Moorgate", "Moor Park" and "Bond Street" didn't make it onto the map.)

"(John Nee) - Extension delayed subject to mood" and "(ABC) - Closed for the duration" are both legends the like of which appear in Underground stations from time to time, and whose associated double meanings are obvious here.

"Monument" Station also serves as one for Bill Oakley (1964-2004), to whom this volume is dedicated."

Various things can be seen or inferred here, although no doubt some of this is entirely in my imagination.

There are two real stations mentioned, Barking and Monument.

Alan Moore: Black line (Northern)
Black is probably appropriate for Moore, as he's usually photographed dressed in black.

Moore's line has junctions with O'Neill, Dimagmaliw, Oakley and Klein, but, perhaps signigficantly, not with Dunbier or Quinn. (There is some sort of unidentified link from Dunbier's line to Moore's, which may indicate some link between them personally.)

East Buttock & West Buttock: This may indicate Moore having to figuratively 'bend over and spread 'em' for DC.

In general Moore's stations seem to be him poking fun at his own public image, like Rumour mill, Barking and Very Cross. Pi is also interesting, as the irrational number Pi(3.1415 etc) is the number he ascribes to the 'imaginary' sphere, Daath, in issue #20 of Promethea. E=mc2 is *almost* MCC, the home of English Cricket.

Kevin O'Neill: Red line(Central)
The fact that O'Neill has the red line might be a play on the banking meaning of being 'in the red,' that is being 'overdrawn.' O'Neill is also 'Subject to delay at all times.' I'm fairly sure there was some reference to his slow progress with the art in the early pages of one of the other LoEG volumes.

Staines is where Sacha Baron Cohen's Ali G comes from.

Conté make crayons.

Crazy Town was a 1932 Betty Boop movie.

Various interesting people come from Stoke Newington, including Daniel Defoe, and more particularly Stewart Lee, stand-up comedian and good friend of Alan Moore.

There is a large head on a flat-bed truck in the top left-hand corner, possibly from a statue of Big Brother?

Is it possible that the blond-haired man in the lower left-hand corner is a young John Constantine? Well, now that I look him up, obviously not, as he's meant to have been born in 1953. Some searching around leads me to guess that this might be a character from Colin McInnes's Absolute Beginners, which is set in 1958. Not sure who exactly, but someone will probably know more about this. It's possibly the nameless narrator.

Presumably the man with the briefcase in the front middle is someone, but I've no idea who. Likewise the two men speaking at the very front middle.

"A dry martini," he said. "One. In a deep champagne goblet."
"Oui, monsieur."
"Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon-peel. Got it?"

It was a dark, clean-cut face, with a three-inch scar showing whitely down the sunburned skin of the right cheek. The eyes were wide and level under straight, rather long black brows. The hair was black, parted on the left, and carelessly brushed so that a thick black comma fell down over the right eyebrow. The longish straight nose ran down to a short upper lip below which was a wide and finely drawn but cruel mouth. The line of jaw was straight and firm. A section of dark suit, white shirt and black knitted tie completed the picture.

And I would like a medium Vodka dry Martini - with a slice of lemon peel. Shaken and not stirred, please. I would prefer Russian or Polish vodka.

Anyway, in a wide shot of a street scene in this section, we see an old lady, dressed in a black coat, wearing glasses and a hat with flowers on it, looking pissed off at a passing car. This woman is the Grandmother from the weekly Giles cartoons that ran in the Daily Express. Giles mostly did political cartoons, but he alternated between politics and domestic cartoons about an unnamed Family cast of characters he'd created. His work was extremely popular. Grandma was a fairly bad tempered old thing & was the basis for an even more violent character in Cerebus the Aardvark. (Dave Sim was a Giles fan, and his version of the character wasn't so much a 'homage' as it was Sim simply lifting the character wholesale from Giles and plopping her down in Cerebus.)

if you are willing to give yourself eyestrain you can barely make out on the dark-blue tag attached to the bat, the words "Clicky-Ba".  The letters 'Cl-' on the first row and 'Ba' on the second row of the tag are the most legible, the other letters seem a scrawl. Thus, this apparent cricket bat, is none other than the 'club' of Chung, servant to the Wolf of Kabul, Bill Samson.  To explain the pith helmet, Samson was often described thus: "He walked with his hands thrust deep into his pockets, and a battered sun-helmet stuck on the back of his head". A sun-helmet is a common synonym for pith helmet.

was the first exhaustive study of the psychological laws underlying team play and esprit de corps, disciplines of criminal gangs, spirit of factory groups, crews, regiments, political parties, churches, professionalisms, aristocracies, patriotisms, class consciousness, organized research and constructive cooperation generally. It did for the first time correlate effectively the increasing understanding of individual psychology, with new educational methods and new concepts of political life. In spite of its unattractive title and a certain wearisomeness in the exposition, his book became a definite backbone for the constructive effort of the new time.

David MacDaniel's novel is ephemeral, and it was repeatedly stated by McGoohan and various members of the production that The Prisoner is not, in fact, John Drake (despite the John Drake picture X'd out at the beginning of the show.)  These statements from the production end (most recently on the  40th Anniversary DVD release) are hobbled a tiny bit, however, by the appearance of an actor playing a character named Potter in both Danger Man and The Prisoner, albeit the character being quite different in each iteration, by the original reference in the story treatments to the Prisoner as "Drake" (he was referred to as P as pre-production and production went on) and by the repurposing of an unused Danger Man script, "The Girl Who Was Death," in the last four episodes of the series -- and there's that passing reference there to "Drake."  But the official line is that the Prisoner wasn't Drake.  More entertainingly, the producers have been known to  speculate that, given the final episode, the series actually took place with in a virtual reality, or entirely in the Prisoner's mind while he was drugged to the gills.

On the 'Drake as Prisoner' suggestion, it should be noted that, although McGoohan and others denied that they were the same character, George Markstein, co-creator of (and script editor on) The Prisoner stated on several occasions that they WERE. One suggestion for the purported confusion is that the character (and name) of John Drake were created and owned by Ralph Smart, so overt identification of the two was either impossible for legal reasons, or undesirable as the rights were not McGoohan's.

 I adored Callan -- bitterly cynical, wonderful work from Edward Woodward.  Meres wasn't Callan's superior, though -- he was his peer (as
was Cross, after Anthony Valentine left for a while.)  Meres was an arrogant, impulsive, and thoroughly sociopathic twat, a former public schoolboy and Oxford graduate who certainly had ambitions beyond his station; he was, however, unlikely to assume the position of Hunter, which Callan did for a while.  In the initial story, "A Magnum For Schneider" (based on James Mitchell' stage play, and done as an Armchair Theater episode) Meres (played by Peter Bowles rather than Valentine) is asigned to keep an eye on Callan, and then set him up for the police to arrest once he's completed his  mission -- Callan promptly turns the tables and leaves Meres for the cops instead.  As a result Callan ends up with his dossier assigned to a Red File (hence the novel version being called A Red File For Callan; the movie adaptation, with Peter Egan as Meres, is just called Callan.)  The series generally partners Callan and Meres, with Callan as often as not managing to screw Meres over.  All the same, I wouldn't call Meres less skilled or less adept than Callan -- Callan's conscience often gets in the way, although he can summon a vicious coldness when he needs to.  If anything, Meres is sometimes a little exciteable because he enjoys his work.  Cross, on the other hand, was less adept and more vulnerable, which eventually causes his death.  Oh, and after Callan, brainwashed, kills a Hunter at the end of series two, it's Meres that shoots Callan -- and then proceeds to show concern and care, which is really rather freaky.

Not only a reference to 1984, this also reminds me of the modern term of nonperson. "A non-person is a person or a member of a group who lacks, loses, or is forcibly denied social or legal status, especially basic human rights, or who effectively from a point of view of traceability, documentation or existence, ceases to have a record of their existence within a society."

Unfortunately, this is one of several similarities with the Big Brother-era England of fiction and today's actual Europe (and the Western World in general), a protagonist on the so called "War on Terrorism" and a "Fortress" guarding its shores and cities against undesirable elements (immigrants) that the aforementioned war causes. It's common that such undesirable people may be abducted, tortured, illegally interrogated or disappear completely; or European countries may cooperate and abet to such actions taking place (by some other western power) in their territories.

Norman Pett's "Jane's Journal: The Diary of a Bright Young Thing" first appeared in the Daily Mirror on December 5th 1932, with his wife as the model. In 1938 Don Freeman came on board as writer, and in 1939, when his wife decided golf was more interesting than posing for him, Pett found the model who was to become Jane in most people's eyes, Christabel Leighton-Porter. C L-P also played the role of Jane in the 1949 film version of the strip, The Adventures of Jane. In 1948 Pett's assistant Michael Hubbard took over as artist, and the last strip, when Jane finally married her long-standing boyfriend Georgie, was on October 10th 1959.J

Jane was revived in a BBC television series, simply called "Jane," starring Glynis Barber, which ran from August 1982 to September 1984.  

As Leighton-Porter's obituary in The Telegraph put it, "Jane was forever shutting her skirt in doors, reaching for her towel in the bath, or romping unclad in tropical ponds. Even the slightest breeze could reduce her to a bra and frilly cami-knickers."

Jane's popularity with the troops during the Second World War is such that it is said that in 1943, on the first occasion that she lost all her clothes, the British 36th Division immediately gained six miles.

An anecdote from this site is worth repeating:

Christabel's favorite moment from the fame of being Jane occurred when the sexy showgirl, for once demurely dressed, met the then Lord Chamberlain. "Tell me my dear," asked the head of the royal household, "what do you do in your act?" "Well," explained Christabel, "at one stage I turn my back to the audience, take off my bra, and then cover my breasts with my hands as I turn 'round." There was a momentary silence, before the King's sidekick replied, "You must have very large hands."

This action is to some extent mirrored by Mina in Page 23, panels 1 & 2.

However, in the world of LoEG, perhaps the Daily Mirror did not actually run the cartoons, and rather the original appearance was the 1949 film, which would fit in with the chronology of the story rather well. Presumably when AQ refers to "that 'Adventures of Jane' series" he is referring to possibly a collection of Tijuana Bibles (TB) similar to the one bound into this, based on the film, which would have been produced by Pornsec.

Yuggoth... is a strange dark orb at the very rim of our solar system... There are mighty cities on Yuggoth—great tiers of terraced towers built of black stone... The sun shines there no brighter than a star, but the beings need no light. They have other subtler senses, and put no windows in their great houses and temples... The black rivers of pitch that flow under those mysterious cyclopean bridges—things built by some elder race extinct and forgotten before the beings came to Yuggoth from the ultimate voids—ought to be enough to make any man a Dante or Poe if he can keep sane long enough to tell what he has seen...

I think Moore is referencing the actual book "1 Enoch" from the pseudepigrapha, as well as the writings of John Dee and Edward Kelly. In 1 Enoch, there is a section where it describes how some of the "Watchers", who were fallen angels, took human wives and had children with them. Their descendents were a race of giants called the Nephillim (not unlike the Titans of Greek Mythology). Here's the link and quote from Wikipedia: "The first section of the book depicts the interaction of the fallen angels with mankind; Sêmîazâz compels the other 199 fallen angels to take human wives to have children." In the magical Enochian tradition “aethyrs” are various planes or worlds which surround and mingle with our own.

I think that the person people think is Chaplin is really the cross-eyed silent screen comedian Ben Turpin.  Take a look at his eyes, and that's definitely not Chaplin's "Tramp" hat.   Nor is theman with the riding crop Erich von Stroheim, who was heavier, had less hair, anda less prominent nose, and whose stern screen personality as "the man you loveto hate" makes it unlikely he would be depicted grinning and going "wow."

But that is an interesting hypothesis about Chaplin and Hynkel co-existing in the world of "League."  Or is it Chaplin's famous character the Tramp  that exists in the world of "League," rather than Chaplin himself?  In "The Great Dictator," a barber (who is essentially the Tramp with clothes in better condition) switches places with his lookalike, Adenoid Hynkel.  The real Hynkel is imprisoned in a concentration camp, while the benevolent barber takes  his place as ruler of Tomania.  Should we assume that this is how World War II ended in Europe in the world of "League"?

Bios is one of those original puns in Greek Philosophy. Depending upon where one puts the accent mark, it means variously bow or life. Heraclitus (frag. 48) says, the name of the bow is life, but it's task is death. Elsewhere (frag. 51) Heraclitus points to the unity of opposites and inherent tensions of life, seeing the bow as emblematic of the backturning (palintropos) characteristic of the unity of opposites which is life. Taken together, Bion can point to Orlando's own negotiation of the extreme's of "Fighting and Fucking" as s/he later puts it. It is also notable that Bion is the neuter form of Bios (which is masculine).

In the front left of the frame is Lurcio, a slave (and leading character) in the fondly remembered Seventies British sitcom "Up Pompei" (with one "i").  Drawn here to look like the popular comedian Frankie Howerd, who played the role.  In the same vein, the old man with the red toga is drawn to look like Max Adrian, who played Lurcio's owner, the wonderfully named Ludicrus Sextus and the young man to the right holding the slate is Ludicrus' insipid son, Nausius, who was forever writing odes of unrequited love, hence the slate.  The show was a bawdy, pun-ridden farce, theoretically based on the plays of Plautus, but clearly more indebted to "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum" and more specifically to the dozens of "Carry On" films that were churned out from the Fifties to the Seventies.

"1958, the year in which Black Dossier is set, was also the year in which the Candle in the Wind, the fourth part of T.H. White's Arthurian epic The Once and Future King, saw print, detailing the destruction of the dream that was Camelot. It can hardly be a coincidence then that in describing Arthurian Britain, Orlando refers to 'awesome, monstrously ugly Lancelot', who you can see here, hacking his way across the battlefield.

White's Lancelot, introduced in 1940's The Ill-Made Knight, is as brave and mighty as any other take on the character, but unique among Lancelots in being spectacularly ugly -- White describes him as ape-like. There's no doubt then that this is meant to be White's take on the hero, not least because, as Keith Kole rightly observes, there is a marked similarity between Kevin O'Neill's depictions of Lancelot, Caliban, and Edward Hyde.

On top of that, White's Lancelot is a sadist. It's not just that he's merely good at beating people up and killing them; he actively enjoys doing so and takes pleasure in inflicting pain on others. He's not just monstrously ugly, as Orlando opines, he is -- in effect -- himself a monster, slaughtering in the service of his queen. But that shouldn't surprise you, really, considering yesterday's observations on another rather more contemporary sadist .

