Worlds and Eyeglasses: Cavendish’s Blazing World in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Black Dossier

Abstract

I examine Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s adaptation of Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World in the comic series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I interpret philosophical aspects of Cavendish’s fictional landscape, including her vitalist materialism and naturalized talking animals, as they appear in series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, rendered through 3-D images and corresponding 3-D glasses worn by readers. Through this world adaptation, Moore and O’Neill onboard themes of naturalness, experimentation, technology-aided perceptual processes, and travel to intersecting worlds to enhance The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’s commentary on the formative influence of fiction on authors and audiences.

1. Introduction

The Black Dossier (2007) is Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s third release in the longform comic series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, featuring a team of characters from Victorian fiction. In this installment, Moore and O’Neill also adapt fictional places, perhaps most notably the Blazing World, a utopian realm from Margaret Cavendish’s fiction The Description of a New World Called the Blazing World published alongside her philosophical treatise Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy (1666). In this essay, I examine Moore and O’Neill’s treatment of the Blazing World as a form of world adaptation across narrative mediums—from Cavendish’s philosophical fiction to comics. First, I clarify the aspects of Cavendish’s work that Moore and O’Neill incorporate in adapting her fictional landscape. Cavendish is a vitalist materialist, who holds that nature is made up of self-moving and rational matter. This motivates the belief that the talking animal hybrids featured in the Blazing World are physical and natural possibilities. Conspicuously, Moore and O’Neill include precisely these “natural” hybrid creatures in The Black Dossier, and contrast them with Dr. Moreau’s experimental hybrid creations from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume II (Moore & O’Neill 2003). Second, I examine how Moore and O’Neill realize multiple connected fictional worlds through distinctive features of the comics medium—3-D images and the corresponding use of 3-D glasses by readers. These glasses are intended to reveal otherwise hidden aspects of panels that depict the Blazing World, including travel portals between worlds. I examine the significance of this choice given Cavendish’s arguments in Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy that distinguish experimental optical lenses (microscopes and telescopes) from eyeglasses and mirrors. I argue that Moore and O’Neill’s engagement with Cavendish’s views regarding naturalness, artificiality, multiple worlds, experimentation, and vision are part of their adaptation of world, which is essential to a comprehensive understanding of The Black Dossier.

2. Origin Stories: The Black Dossier and the Blazing World

Volumes I and II of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen feature characters from late 19th century fiction—including Mina Murray from Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), Allan Quartermain from H. Rider Haggards’ King Solomon’s Mines (1885), Robert Lewis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), Griffin from H. G. Wells’ The Invisible Man (1897), and Captain Nemo from the work of Jules Verne (1870) (Moore & O’Neill 2000, 2007). According to Moore, this superhero-team-mashup of Victorian fictions brings the precursors of comic book heroes to the fore:

It seemed to me that the fantasy fiction of the late Nineteenth century was a breeding ground for a lot of central ideas that would later surface in pulp fiction and in comics…Like Jekyll and Hyde slowly morphing into the Hulk over eighty years. (Nevins, 2003, 218)

Since superheroes had evolved from characters of the Nineteenth century it seemed an interesting idea to take one of the concepts that had grown out of later superheroes, i.e., the superhero team, and then try to apply that to the characters that had been the inspiration for all of these heroes and see how it worked. (Ibid., 219)

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (hereafter League) contains a number of character adaptations, translated across mediums from their original narratives in Victorian literature to contemporary comics. ¹ For Moore, character adaptations involve a type of fidelity to idealized versions of the characters abstracted from their original stories:

…in some ways there is some ideal form, some ideal Platonic form of these characters, existing somewhere in the reaches of the human mind, and it’s the writer’s job to try and not so much invent the characters as it is to intuit them, let them speak. And I think that very much with Allan and Mina, you read the originals and you think about the characters and you extrapolate, you think “All right, this is how the characters were then, what would they be like if these things had happened?” And you start to get an idea, you start to get an impression. So, yea, that is pretty much how I arrive at most of my characters really from the belief that there is a perfect realization of that character, somewhere there, and that if you are just patient enough or dig deeply enough you will be able to unearth it and present it to your readers intact. That’s the theory. (Nevins, 2004, 258) ²

