Nemo 3: River of Ghosts

Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s Nemo trilogy has followed Janni Dakkar, the daughter of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen‘s pirate submariner, across the globe. In this final book, River of Ghosts, the threads come together as she chases an ancient enemy up the Amazon river. Here, against a backdrop of ancient ruins and lost civilisations, we find her tackling the remnants of the Nazis who escaped the war (and the second book), who are busy cloning themselves and constructing an Arian army of Stepford wives.

Moore’s script is, as usual for this series, laced with literary references that you may or may not be bothered to look up. Without the cross-referencing, some of the sub-plots can seem a bit random (the fish-people, for example, are from Creature from the Black Lagoon – if you’re interested, check out Jess Nevins’ annotations) but it’s an otherwise entertaining enough finalé to the series, making the whole Nemo trilogy arguably better than the Century series that preceded it.

O’Neill’s art has its usual edginess, and the inevitable apocalyptic ending is taken on with relish, as dinosaurs and explosives take their toll on human and robot alike.

Overall it’s a fitting exit. This was only ever a distracting fantasy adventure story and relatively light stuff for Moore, but even taken at face value, Moore shows that he’s more than capable of cranking this stuff out and still making it superior to most rival comics.

All the books in this series: