Fanfic / The Black Dossier Volume II

The Black Dossier, Volume II is a series of story supplements by author Draco Orwell, functioning as an Expanded Universe for Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, taking a deeper look into not only the British part of the League's history, but also that of their French counterparts, Les Hommes Mysterioux, and the sinister machinations of the German Nazi League, the successors to their "Twilight Heroes". Several chapters are also devoted to parts of the world that were only barely touched on in the source material, such as the United States, Canada, China and Japan.

As of 2017, the Leagues featured in the story are:

• The First American League (1875)
• The Celestial League (1899)
• The Second American League (1901)
• The First Archeologist's League (1907)
• The First Allied League (1914)
• The League Of Horrors (1921)
• The Third American League (1925)
• The Second French League (1927)
• The Kane League (1938)
• The First Japanese League (1941)
• The Second Allied League (1942)
• The First All-American League (1942)
• The Nazi League (1942)
• The Canadian League (1948)
• The Fourth American League (1956)
• The Drifter's League (1958)
• The Neo-Celestial League (1960)
• The First Magic League (1963)
• The Third French League (1966)
• The Second Japanese League (1967)
• The CIA Spy League (1968)

The Character Page Needs Wiki Love.

This story contains a truly staggering amount of pop culture trivia and references, including:

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• Accidental Hero: As in the source material, Inspector Closeau is this for the Third French League. While bumbling and massively out of his league in many missions, he did prove his worthiness on several occasions, albeit mostly by accident.
• Adaptational Name Change: Like in the comics, some characters have different names, either because they were named as such in the source material as part of Writing Around Trademarks, or for an obvious trademarked character to fit the theme.
  • Max Frost is known as Max Foster, as he was referred to in Century: 1969.
  • Tintin is referred to as Martin Sterckx, while Captain Haddock's name is only slightly altered to Hadoch. Professor Calculus (Tournedus in the original French) is unchanged.
  • The Kaiju in the second Japanese League Chapter are referred to by various names, highlights include Rodan as "Radon", King Ghidorah as "Gammera" and Godzilla himself as "Gigantis".
• Another Dimension: Various alternate dimensions are visited by various leagues or mentioned in their respective chapters, some of them include Sesame Street, Toontown and Arda, along with many others.
• Big Bad: Adenoid Hynkel and the Nazi League for the Second Allied League and the All-American League, INGSOC and Big Brother for the Canadian League, Fantômas for the Second and Third French League, and The Narrator for the Magic League.
• Evil Versus Evil: During the INGSOC years, the Canadian government and other Commonwealth nations provided funding and resources to groups inside Britain fighting against Big Brother. One of the most successful and powerful of these were the sentient animals of the infamous Animal Farm, led by the totalitarian pig Napoleon.
• Godzilla Threshold: The world-scale memory-erasing technology owned and operated by The Syndicate was only ever used twice; to erase the existence of Max Fosters' short-lived presidential term, and, fittingly enough, to fix the worldwide mental trauma caused by the "War Of the Monsters" in the late 70's, which included Godzilla among many other monsters.
• Government Conspiracy: The rebellion made by various U.S. government officials to bring down Max Fosters' administration and completely erase it and any changes it had made to the United States. As of modern-day, only a handful of the world's most highly ranked officials have any knowledge that Foster ever existed.
• Karma Houdini: Fantomas is revealed to have survived the final battle between his League of Horrors and the Second French League by switching places with Dr. Kramm, leaving him to die in his place when the Leagues lair collapsed. Afterward, he disappeared again, only to eventually be revealed to have died of old age in the aftermath of World War II, completely unpunished for the atrocities he'd committed.
  • Dr. Wichserkopf, predicting the fall of the Nazi regime, managed to make himself part of Operation Paperclip, receiving a pardon from the U.S. in return for his assistance in nuclear weapons and space flight research. As part of his new identity, he also changed his name to a more familiar one - Dr. Strangelove.
• Killer Gorilla: Dr. Coriolis, a Mad Scientist and self-proclaimed successor of Dr. Alphonse Moreau specialized in creating monstrous, insane animals as weapons, with apes being his preferred species. It's revealed that he was the creator of the murderous ape that terrorized the Rue Morgue until it was caught by Auguste Dupin.
• Legion of Doom: The League Of Horrors, The Nazi League, and The Celestial League, though only the first of the three groups would agree with the term, as it consisted of unrepentant arch-criminals who joined forces solely to cause more death and misery. The Nazi League, while also being made up of monsters, was an officially sanctioned government group, while the Celestial League considered themselves well-intentioned extremists.
  • The League of Horrors consisted of Fantômas, Erik Karim, Dr Christian Coriolis, The Red Mask, and Dr. Cornelius Kramm.
  • The Celestial League consisted of The Doctor (Fu Manchu), Pao The Invisible, Zatoichi the Blind, Mola Ram, Ra's Al Ghul, and Lady Oyuki.
  • The Nazi League consisted of Dr. Ilsa Schlimm, Albrecht Krieger, Dr. Wichserkopf Merkwugigliebe, Captain Eric Von Stalheim, Dr. Christian Szell.
• Overlord Jr.: The Fantomas fought by the Third French League turns out to be the son of the original, who died in 1946. This version specifically mentioned wearing the blue face mask introduced in the 1964 Fantomas film, unlike the black masks preferred by his father.