Character fidelity does not require that an adaption maintain all, or even most, of the characters’ features from their origin-narrative, but instead, according to Moore, the character in their previous context constrains which dispositions develop and are realized in new contexts. For example, Moore describes Mina as “my own version of a post-Dracula Mina Harker” with the moniker “Murray” signaling separation from her husband Jonathan Harker since the fictional events in Dracula. ³ Despite the many character adaptations across the League series, there is no one adaptation that is the central driving force, Moore explains, “I’m choreographing a huge car crash of different people’s worlds and characters.” ⁴ Though the League is not primarily driven by character adaptations, character adaptations are central to the conceit of the League, yielding a rich web of references that serve many further aims—satire, commentary, and fun, “…the League is this complex literary joke that is probably about a lot of books that [readers] haven’t read and would never be interested in reading.” ⁵ Both character and world adaptation serve Moore and O’Neill’s goals to entertain, to offer social and political satire, and to render commentary on the state of comic books, real world events, past literary narratives, and literary archetypes and cliches. The League was released through the early 2000s, a golden age of comics-to-film adaptation, making it distinctive by contrast in its literature-to-comics adaptation(s). ⁶

The Black Dossier (2007) is the third release in the series, and in this installment Moore and O’Neill expand their fictional source material, weaving together fictional characters from time periods before and after the 19th century, such as Prospero from Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611), and Orlando from Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando: A Biography” (1928). The main narrative takes place in the 1950s, but The Black Dossier is interspersed with metafictional source material relevant to the League going back thousands of years. (An intermittent narrative follows Mina Murry and Allan Quarterman on the run after they confiscate a dossier documenting the history of the titular League.) A striking feature of this installment of the League is that it presents the contents of the dossier to the reader as Mina and Allan read them. ⁷ In fact, the contents of the fictional dossier correspond to most of the contents The Black Dossier itself. These include editorials, a counterfeit Shakespearean manuscript, comic strips, satirical cartoons, historical comics, postcards, and a map of the Blazing World—complete with renderings of Cavendish’s hybrid animals such as parrot–men, bear–men, fox–men, and lice–men (Figure 1).⁸

Figure 1. Cavendish (1666) did not provide a map of the Blazing World. Moore and O’Neill’s map features distinctive elements of Cavendish’s work, including the publication date 1666 in the bottom left corner, and the images of animal hybrids in the top right (2007, 88).

The narrative of The Black Dossier culminates in a voyage to the Blazing World, where Prospero reflects on the interplay between fact and fiction. Although Cavendish is not explicitly mentioned in The Black Dossier, the preceding series, Volume II, appends a “Travel Almanac” explaining that the Blazing World was “psychically charted by the Duchess of Newcastle in the fateful year 1666” (2003, 161). ⁹ In her Preface to The Blazing World Cavendish comments on publishing her two works, The Description of a New World Called the Blazing World (Cavendish 2016, hereafter Blazing World), alongside Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy (Cavendish 2001, hereafter Observations) together:

… I added the Piece of Fancy to my Philosophical Observations, and joined them as two Worlds at the ends of their Poles; both for my own sake, to divert my studious thoughts, which I employed in the contemplation thereof, and to delight the reader with variety, which is always pleasing. But lest my fancy should stray too much, I chose such a Fiction that would be agreeable to the subject I treated in the [Observations]…” (To the Reader, 59–60).

Observations is an expansive work which charts Cavendish’s mature views on mechanism (the explanation of natural phenomena through quantitative measures of matter and physical laws), materialism (the view that all the natural world is made of matter), and experimental philosophy (testing hypotheses and drawing conclusions about natural events through observations in contrived settings, such as in a lab with a microscope). ¹⁰ Over the course of Observations, Cavendish offers critical treatments of experimental practices, chemistry, telescopes, and microscopes especially in response to Robert Hooke’s microscopic studies in Micrographia (1665).