I think it's fair to say that Lancelot's a far more attractive character than Bond, though. He may be a sadist, but he knows it, and is horrified by it. Deeply good, rather than ruthlessly amoral, his whole life is dedicated to controlling the beast that he is, to harnessing his monstrous tendencies so that his extraordinary abilities can be used for good, rather than evil.

It's rather tempting to consider Lancelot as a sort of proto-Hyde figure, considering not just his appearance but how Edward Hyde's character developed over the first two volumes of League.

It's also worth noting in this respect that O'Neill depicts Lancelot as looking suspiciously reminiscent of Sláine, the Celtic hero of 2000AD. Look at his armlet, and at that wide and ornate metal belt, and then note that that's pretty much all he's wearing: everyone else is wearing generic Celtic armour. Why? Well, the implication must be that that like Sláine and Cúchulainn, the Irish hero upon whom Sláine is largely based, Moore and O'Neill's Lancelot is warped , prone to berserker furies that transform him into a creature more like a beast than a man, and utterly invincible in battle. Echoes of Hyde again, methinks...

 

It's also striking that on the following page Beowulf (40.1) appears looking more than a little like Mike McMahon's depiction of Sláine, again complete with armlet and broad ornate metal belt. Orlando admits to not really having understood what Beowulf was, which raises that whole hero/monster question again. It's natural to see Beowulf as being in the same berserker model as Sláine and Hyde, considering his behaviour in the poem, and I can't help but think of the line in the new film where Grendel's mother notes that Beowulf is just as much a monster as her son."

Has anyone sourced the supposed rumor that Anne Boleyn was a fairy? By no means am I an expert in the field, but I have banged around a bit with the Tudors, and I've got to say this is a new one on me. From what I gather, the primary source for the six-fingers of Anne Boleyn is Nicholas Sander's "On the Origin and Progress of the English Schism", a Catholic work in Latin which has a pretty salacious description of Boleyn. The text infers that Boleyn was somehow the daughter of Henry VIII (don't ask me), but no where does it claim her to be a fairy, or an Elf, or whatever the actual period phrasing would have been.

I tend to the read the idea of Gloriana's mother being an elf as Moore making a literal connection between the allegory of Spenser's Fairie Queene and Elizabeth I rather than being sourced in an old time rumor.

He--for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it--was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters. It was the colour of an old football, and more or less the shape of one, save for the sunken cheeks and a strand or two of coarse, dry hair, like the hair on a cocoanut. Orlando's father, or perhaps his grandfather, had struck it from the shoulders of a vast Pagan who had started up under the moon in the barbarian fields of Africa; and now it swung, gently, perpetually, in the breeze which never ceased blowing through the attic rooms of the gigantic house of the lord who had slain him.

• “beloved Spanish aristocrat Quixote,” a.k.a. Don Quixote, from Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra's Don Quixote de La Mancha (1605-1615).
• “impoverished sea-captain Robert Owemuch,” from The Floating Island (1673), by “Frank Careless.”
• “ravishing courtesan Mistress St. Clair.” I believe this is a reference to Amber St. Clair, from Kathleen Winsor’s Forever Amber (1944). In the novel poor country girl St. Clair goes from being a prisoner at Newgate to the mistress of King Charles II.
• “Christian,” from John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim's Progress from this World to that Which is to Come (1678-1684). In Progress Christian, an Everyman, travels from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, visiting the Slough of Despond, the House of the Interpreter, and various other locales on the way.

Orlando returns to his immortalizing pool for no reason other than to carve his new name on the map beside it. Kevin draws this scene out, along with an image of the map itself, an elongated map of Africa with 2 x's and the word ORLANDO written next to the lower x. What could this be a reference to?

It was a common myth of the 14th to 18th century that somewhere there existed a Fountain of Youth, that could bestow youth and immortality. Most famously, Ponce De Leone, then governor of Puerto Rico, was convinced by local native myth that the Fountain of Youth existed somewhere north of Puerto Rico and somehow got the idea that this meant midland florida along the eastern coast. The fountain he ended up deciding on is located in St Augustine, FL where there is now a themepark type "historical site". If we see Kevin's map as florida, the peninsula stretching out towards the then known world of the carribean (not such a stretch), then the 2 x's are perfectly lined up to be Orlando, FL and St. Augustine, FL respect vely. St. Augustine is located due north and very slightly east of Orlando in about the same ratio to on a map of Florida as drawn in Kevin's map. This map alongside an african fountain of youth could have given someone the idea that the fountain or a similar one was located in St. Augustine, if that someone was a Carribean explorer like Ponce de Leon.

Of course, this presupposes that Orlando, FL was known as Orlando at the time.. but it was actually not named that until 1837... but how nitpicky can we be? There is no other explanation for this panel being awkwardly thrust into the narrative.

That is to say: 'Orlando's name inscribed on the map by the fountain of youth may be a reference to Ponce de Leon's search for a fountain of youth just north of Orlando, Florida'

• “unlucky mariner Lemuel Gulliver,” from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726).
• “trapper Natty Bumppo,” from from James Fennimore Cooper's five Leatherstocking novels, the most famous of which is The Last of the Mohicans (1826).
• “libertine Mistress Hill,” a.k.a. Fanny Hill.
• “dual-natured clergyman Dr. Syn,” from Russell Thorndike's Doctor Syn (1915) and its six prequels. In Doctor Syn the kindly and genial Reverend Doctor is the vicar of Dymchurch at the turn of the 19th century. Syn was also the notorious pirate and smuggler Captain Clegg, who was also known as the Scarecrow.
• “and the resourceful Blakeneys,” a.k.a. Sir Percy Blakeney and Lady Marguerite Blakeney, from Baroness Emmuska Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905) and its ten sequels. Sir Percy Blakeney was a foppish British nobleman during the years of the French Revolution. His alter ego, the Scarlet Pimpernel, was a daring hero who rescued many innocent members of the French royalty from Robespierre and the Terror. Lady Marguerite Blakeney, his wife, was “the cleverest woman in Europe” and an able partner to the Pimpernel.

I just wanted to point out that Fortunio is a strange figure, much more complex and resonant with the upcoming world of LOEG than may be made apparent by your summation. It’s been a few years since I’ve read the story but Fortunio’s origins strangely mirror some of Doc Savage’s,at least in the idea of a child deliberately raised in a controlled environment by an experimenting parent. Fortunio is denied nothing he desires as a child and this makes him a “superhuman aesthete” as the book says but also underlays his horrifying secret – beneath his house lies a charnel pit filled with the bodies of men who crossed or vexed him and whom he killed without remorse.

Bon Po (literally "men of Bon"... or "men of Tibet"... the only people who don't call Tibet something that sounds like "Tibet" are the Chinese and Tibetans... "Tibet" is from an Arabic cartographer's map saying 'Tubbat' or "the highlands" or "the high lands of Bon" by way of Turkish and Persian transliterations.

Bon is :meant: to be the animist religion that was in Tibet before Padmasambhava tamed all the pagan deities, but from what little contact I have had with it, it seems to me that the Buddhists had done a good job of eradicating almost the whole of it, and the Bon Po were forced to make stuff up subsequently based on what they could remember.

David-Neel picks up on the boogie-man image of Bon that the Buddhist clerical authorities put about. (Not that you'd think it now, but prior to the Chinese invasion the Buddhist schools were very blood-and-thunder, and scapegoated Tibet's small Muslim and Bon communities endlessly.)

All the Tibetan Buddhist schools have practices involving meditating on the impermanence of the body using human skin and bones (some times dressing up in it). There's no top soil in Tibet, hence sky burial and exhumation burial, and a greater familiarity with human remains generally. Not heard of people being turned into ointment though.

Orlando being in Tibet in 1906 leaves open the possibility that he/she was part of Sir Francis Younghusband's British invasion in 1904.

Depending on the correspondence between our own timeline and theirs, Quatermaine and Murray's presence in Tibet in 1906 suggests they may have been monitoring events in Lhasa, given that a power vacuum had opened up following the Ninth Dalai Lama's escape to Urga, facilitated by the Tsarist agent Agvan Dorjiev.

It is widely believed that in the previous decade Dorjiev had received many secret lessons from the Panchen and other lamas on the Shambala myth. The Shambala myth has now been endlessly analysed due to its popularisation by the Theosphists and then twentieth century lamas, especially Chogyam Trungpa, who famously was Allen Ginsberg's teacher.

(I used to live at Samye Ling which Trungpa cofounded. Its library is a treasure trove of batty Theosphical and counter culture tomes, including some of the Arthurian and other mythos that Trungpa read before making his move to the USA. His mission was to try to translate the concepts of tantra into Western terms, especially that of devotion to a teacher, which later on involved him getting his female students to dress up as French maids).

However, at the turn of the twentieth century, teachings of - and knowledge about - Tibetan Buddhism that are commonplace now took a lifetime of obedience and prayer for its students to acquire.

Though often interpreted as being a literal, but fragmented, historical recollection of a real culture - possibly in Siberia, possibly to the North of the Chang Tang desert, the Ghandaran culture or Sutlej valley of present-day Pakistan, or the Silk Road cities of East Turkestan, though some speculate it may even be a fractured memory of the Srivijayan kingdom of modern-day Sumatra (giant rats anyone?) - the esoteric aspects of Shambala myth have obvious correspondences with the ideas of the 'Blazing World'.

Specifically, the Kalachakra teaching predicts that - when the world declines into war and greed - the twenty-fifth Kalki king will emerge from Shambhala, a literal 'Pure Land' of enlightened beings to the North of Tibet, with a huge army to vanquish "Dark Forces" and usher in a worldwide Golden Age.

We can speculate whether Murray, Quatermain and Orlando were brought together by intelligence pertaining to the balance of temporal power in Central Asia at the time. Or if in piecing together their own intelligence from numerous lifetimes of travel, and scraps of information that may have corresponded with secret Tibetan knowledge - then travelling back to England by circuitous way of the North Pole - they were by then pursuing their own lines of inquiry.

Amidst the group of soldiers in the left of the panel watching the phantom archers stands 2 very familiar faces to fans of British comedy: the WW1 versions of Edmund Blackadder and his cretinous sidekick, Baldrick. There are a few other soldiers with them who are (possibly) supposed to be the other characters from Blackadder Goes Forth, but they don't really resemble the actors Hugh Laurie or Tim McInnerry, whereas O'Neill got perfect likenesses for Rowan Atkinson and Tony Robinson. (One of the other soldiers has a moustache, and it's possible he's supposed to be Kevin Darling, but he doesn't particularly look like IcInnerry.)

Not to be contrary but - the German jet to the left, with the teardrop hull, is the real life Messerschmitt Me 163 - a rocket powered fighter used for bomber intercept. Introduced in 1944 and from what I understand, not very effective.

The German fighter in the rear - the one resembling a V1 flying bomb - resembles a proposed piloted version that I've heard of but, to best of my knowledge was never used. I think the Japanese built one as a kamakaze, that they called the Oka.

In real life both aircraft were desperate measures against an ever growing Allied air force.  Here they seem to be front line, production aircraft and are both used earlier in the war than in the real world - which I think takes us right back to this being a display of how the League's world is more advanced.

In Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five," the protagonist Billy Pilgrim (a time traveler), describes the race of aliens and their unique perspective of time, noting that they experience the past, present and future simultaneously. So when they meet someone for the first time, they say, "Hello, goodbye." In the 1972 film adaptation of "Slaughterhouse-Five," Billy repeats the greeting at least three times in front of an audience, waving each time as he does so. At the moment, I can't remember if Billy, in the novel, actually waves during his public speech.

However, in both the novel and film, Billy tells the audience that he knows he will killed after his speaking engagement (since he's unstuck in time, he knows his own future). He tells everyone that unlike most humans, he has personally experienced the true nature of time, and therefore knows the Tralfamadorian's perspective is true; the past, present and future occur all at once...time is not linear as the rest of us experience it. That can only mean that everyone is always alive and death is not a tragic event.

After that, a sniper shoots Billy, killing him instantly.

I believe that the section is incorrect in stating that it is a "limited first folio edition from 1620". Hopefully I've managed to include a link to the page on Wikipedia which listed differences in sizes may make what I'm saying clearer. Simply, I think this is meant to be what would have actually been a 'quarto', as that is the format in which individual plays would have been printed. As you may know, the first *folio* of 36 of Shakespeare's plays wasn't actually published until 1623. Prior to that, 18 had been published in quarto volumes. This probably seems like nitpicking, but if you're familiar with the period and know how things were published, then it really leaps out as error. Folios were big expensive volumes, and a single play was never published in that format, only collections, of which Shakespeare's work was one of the first (it's hard to overestimate just how significant the first folio is in creating his subsequent reputation).

I'd like to quibble with what Peter Svensson has written. I love the idea that The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream would be historical plays in the world of the league (of course, they would!), but he says that The Tempest is "traditionally considered Shakespeare's final work". Well, yes and no. That's actually a product of Romantic criticism, which obscures the actual conditions Shakespeare's plays were produced under. Leaving aside the problem of dating plays in this period, Shakespeare definitely had a hand in two further plays, Two Noble Kinsmen and Henry VIII. Just because he was only a collaborator doesn't make them any less *his* works. Pericles and Macbeth were both almost certainly collaborative works, possibly others were too. Shakespeare was something of an exception given that he didn't collaborate very much in a theatre culture where collaboration seems to have been the norm. And of course, he did still collaborate with the actors of his company, tailoring roles to fit their particular skills (this may be stretching the comparison a bit, but you could possibly compare that with the collaboration between writer and artist in a comic if you wanted?).

Rather than considering Prospero's final epilogue as Shakespeare's farewell to the Theatre, it's probably more accurate to see it as a traditional request by the actor for applause. Twelfth Night has a similar epilogue if you want a comparison. In the spirit of trying to offer a positive alternative to what someone else has said, this might actually tie in very nicely with the idea you note at the end that here the author (Alan Moore) is stepping out from behind the mask of the character and speaking directly to us readers, just as Ariel's hand is breaking the panel border.

'Invigorate tired skin' was the kind of promise made on the packaging of ye olde-fashionede vibrators- Since obviously the manufacturers couldn't straight out say what they were  really for. So a lot of cute circumlocutions were used.  Check out the Antique Vibrator & Quack Medical Museum for lots of rad info like the  following: "Electromechanical vibrators were first used in medicine in 1878 and were  available as a consumer product by 1900. The vibrator was the 5th home appliance to be electrified. It was preceded by the  sewing machine, fan, teakettle, and the toaster. It would be another ten years before the electric vacuum, iron, and frying pan became available as consumer products."

"He even offered me a tour of the Malaccan Straits, suggesting that he take me up the southeast passage..."

While the Straits of Malacca are genuine, this has to be a play on words.  In Greek slang, "malacca" is a curseword, meaning "wanker" or "masturbator", but considered much harsher in tone.  There is also the rhyming "malaka", meaning "asshole", and invoked in contexts of buggery, which is what I think is actually being punned on here, given the second part of the cited text.

That page also contains the reference to "solitary ardour in the rigging," clearly a sideways reference to "frigging in the rigging," a line from the chorus to the classic sea shanty, "The Good Ship Venus";  one version of the lyrics (v. bawdy) are given here.

The reference to "Dorat" of Page 64/Fanny Hill 8 is a reference to the fictional Jean Baptiste Dorat of Beardsley's "Under the   Hill" (previously ref'd in the Orlando Section of Page 45/Trump 17. Panel 1).  Beardsley describes Venus' dressing-room as being  "panelled with the gallant paintings of Jean Baptiste Dorat."  Later  on, Tannhäuser peruses the paintings, and notes one "showing how an  old marquis practised the five-finger exercise, while in front of him  is mistress offered her warm fesses to a panting poodle…,"  explaining Fanny's references to the Marquis Dorat and his poodle.

If you would like to see for yourself, a version of the Beardsley text can be downloaded for free as a searchable PDF here.

Why the poodle is named "Franz", I'm not sure, unless this is all some obscured reference to Faust, in which Mephistopheles appears as  a poodle (Franz Liszt has a Faust Symphony, as well as his Mephisto  Waltzes).  As well, Faust's love is known as "Marguerite" in the  French versions, another name mentioned by Fanny here.  This is a stretch, admittedly.

You assume that M's secretary must be Moneypenny, but I suspect she's actually Lady Ann Sercomb - George Smiley's beautiful and notoriously unfaithful wife.
 
Three reasons for this: George's line, ``A cup of tea for M, please, dear,'' hints at a closer relationship between the two than just intelligence officer and secretary. Also, the first chapter of Le Carre's ``Call For the Dead,'' which introduces Smiley, notes that he met Ann when she was secretary to Smiley's MI5 superior, Steed-Asprey.
 
Finally, the Lady Ann was an aristocrat whose marriage to ``breathtakingly ordinary'' Smiley stunned the London upper class. Note how O'Neill depicts M's secretary with white gloves, what appears to be a ruby necklace, and prominent earrings. Not your typicaly secretary's trappings.

On the notes about page 20 panel 3, Keith Kole ask about the Doctor Who novel that refers to to Dame Emma Knight. He thinks it one by Paul Cornel.  It was instead by Lance Parkin, "The Dying Days" the last Docter Who novel published by Virgin Publishing.  He has Dame Emma Knight at a party for the return to Mars in the Doctor who Universe in the 1990's.  In the TV show Britian has a space program ( no doubt because of Quatermass, who is refered to in the show during the episode Remenbrance of the Daleks, and also in Parkin's Dying Days) which is sending mission to Mars in the early  70"s or 80's.(This is reveled in the episode of Ambassidors from Space. It is one of the Unit episode whch are almost impossible to date. See Lance Parkins' A-History, which explains the dating conflicts for the Unit episodes of Doctor Who far better than I could) It a shame that a sceen with Muder and Scully talking to President of the US, about the arivaul of the Ice Warriors in London was removed by the editor at Virgin.

What seems especially interesting to me about the Black Dossier is the way in which Moore has turned that school-story hothead Harry Wharton, who was always playing 'pranks', being mischievous, and getting into trouble (probably at least partly inspired by that other famous schoolyard Harry; Thomas Hughes' Harry Flashman from Tom Brown's Schooldays, considered by most readers to be the most interesting character in the book, also famous for his mischievous pranks, albeit of a more cautionary nature) into an agent of political intrigue.

This is an uncanny parallel to the way in which Fraser turned Harry Flashman into an agent of political and international intrigue, albeit of a somewhat different nature.  Perhaps this parallel was unintended by Moore, but it is there nonetheless.

The monkey in the bowler hat is from the PG TIPS advertising campaign. Since 1956, in the longest running advertising campaign for any brand, PG TIPS often advertised using chimpanzee's dressed as humans and drinking tea.(This was obviously inspired by the regular 'Monkey's Tea Party' that British Zoo's used to run everyday for visitors.) In fact, one of these adverts, called 'MR. SHIFTER' holds the world record for the advert shown most time on British Television. In it, the removal man, Mr. Shifter, wears a bowler hat. The adverts have been voiced by an impressive British comedy cast list over the decades, consisting of Peter Sellers, Bruce Forsyth, Kenneth Connor, Arthur Lowe, Irene Handel, Stanley Baxter, Willie Rushton, John Junkin, Kenneth Williams, Pat Coombes, Miriam Margoles, Andrew Sachs and David Jason. 

"There are little undercover threads throughout our story with connections like that," continued Moore. "The film 'The Third Man' was written by Graham Greene, who based the character of Harry Lime on his lifelong friend Kim Philby, a very famous British spy who turned out to be a double agent for the Russians. And weirdly enough, there had previously been two Russian agents exposed, Guy Burgess and Anthony MacLean, and there was a rumour there was a third double agent in MI5. I remember there was a headline back in the Sixties that said, 'KIM PHILBY IS THE THIRD MAN,' which were written completely unaware that he was the third  man. So he was the basis for 'The Third Man.' All of these obscure facts are woven into the fabric of 'The Black Dossier.' It's been very interesting, with some surprising inclusions."

"Kim" must be an allusion to Philby. The pathos of making this kind of connection between the beloved childhood heroes of "the Famous" five and the older and infinitely more tarnished "Cambridge" five --  especially given their shared dormitory context -- would be too tempting  for Moore to pass up much less ignore.

At the risk of pushing it, a third dimension emerges in the adult relationship between poor old Billy and Harry -- John Le Carre's George Smiley was also related by marriage to Bill Haydon (a Philby analog), although over there it's Smiley/Bunton who's married Haydon/Wharton's cousin. Poor old Billy does seem to have grown up into a sort of Smiley  parody, Haydon was indeed quite the golden boy (and his/Philby's "labour"affiliations are equally unexpected and disastrous) and the relationships with the "cousins" were always anguished.

• Ian Gould writes, ""Joycamp Harlots" suggests to me a fusion of the German "Joy Division" military brothels and the British seaside holiday camps. Joycamps for the proles would fit right in with pornsec."
  
• Philip & Emily Graves write, "The sign at the top advertising "Vitamalt Chocolate" is from Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell, as is the one beneath it which reads in its entirety: "Cyprolax Hair Lotion Banishes all Unpleasant Intruders" (From Chapter 3)." Michael Norwitz writes, ""Cyprolax" is a reference to Orwell's novel "Keep the Aspidistra Flying" (Cyprolax Hair Lotion and Whiterose Pills for Female Disorders)."
  
