The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier

I originally checked out The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier due to news about an attempt at censorship but quickly came to appreciate the book itself. The combination of a graphic novel in which a "Black Dossier" is a key element of the plot and is included in the book itself in the form of various documents mixed into the pages of the illustrated tale is thought provoking.

In fact, this work got me thinking quite a bit about the relationship of such hybrid works to various electronic offerings. For example, ereaders and such devices are always more complicated than they at first appear, acquiring extra little bits and pieces of equipment. Oddly enough, The Black Dossier includes a 3D section requiring an extra bit of equipment in the form of 3D glasses!

The mix of texts mean that readers drawn in by a graphic novel may not want to read every last page just as a documentary on DVD may acquire more viewers than related documents on an accompanying DVD-ROM.

One clear difference is the fully integrated nature of The Black Dossier, a book that includes all its elements in one package. A reader might become attached to such a book in a different manner than one might become attached to an ebook one accesses on an ereader. Perhaps the ereader will get all the future love once reserved for physical books themselves.

But thinking about The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier also inspired a new blog category, Books I've Read, in order to separate the discussions on particular books and the changing nature and concept of the book, until now jammed together in Books.