The story set out in The Blazing World begins with the kidnapped lone survivor of a passage through the freezing Arctic. As the ship travels to another world via the North Pole, she is welcomed by talking animal hybrids—bear–men, parrot–men, fox–men, lice–men, worm–men and others, along with an Emperor, who crowns her Empress of the world (66–71). The Empress quickly sets out to better understand her world. Different kinds of animals, each with different perceptive capacities, form intellectual societies and present their observations and studies to the Empress:

The Bear–men were to be her Experimental Philosophers, the Bird–men her Astronomers, the Fly- Worm- and Fish–men her Natural Philosophers, the Ape–men her Chymists, the Satyrs her Galenick Physicians, the Fox–men her Politicians, the Spider and Lice–men her Mathematicians, the Jackdaw- Magpie- and Parrot–men her Orators and Logicians… (The Blazing World, 71).

Through interactions with each of the societies, the Empress, and other characters, advocate for many of Cavendish’s views from Observations. I highlight some of these views below.

The Blazing World plays a distinctive role in the exposition of Cavendish’s philosophical thought, and Moore and O’Neill are evidently familiar with Cavendish’s narrative. The question arises of the extent to which Cavendish’s philosophical commitments can be incorporated into the comics medium alongside adaptation of the setting of Blazing World. ¹¹ As I’ll argue, Cavendish’s vitalist materialism explains a puzzling and conspicuous feature of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series: the starkly contrasting treatment of the “natural” hybrids of Cavendish’s Blazing World and the experimental and artificial hybrids created by Dr. Moreau that are featured in Volume II.

3. Vitalist Materialism in Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy, The Blazing World, and The Black Dossier

a. Natural (not supernatural) bear–men

According to Cavendish’s vitalist materialism, nature is composed of self-moving, rational, and sensing matter:

…since there is no more but one Universal principle of Nature, to wit, self-moving Matter, which is the only cause of all natural effects (The Blazing World, 92).

But, nature has placed sense and reason together, so that there is no part or particle of nature, which has not its share of reason, as well as of sense: for, every part having self-motion, has also knowledge, which is sense and reason… (Observations, 93).

Cavendish’s conception of self-moving matter contrasts with mechanist accounts of matter according to which matter is passive: moving but not self-moving. The alleged passivity of matter has different implications for different mechanist contemporaries, especially regarding the relationship between matter and thought. For example, René Descartes (1596–1650) advocates for physical explanations that appeal to matter’s extension and the laws of motion in Principles of Philosophy (1664), Discourse on Method (1637), and The World (1633) (see Descartes, 1991). Descartes argues that the essence of matter is distinct from thinking, ¹² so that either automated or living matter (without thought) could at best poorly imitate rational behaviors including language generation and communication. ¹³ Relatedly, John Locke (1632–1704), in Essays Concerning Human Understanding (1689), notes that his concept of extended impenetrable matter does not explain how matter could think, although he holds this to be consistent with the possibility of God’s creation of thinking matter. ¹⁴

Later, in a critical commentary on this passage from Locke, G. W. Leibniz (1646–1716) casts support for mechanist philosophy as a commitment to explaining natural events in terms of the essential features of matter. ¹⁵ If God creates thinking matter by superadding non-physical properties to bodies, without a mechanistic explanation of how matter thinks, thinking matter is a miracle. Thus, insofar as a capacity for language, spontaneous reasoning, and knowledge-acquisition are forms of thinking, and because thinking cannot be explained in terms of the features of passive matter and physical laws, Leibniz concludes that there is not a mechanistic explanation for linguistic capacities, or a general way to naturalize rational matter in a Lockean framework. Accordingly, in such a framework, the bear–men, worm–men, and lice–men of the Blazing World are fantastical fictions which could not arise in a mechanistic material world without divine intervention. Were they to exist, they would be non-natural, supernatural, or miraculous creatures.

Contrary to the mechanist conception, Cavendish advances the view that all matter is both self-moving and rational, and that different parts of matter take on different figurative motions. ¹⁶ Rationality is thereby built into Cavendish’s notion of matter. However, the expression of the rationality of matter varies with the composition and motion of different parts of matter, which she variously describes as interior figures, figurative motions, or interior natures: ¹⁷

The complex world as we know it is built up out of different configurations of matter, each organized with a nature and behaviors appropriate to it (an interior nature) and exterior features (detectable by other parts of nature) (Observations, 221).