• “New B.B. Bardot Talks!” is a reference to the actress Brigitte Bardot and “Garbo Talks!” The silent film actress Greta Garbot was famous for her taciturnity and carefully cultivated mystique, and the film Anna Christie, which contained Garbo’s first onscreen words, was billed with the words “Garbo Talks!” Ian Gould adds, ""B.B. Bardot speaks" refers not only to Garbo but also to the fact that in 1984 Big Brother (BB) never appeared in public and seldom gave speeches."
• Presumably that is the 1950s Invisible Man (see Page 148 below) on the cover of The Naked Truth. Mark Elstob writes, "The magazine "The Naked Truth" is clearly an issue of the down market gossip magazine featured in the Peter Sellers film of the same  name. In that film, the front cover is repeatedly shown and O'Neill has faithfully reproduced its design."
• “Hank Janson” is a reference to “Hank Janson,” the pseudonym of Stephen D. Frances, a British writer who adopted the pseudonym in order to write hardboiled novels. (“Hank Janson” sounded suitably American).
• Presumably “–nton –llion” is a reference to someone or something, but it’s eluding me. Philip & Emily Graves write, "The "--tom ---llion" is presumably the 'Phantom Stallion', likely not the books by Terri Farley, but the 1954 film with Rex Allen."
• Weird Date is very much in the style of the 1940s spicy pulps, but there wasn’t one by that name. Michael Norwitz points out that Weird Date was the name of a comic in Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay.
• “Bat” is in all likelihood not a reference to Batman to but to one of the many pulp and British storypaper characters by that name.
• Regarding “Nick Stacy," Michael Norwitz writes, "Nick Stacy was the ultra-violent detective starring in his own newspaper strip created by Hector Ghoul, which appeared in the July 20, 1947 Spirit newspaper section." Greg Strohecker notes that Nick Stacy was a satire of Dick Tracy.
• “Phallos,” similar to “phallus” (look it up, kids–education is fun! I particularly recommend doing a Google Image search), is a likely title for a 1950s porn mag.
• I’m not sure what “Secret of Paris” might be a reference to. Philip & Emily Graves write, "Assuming 'Secrets of Paris by night' is an adult product, then it could be an allusion to the more recent "One Night in Paris", maybe."
• Jelly Result is a reference to the novel of the same name by eccentric author Jeff Lint.
• “Blackshirt” is a reference to the cracksman and Gentleman Thief of that name, created by “Bruce Graeme” (a.k.a. Graham Jeffries) and appearing in dozens of novels and short story collections from 1924 to 1969. Ian Gould adds, "Oswald's British Legion of Fascists were known as blackshirts. In the curious fusion of left and right in the LoEGverse's version of Airstrip One, I can see a pulp hero being modelled on them."
• “Castle Hill Labs VD Scare” is, as Damian Gordon points out, a reference to the first episode of the Invisible Man tv series (see Page 148 below), in which there is an explosion at Castle Hill Labs, where Peter Brady is working.
• I think “Clint” is a reference to the 1960s injunction, in American comics, against characters having “Clint” as a first name, on the grounds that, when drawn as “CLINT,” it might appear as quite a different word to the casual viewer. A number of readers, including Robert Scott Martin, Mario di Giacomo, and Michael Norwitz, point out that this also applies to "Flick" magazine, three spots up on the magazine rack.
• “The Winged Avenger,” mentioned above on Page 8, is, in an episode of The Avengers, a killer vigilante superhero who appears to make the leap from comic books to real life.
• “Me Con?” is a reference to the Mekon, Dan Dare’s opponent. The figure is drawn like the Mekon.
• Christopher Reynolds writes, ""Bradgate Argus": The Argus is the daily newspaper for Sussex. It is based in Brighton and produces different editions for different areas of Sussex, the one seen here being the Bradgate edition."
  
• “J. Arthur” is British slang for “masturbation.” (“J. Arthur” from British film producer “J. Arthur Rank,” “rank” to “wank”).
• “Hand Shandy” is British slang for “masturbation.”
• Ian Gould notes, ""True Sweat" magazine: "true sweat" was another term for the "Men's Adventure" pulps of the 50's and 60's."
  

The ducks in St James's Park are so used to being fed bread by secret agents meeting clandestinely that they have developed their own Pavlovian reaction. Put a St James's Park duck in a laboratory cage and show it a picture of two men -- one usually wearing a coat with a fur collar, the other something sombre with a scarf -- and it'll look up expectantly.

I wondered if these might not be two of the three harpooners from the Pequod.

Queequeg was Ishmael's close companion and a prince from the South Seas. Tashtego was an Gay Head Indian from Martha's Vineyard, and Daggoo is an extremely tall, imposing African.  All three are supposed to have died when Moby Dick destroys the Pequod at the end of the novel (after all, Ishmael says that he was the only survivor and was picked up by another whaler, the Rachel, which was cruising the area searching for one her whaleboats.  The lost whaleboat had the youngest son of the Rachel's captain on board), but who knows, right?

There are many men in London, you know, who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals. It is for the convenience of these that the Diogenes Club was started, and it now contains the most unsociable and unclubable men in town. No member is permitted to take the least notice of any other one. Save in the Stranger's Room, no talking is, under any circumstances, allowed, and three offences, if brought to the notice of the committee, render the talker liable to expulsion. My brother was one of the founders, and I have myself found it a very soothing atmosphere.

I'm a little puzzled by the reference to the "recently-resurfaced brother of Mycroft Holmes." Sherlock's "resurfacing" from the Reichenbach Falls took place in 1894, not 1901. The story of this event, "The Empty House," was not published, however, until 1903, and it wasn't until that date that the British public learned that Holmes had not perished at the hands of Professor Moriarty. Perhaps this confused the author of the Dossier. Another alternative, although I can't fix the dates exactly: In Kim Newman's Anno Dracula (in which Mycroft and the Diogenes Club attempt to overthrow Dracula, who has become the Prince Consort of Victoria), Sherlock has been incarcerated in a concentration camp, and he may have been released in 1904-1905 after Dracula left England.

Fulworth is near Holmes's retirement cottage (mentioned in "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane"), and it may be that the "resurfacing" spoken of here is meant simply that someone unknown ran into Holmes at his cottage. The events recounted in that story took place in July 1907, and it was not published (and therefore Holmes's precise place of retirement was unknown to the public at large) until 1926.

I think you’re missing some more specific Lovecraft references in “What Ho, Gods of the Abyss”.  The mention of brains removed and stored in cylinders, and of Peabody’s illness giving him a raspy voice and making him sensitive to light is a reference to Lovecraft’s “The Whisper in Darkness”.  In the story, a race of aliens with great surgical abilities called the Mi-go can remove the brains of human, usually their allies, and store them in cylinders to be transported through space.  The character Akeley, who fights against the Mi-go, is captured by them and has his brain placed in a cylinder.  Meanwhile, a Mi-go impersonates Akeley, wearing Akeley’s skin as a disguise.  In order to make this more convincing, it keeps the lights low and talks in a low voice, claiming to be sick (the Mi-go can impersonate human speech, but their voices have a distinct buzzing sound; hence Peabody’s rasp).  Apparently the same thing is going on here.  The creature the League is shown fighting against might therefore be the Mi-go that was impersonating Peabody, which would explain the reference to “the torn and paper like visage of Mr. Peabody” during the battle.

Possibly a comic-book allusion - Something about the look of Billy here and the lighting remind me very strongly of Abel, DC Comic's HOUSE OF SECRETS horror comic host. A cowardly (socially inept, almost child-like), stuttering overweight man with two points of upswept hair, illuminated from below (Abel often walked the creepy halls with a candle) who presides over his own windswept "House Of Secrets". There's no specific panel I can refer to (although I do have an image downloaded from the web of a Berni Wrightson ink sketch for a cover of HOUSE OF SECRETS that captures the similarity.) but I do mention it also because Moore, long before Neil Gaiman used them in SANDMAN, was the one to really re-invigorate the characters of Abel (and his HOUSE OF MYSTERY host-brother Cain) in his genre-defining run of SWAMP THING - taking characters who had previously been seen as nothing more than standard comic book hosts and redefining them as supernatural psychopomps who actually "exist" in the DC Universe.

The prime minister is presumably Winston Churchill (1874-1965), who was indeed a heavy drinker, though not an alcoholic. Here Moore is building upon the historical fact that Churchill, though he was such a great war leader, was turned out of office in 1945, right after the war's  end.  You should find this quotation from Churchill's Wikipedia entry relevant: "During the opening broadcast of the election campaign, Churchill astonished many of his admirers by warning that a Labour government would introduce into Britain "some form of Gestapo, no doubt humanely administered in the first instance". Churchill had been genuinely worried during the war by the inroads of state bureaucracy into civil liberty, and was clearly influenced by Friedrich Hayek's anti-totalitarian tract, The Road to Serfdom (1944)."

The Invisible Man (Peter Brady) = The Invisible Man (Hawley Griffin)
Prof James Gray = Nemo (both submarine builders, Nemo even inspired Gray in League V2)
Worrals = Mina (female leads experienced in death)
Wolf of Kabul = Quatermain (both in the great white hunter tradition, they even both wear pith helmets)
The Iron Warrior = Hyde (both really killers pressed into service).

Moore acknowledges Dr. Sax's once heroic status despite making him a villain here. Page Five of "The Crazy Wide Forever" notes: "Dr. Sachs that hero bold gon bad." I was disappointed at first to see Sax portrayed in such a villainous manner, but that line pleased me. It also seems Sachs' accidental death of sorts is a reference to the death of the seemingly unbeatable World Snake, on which Sax comments something akin to: "Ah, the universe disposes of its own evil." Very few of Moore's characters react to the eldritch oddness they encounter the way Lovecraft's characters do, but since Sachs relates his ties to the various things Outside, it may be he was driven mad. Given the original Dr. Sax playing around with potions to defeat long-slumbering creatures, it's not far-fetched that Moore recasts him in the mold of a Lovecraftian villain such as Whateley or Tillinghast. Also, the way Sal's Beat prose is occasionally unreadable and trails off with repetitions MAY (though probably isn't) a reference to the last w rds of the narrators of "The Rats in the Walls" who regresses from babbling in modern English to archaic English to Latin to grunts. Sal is a normal guy who just saw something insane, so it's likely that the booze and drugs save him from full madness. Still, "Rats" also dealt with genetic memory and traits, and Dean does take after his ancestor...

• "she's Minnie but  never mooched":  reference to the 1931 song "Minnie the Moocher," co-written and originally performed by Cab Calloway .  Calloway also performed the song in the Betty Boop animated cartoon "Minnie the Moocher."
• "Captain Easy:  adventure hero created by cartoonist Roy Crane for his pioneering early 20th century adventure comic strip "Wash Tubbs," which was later renamed after the captain."
• "The Lone Ranger:  masked western hero who was created by George W. Trendle and has appeared in radio, television and film."

Krupp is probably Gustav Krupp, an important German industrialist under Hitler. He's also mentioned in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.

The nonsense-free-association here conflates the four main names for the Devil with places in America. So Mephistopheles, Beelzebub, Lucifer and Satan + San Francisco Bay, California and San Andreas become Mephrisco Bayzeebub, Lucifornia, and Satandreas.

'the dried fried hide o Rin Tin Tin' Starring on radio, in over a dozen films and an ABC TV show (several generations of) Rin Tin Tin is one of the most famous canine stars.

Big Sur is a novel by Kerouac which takes place "during the summer of 1960", written late in his productive life, and dealing with his mental breakdown.

Bill, Bull or Will Hubbard is Kerouac's analogue for William Burroughs in his books Book of Dreams (1952-60), Desolation Angels (1956, 61) and Vanity of Duluoz (1968).

'sum ole Republic serial script' Republic Pictures produced more than 60 serials from the 30s to the 50s, featuring most notably The Lone Ranger, Dick Tracy, Zorro, Fu Manchu, Captain America and Captain Marvel. Not sure if the surrounding references here ('nightmare outhouse needle fulla calibrated serum' 'some Aztec virus junk [made from] cennipedes.. n jimson weed') point to a genuine serial, or just to the style in which Dr Sachs is "explaining" himself.

The Nova Mob (as noted, here conflated with the 'Great Old Uns') features in the Nova Trilogy by William Burroughs: The Soft Machine (1961), Nova Express (1964) and the Ticket that Exploded (1962). The trilogy is a semi-sequel to Naked Lunch (1959). The plot is difficult to follow or describe, but the goal of the Nova Mob is described as follows:

'The basic nova technique is very simple: Always create as many insoluble conflicts as possible and always aggravate existing conflicts-This is done by dumping on the same planet life forms with incompatible conditions of existence-There is of course nothing "wrong" about any given life form since "wrong" only has reference to conflicts with other life forms-The point is these life forms should not be on the same planet-Their conditions of life are basically incompatible in present time form and it is precisely the work of the nova mob to see that they remain in present time form, to create and aggravate the conflicts that lead to the explosion of a planet...'

The Nova Mob apparently constitutes a group comprised variously of Mr Bradley/Mr Martin (here linked to Hastur, who first appeared in "Haïta the Shepherd" (1893) by Ambrose Bierce, and was later referenced by Lovecraft and elevated in status by August Derleth), Johnny Yen, Sammy the Butcher, Green Tony and Izzy the Push and/or Iron Claws, The Brown Artist, Jacky Blue Note, Limestone John, Hamburger Mary, Paddy the Sting, The Blue Dinosaur and The Subliminal Kid (here linked to Lovecraft's Robert "Bobby" Harrison Blake from The Haunter of the Dark). Agent/Inspector Lee and the Nova Police (Hassan i Sabbah, Agent K9 and Technical Tilly) investigate and try to stop the virus/alien ollective/intergalactic criminal group 'The Nova Mob' from creating conflict through language.

The mention of "th' Sublim'nal Kid" jumping "in an out TV commercials" refers to subliminal advertising techniques, pioneered by James Vicary in the 1950s. The three examples here are probably not specific references, although 'Drink Coca-Cola' was supposedly used early on in cinemas, and 1960s clinical trials used the phrase 'Destroy Mother'. The McCarthy censorship plans of the 1950s were designed to thwart 'th' Red Chinese'.

Have you considered that the basic premise of Crazy Wide Forever (although difficult to discern) is similar to that of Neal Stephenson's novel Snowcrash (1992)?