• Ms. Fanservice: Emmanuelle Arsan, the protagonist (and author) of the erotic novel Emmanuelle, was recruited for the Third French League largely for this reason, with the intent of using her beauty and sex appeal for infiltration and intelligence gathering. However, feeling somewhat objectified by this, Arsan sought out former French League member Adele Blanc-Sec and asked her for training. As a result, Arsan ended up becoming a competent Action Girl instead, perfectly capable of holding her own in a fight.
• Related in the Adaptation:
  • This version of The Red Mask is a woman named Ludivine Thernadier, a descendant of Monsieur Thernadier from Les Misérables. While he didn't have a first name in the source material, it's given as "Lukas" here.
  • The intelligent animals of Animal Farm are descendants of the creations of Dr. Alphonse Moreau, explaining their ability to talk which is never brought up in the novel. It's implied the same applies for all of Britain's talking animal populations, aside from those outright magical in nature.
• President Evil: President Max Foster combines this trope with Well-Intentioned Extremist. During his short-lived reign, the United States withdrew from all armed conflicts across the globe, provided aid and surplus food to third-world nations for free, dismantled clandestine spy organizations like the CIA and FBI, and many other leftist ideals. He also forces everyone over 30 into retirement, and anyone over 35 into concentration camps where they're permanently dosed with LSD and Taduki. In-universe, Foster's political platform is referred to as a kind of "hippie-fascism".
• Put Them All Out of My Misery: The social upheaval that broke out in France during the 1960s and nearly escalated into a civil war turns out to have been orchestrated by the second Fantomas at his father's behest. Before he died, Fantomas had come to view the rest of humanity as having become just as monstrous as he had always been due to World War II and the nuclear bombing of Japan, and tasked his son with one final mission; put the world down like a sick dog. The plan had been to plunge France into chaos, then escalate further by drawing in the U.S. and the USSR, eventually culminating in World War 3. The Third French League narrowly averted the plan.
• Reality Warper: The Narrator, an immensely powerful being encountered by the Magic League in the early 60s, who claimed to be part of an entire race of cosmic entities known as the "Que", and was, in fact, the source of some of the cases the League had investigated, such as the reality warping child of Peaksville, the murderous Talking Tina doll that haunted the Streator family, and the magical sack found by department store Santa Henry Corwin, seemingly for nothing other than his own amusement.
• Start My Own: The independent League formed by Charles Foster Kane in 1938, which Kane hoped to use to affect world events the way his newspapers had once done. Consisting of Gene Autry (or rather, the character Autry portrayed in his movie roles, who is stated to have been the real-life Autry's brother), Ann Darrow, Tom Powers, Armand Robur, and William "Bill" Dunn. The League only lasted for a single mission, an expedition to Skull Island in the hopes of capturing another specimen like Kong, which turned into a disaster that led to the deaths of Darrow, Powers, Dunn, and many of the island natives at the hands of a rampaging horde of velociraptors. Only Autry and Robut made it back to civilization, at which point Kane fired them for "failing" him.
  • The Drifter's League, formed in 1958, was another independent effort, this time by several members of the burgeoning "Beat" generation to deal with criminals and dangerous situations arising in the new subcultures of the U.S. Formed by Sal Paradyse and Dean Moriarty, the group included Maria "Verruca" Almondovar, Johnny Strabler, and Holden Caulfield.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The Kane League was designed to mimic the original Murray Group, which Kane considered to be the most successful and dynamic. Darrow took Murray's role, Autry took Quatermain's, and Robur took Nemo's. Dunn was believed to have lost his psychic abilities, but it was revealed that he had actually metabolized the serum that first granted him his powers and was now dependant on his mood to access them, similar to Edward Hyde. Powers was given an invisibility device to give him the same role as Hawley Griffin.
• Un-person: After Max Foster was overthrown by a combination of the Men In Black, surviving government operatives from groups like SHIELD and CONTROL, and the assistance of Tony Stark, his existence and that of his run as President was erased from history using the Men In Black's memory-altering technology. His term was replaced with Richard Nixon.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The Drifter's League campaign of domestic terrorism against the American military-industrial complex backfired massively in their final act of sabotage, which ended up releasing a bioweapon called Trioxin from a government lab, causing a minor Zombie Apocalypse in Pittsburgh. The events were covered up as fiction through the release of Night of the Living Dead (1968), while the Drifter's League got a 10-year sentence, which was only as lenient as it was because of their assistance in containing the disaster. They remained in Chisholm Prison for little under a year before being pardoned by Max Foster upon him taking the Presidency.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: After the fall of INGSOC, and the restoration of the British government and monarchy, M-I5 and the higher-ups turned against the Animal Farm, since it had grown to encompass most of the surrounding areas, and was essentially a mini-Soviet state within Britain's borders. This eventually escalated into an attempt at outright genocide against all "thinking animal" people, and any human who sheltered them. However, thanks to the modern weaponry provided during the INGSOC years, and unexpectedly hard resistance, what was supposed to be a quick campaign of extermination turned into a two-year civil war with heavy losses on both sides, and ultimately the animals defeating the human troops!