But some may object, that if there be sense and reason in every part of nature, it must be in all parts alike; and then a stone, or any other the like creature, may have reason, or a rational soul, as well as man. To which I answer: I do not deny that a stone has reason, or doth partake of the rational soul of nature, as well as man doth, because it is part of the same matter man consists of; but… [they differ in their] particular interior natures, figures and properties (Ibid.).

Wherefore, in all probability of truth, there is sense and reason in a mineral, as well as in an animal, and in a vegetable as well as in an element, although there is a great difference between the manner and way of the sensitive and rational perceptions, as there is between both their exterior and interior figures and natures… (Ibid., 223).

Cavendish explicitly connects the materiality of nature to the explanatory reduction of natural phenomena, including human rationality to the activity of matter:

…wheresoever is natural matter, there is also self-motion, and consequently, sense and reason. By this we may see how easy it is to conceive the actions of nature, and to resolve all the phenomena or appearances upon this ground. And I cannot admire enough, how so many eminent and learned philosophers have been, and are still puzzled about the natural rational soul of man (Observations, 223, emphasis added). ¹⁸

Thus, on Cavendish’s view, the capacities of bear–men, worm–men, fox–men and parrot–men are not ruled out by the nature of matter, and their capacities can be grounded in the interior nature of matter in much the same way that human rationality is explain via vitalist materialist explanation. If we take “natural” to mean explainable via to the motion and configuration of matter (or at least compatible with it), then Cavendish’s philosophy offers a competing philosophy of nature on which bear–men, worm–men, and lice–men are natural, as opposed to supernatural, or metaphysically impossible fictions.

Cavendish does not, however, accept unconstrained permutations of material creatures as natural, because interior natures also determine what is natural, “We should rather account that man monstrous that could fly, as having some motion not natural and proper to his figure and shape” (Observations, 64). Interior natures not only determine what is natural to and unnatural to a particular kind, but arguably also limit what types of creatures can occur in nature more generally, or what creatures are physically possible. In an earlier work, Cavendish presages the hybrids of the Blazing World in a discussion of elemental, mineral, vegetable, and animal hybrids such as elemental–men and animal–vegetables:

…for had Vegetables, Minerals, and Elements, the same Shape created by the Creator, which is the Animate matter and motion, there might be Vegetable, Mineral, and Elemental Men, Beasts Fouls, and Fish, as also there might be Animal Vegetables, Minerals, and Elements…. (Philosophical and Physical Opinions, Cavendish 1663, 15–16, my emphasis added).

Despite the abundant capacity of matter to take on different shapes and motions, Cavendish concedes that interior natures might rule out certain types of creatures such as elemental–men and animal–vegetables:

…but yet it is not possible for Vegetables, Minerals, or Elements, to have either the same Life or Knowledge as Animals, or Animals to have the same Life or Knowledge as Vegetables, Minerals, or Elements, because the motions and degrees of Temperaments, as also their Creations, Consistence, their Proprieties and Faculties are different, otherwise Infinite matter would be as one Figure, and no Variety, or else would be in a Confusion, without Distinction (Ibid., my emphasis added).

There are at least two ways to read this passage that draw different conclusions about how interior motions constrain what is physically possible and natural. On the one hand, Cavendish might be saying that it is not possible for there to be element–men hybrids (e.g., fire–men) because the interior natures of humans and fire are incompatible. This would render fire–men (for example) either physically impossible (if they cannot exist because the motions are incompatible with their figures) or at best monstrous (if they can exist but have motions not proper to their figures). By contrast, bears and humans, both taking part in animal lives, have compatible interior natures and so bear–mean are physical possibilities and natural. ¹⁹ On the other hand, Cavendish might be asserting that animal–elemental hybrids are indeed physically possible and maybe even natural in some contexts, but she is denying that they are in fact kinds of this world that combine the life and knowledge of those different types. So interior natures constrain what is natural to a kind, but not which kinds are natural more generally. Regardless of which reading one adopts, neither the basic features of matter nor the interior natures of living creatures rule out bear–men, worm–men, fox–man, parrot–men, and lice–men understood as versions of creatures from our world, with the capacity to reason, to communicate, and to seek and share knowledge of mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry, and logic. According to Cavendish’s version of materialism, talking and reasoning animal hybrids are therefore not only broadly possible (contra Descartes), but physically realizable without divine intervention, or natural (contra Locke). ²⁰