1. Infection of viral language through drugs. In Snowcrash it causes speaking in tongues or "Babel" while in CWF it will apparently give vent to the words of ancient Mesoamerican deities that will infect all who hear them.
2. Mythic origin of said infection. In Snowcrash, Babel is traced back to the Mesopotamian story of Enki. CWF goes with "Aztecs" and "Mayan" unnamed deities.
3. Targetting of free thinkers. In Snowcrash, the drug is used as a virus to target hackers, while in CWF the beat poets are the targets.
4. Neal Stephenson is similar to Moore in his constant (and sometimes dense) referencing of history, mythology, popular culture, science, etc in his writings.

Unless someone knows otherwise, I would suggest that the song "Immortal Love", (from the 'Summer afore last') will feature on the semi-mythical vinyl single which should accompany the Absolute Edition of the Black Dossier.

Hyman Solomon is from On the Road, and his quote is almost as recanted there: 'The man was a ragged, bespectacled mad type, walking along reading a paperbacked muddy book he'd found in a culvert by the road. He got in the car and went right on reading; he was incredibly filthy and covered with scabs. He said his name was Hyman Solomon and that he walked all over the USA, knocking and sometimes kicking at Jewish doors and demanding money: "Give me money to eat, I am a Jew." He said it worked very well and that it was coming to him. We asked him what he was reading. He didn't know. He didn't bother to look at the title page. He was only looking at the words, as though he had found the real Torah where it belonged, in the wilderness.'

Interestingly, both Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale and Gala Brand in Moonraker think Bond is reminiscent of Hoagy Carmichael.

The mugwumps, from William Burroughs' Naked Lunch are the slaves of Cthulhu in Move Under Ground (2004) by Nick Mamatas.

"I Like Ike" was Eisenhower's slogan in the 1952 Presidential election campaign, against Truman's policies on 'Korea, Communism and Corruption'.

Bodhisattva is another Buddhist term, meaning enlightened existence and is the term used to refer to such individuals. In The Dharma Bums (1957) by Jack Kerouac, Kerouac's analogue Ray Smith is called a 'Bodhisattva, a great wise being or great wise angel'. In Move Under Ground (2004) by Nick Mamatas, combining the beat style with the Cthulhu mythos, the 'bodhisattva Kilaya accompanies [Kerouac] on his trek to defeat Cthulhu'.

The picture in the lower right hand corner, I suspect, is a reference to the Bild Lili doll upon which the American Barbie doll was based. 

Lili started as an adult cartoon. The doll was first made as a premium for adults. Ruth Handler, an American, adapted the doll slightly and sold it to Mattel.

The original Barbie picture/drawing promoting her on all liscenced products was almost the exact same pose as the woman in the Dossier, down to the way the eye was drawn.

original Lili.

Barbie's original silhouette/profile on packaging (although in this image it is flipped)

here is a better picture of the barbie head logo and it is EXACTLY like the picture in the black dossier.

Disturb me no more, Allan, with the tremors and changes of your uncertain mind, lest you should work more evil than you think, and making mine uncertain also, spoil my skill. Nay, do not try to fly, for already the net has thrown itself about you and you cannot stir, who are bound like a little gilded wasp in the spider's web, or like birds beneath the eyes of basilisks.

As a big fan of the James Bond books I was very surprised that Bond ended up as a traitor to his country. This is a big departure from the Fleming books and seems to be out of character for him. Bond didn’t even really enjoy killing in the books, but he seems fairly cold-hearted in the Dossier, e.g. his later disposal of Drummond. I think Bond’s betrayal is largely symbolic in nature, and can see three ways in which it symbolizes Alan Moore’s views of the world (but I’m sure others will see other ways);

1. Bond (created in the 1950s) is a more modern hero than Quatermain (created in the 1880s) and as such represents the decline of imagination which Alan Moore says will be one of the key subtexts of Vol. III:Century. Gone is the grandeur of the Victorian imagination on display and in its place a gun-wielding thug. Thus Bond is symbolic of this corruption and de-evolution of imagination

2. Bond is a professional spy and killer whereas almost all of the great Victorian adventurers were amateurs. Almost none of the previous generation of heroes worked directly for the government (ok, I know Sherlock Holmes did occasionally work for the government – through Mycroft, the Prime Minister, etc. but in the main he was a private consulting detective) whereas Bond in directly answerable to a government that allows him to kill in certain circumstances. Older British literature always celebrated the successfully amateur, who could always succeed seemly without any preparation or training (except what had been learned on the battlefield – or on the playing fields of Eton).

3. Bond is primarily known as a movie character, the James Bond movies are much more seen than the novels are read, and therefore, in a sense the Bond character has betrayed his literary roots by becoming a success in another medium. And the character of Bond in the books is certainly totally dissimilar to the quip-generating lothario that characterized the Moore era of Bond. Additionally I think we all know that Alan Moore may have somewhat of an issue with stories that are adopted into movies when they lose some of the qualities of the original source (e.g. LXG: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Movie, and Constantine).

"The clusters of cubes on the bottom half of each side, as well as the three-pronged fork KoKo is standing on, and the center circle on the left side are all examples of optical illusions. The prong is often refered to as The Devil's Fork.

The concentric arcs of the background evoke the famous woodcut of the man reaching the edge of existence. This is probably best known as the cover to Daniel Boorstin's The Discoverers.

I'll go out on a limb and guess that the sailing ship is the Flying Dutchman.

I'd also venture that there is some metaphor to be found in an, I dare say, ejaculation of (sperm?) whales sprouting from a particularly phallic mushroom cloud, something involving creation and destruction being linked. I say this because the entire 3D section seems to break form for the series and harkens back to the content-rich panel structure of Promethea. Several pages have panels that form a whole image, with lots of sequential background action and more metaphors than you can shake a stick at. Given the subject matter, this is not surprising. Moore's done similar "place where ideas come from" stuff in Supreme. The Jack Kirby tribute leaps to mind.

I was also reminded of Promethea in the Descent of the Gods portion. The layering of cosmologies, mythologies and lores reminded me of Sophie walking the Sephiroth.

The animal-men are some of the native inhabitants of The Blazing World as described in Margaret Cavendish's original book.  In it she writes:

"The rest of the Inhabitants of that World, were men of several different sorts, shapes, figures, dispositions, and humors, as I have already made mention heretofore; some were Bear-men, some Worm-men, some Fish- or Mear-men, otherwise called Syrenes; some Bird-men, some Fly-men, some Ant-men, some Geese-men, some Spider-men, some Lice-men, some Fox-men, some Ape-men, some Jack-daw-men, some Magpie-men, some Parrot-men, some Satyrs, some Gyants, and many more, which I cannot all remember; and of these several sorts of men, each followed such a profession as was most proper for the nature of their species, which the Empress encouraged them in, especially those that had applied themselves to the study of several Arts and Sciences; for they were as ingenious and witty in the invention of profitable and useful Arts, as we are in our world, nay, more; and to that end she erected Schools, and founded several Societies."

In addition to the fish-man, fly-man, and bird-men that are on p. 178, this is also the source for Allan's observation in Panel 1 of p. 179 about "all the animal people," and Mina's reply in Panel 2, where she refers to "worm-men and louse-men."

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