b. Natural (not artificial) bear–men

The supernatural is not the only category Cavendish contrasts with respect to what is natural. Cavendish also contrasts what is natural with what is artificial. Although all events in the material world can be explained through vitalist materialist explanations and so all parts of the universe are natural in the sense of being a part of nature, Cavendish distinguishes the processes of nature from the processes of arts and craft and, correspondingly, natural works from artifacts. On this score, Cavendish claims that artifacts are composed of natural materials that are transformed or recombined through the application of arts or craft, such as chemistry as the craft of elemental transformation and horse breeding as the craft of caring for and training horses (Observations, 105). ²¹ Cavendish’s discussion of artifacts, their departure from other products of natural processes, and their relation to experimental philosophy shed crucial light on both the contrast between natural and artificial in The Black Dossier, alongside perhaps one of the most striking formal features: the use of 3-D glasses. ²² In order to better appreciate how Moore and O’Neill’s narrative and formal choices present Cavendish’s thought, I discuss four key theses, in turn, from Observations, which traverse her account of artifacts to her criticism of experimental philosophy.

According to Cavendish (i) artifacts are more likely to function irregularly than natural works, (ii) experimental and perceptual processes, aided by artifacts such as microscopes, combine artificial and natural processes, and (iii) some practitioners of experimental philosophy misunderstand the relationship between art, perception and reasoning, and (iv) thereby also misunderstand (or misrepresent) their motivations and achievements. These four theses are each present in the following passage:

“… [experimental philosophers] think they can measure all the several sorts of heat and cold in all creatures, by artificial experiments; for as much as a natural man differs from an artificial statue or picture of a man, so much differs in a natural effect from an artificial, which can neither be so good, nor so lasting as a natural one. If Charles’ Wain [a constellation], the axes of the earth, and the motions of the planets were like the pole, or axes, or wheels of a coach, they would soon be out of order. Indeed, artificial things are pretty toys to employ idle time: Nay, some are very useful for our conveniency…though nature takes so much delight in variety, that she is pleased with them, yet they are not to be compared to her wise and fundamental actions: for, Nature being a wise and provident lady, governs her parts very wisely, methodically, and orderly…but her artificial works, are her works of delight, pleasure and pastime: Wherefore those that employ their time in artificial experiments, consider only nature’s sporting or playing actions; but those that view her wise government, in ordering all her parts, and consider her changes, alternations, and tempers in particulars, and their causes, spend their time more usefully…” (Observations, 105).

These theses are rooted in Cavendish’s basic philosophical commitments.

First, artifacts are created by altering (e.g., composing and dividing) materials, and Cavendish claims that such artificial unities are more likely to be irregular. They tend to degenerate are more unpredictable than other productions of nature and thus cannot be “so good nor so lasting” (105). This is because the parts out of which artifacts are fashioned retain many of their previous motions and dispositions, and simply recombining those parts might fail to produce unified activity:

… although art can put several parts together, or divide and disjoin them; yet it cannot make those parts move or work, so as to alter their proper figures, or interior natures, or to be the cause of changing and altering their own, or other parts, any otherwise than they are by their natures” (Observations, 84).

Because the materials out of which artifacts are constructed have their own motions and natures, and artifacts seek to recombine and repurpose those materials, not all artifacts function regularly or as intended. This is not to say that Cavendish believes that artifacts are without value, she emphasizes that artifacts can and should be used to improve wellbeing as “some are very useful for our conveniency” (Observations, 105). In Blazing World, the Empress admires many of the intellectual societies and their technologies that serve to complement natural processes, such as fostering seed growth agriculturally (90), engineering which produces ships with “artificial wind that had the better of the natural” (66) and even submarines (145). While Cavendish does not treat all artifacts as troublesome in virtue of being artifacts, she nevertheless holds their artificial unity to render them less likely to function well in the long term.

Among artifacts, Cavendish’s central curiosity concerns devices for the assistance of vision. She says,

…mistake me not; I do not say that no glass presents the true picture of an object: but only that magnifying, multiplying, and the like optic glasses, may, and do oftentimes present falsely the picture of an exterior object; I say, the picture, because it is not the real body of the object which the glass presents, but the glass only figures or patterns out the picture presented in and by the glass, and there mistake may easily be committed in taking copies from copies (Observations, 50–51).

When experimental philosophers join artifacts (such as microscopes) with perceptual processes (such as vision) in scientific observations, Cavendish claims that it yields “a third figure between nature and art” (Ibid.). These “third-figures” are artificial–natural hybrids “…artificial glasses present objects, partly natural and partly artificial…they can present the natural figure of an object, yet that natural figure may be presented in as monstrous a shape” (Ibid.). According to Cavendish, the objects of knowledge gained through the art of microscopy, are therefore artificial–natural hybrids. This contrasts with the objects of knowledge available through unified perceptual processes:

For example, all parts concurring to compose the figure of the eye, agree together, not only in the composition, but in the act of seeing or perception, and in all other things, if regular, that are proper to that figure…they are not ignorant of what their own adjoining parts do. I say, they are ignorant, not of all distant parts, but only of some: for, both the eye and the ear perceive at a distance, though not at all distances; …Thus you may perceive an eye, or any other sensitive figure, is composed of parts, not only self-knowing and perceptive, but also agreeing, as being connected and acting in one common union (Observations, 159–160, emphasis added).

For Cavendish, vision proceeds through self-knowledge, agreement, and a common union of the various parts of the eye and nervous system. As artifacts, microscopes may fail to exhibit such unity for several reasons: because of a lack of self-knowledge, because of the irregularity of motion of parts in action, or because of a failure of sympathy among parts. ²³ Additionally, microscopes might also fail to form such a union with the human perceptual system that purports to employ them. For Cavendish, a successful union with our perceptual systems is suggested on the basis of the usefulness of the object or an increase in the regularity in perception. ²⁴ Since the early practices of microscopy were marked by variability on account of emergent understanding of lighting, lens-making, and calibration, she concludes that the significant variations in what people observe in microscopes is evidence against a unified artifact (Observations, 51, 175). ²⁵

Moreover, perceptual systems, according to Cavendish, give us information about the exterior figures of objects, but do not directly reveal the interior motions or natures, which are instead discoverable by our rational capacities:

…although our sensitive perception can go no further than the exterior shape, figure and actions of an object; yet, the rational being a more subtle, active, and piercing perception, by reason it is more free than the sensitive, does not rest in the knowledge of an object, but, by its exterior actions, as by several effects, penetrates into its interior nature, and doth probably guess and conclude what its interior figurative motions may be: For, although the interior and exterior actions of a composed figure be different, yet the exterior maybe partly give a hint or information of the interior… (Observations, 175).

A similar note is struck in Blazing World:

Then the Empress asked them, whether by their sensitive perceptions they could observe the interior corporeal, figurative motions both of Vegetables and Minerals? They answer’d that their senses could perceive them after they were produced, but not before; Nevertheless, said they, although the interior, figurative motions of natural Creatures are not subject to the exterior animal, sensitive perceptions, yet by their rational perception they may judge of them, and of their productions if they be regular” (Blazing World, 88).

So, in copying out images of objects through optical lenses to the eye, Cavendish is skeptical that microscopes offer what our reasoning requires for grasping the interior motions of the objects of perception—specifically, observation of effects and the inner nature of the object. Insofar as vision is a perceptual process that conveys information about the exterior of objects, Cavendish summarizes its capacities when joined with a microscope:

In short, magnifying glasses are like a high heel to a short leg, which if it be made too high, it is apt to make the wearer fall, and at the best, can do no more than represent exterior figures in a bigger, and so in a more deformed shape and posture than naturally they are; but as for the interior form and motions of a creature, as I said before, they can no more represent them, than telescopes can the interior essence and nature of the sun… for if one that had never seen milk before, should look upon it through a microscope, he would never to be able to discover the interior parts of milk by that instrument… (Observations, 52–53).

Our observations through microscopes therefore combine two limitations: direct access to merely exterior motions (through vision) facilitated by a potentially disorganized and non-unified set of parts (those of microscopes).

In addition to assessing the tools of experimental philosophy, Cavendish discusses its practitioners, especially members of the London Royal Society. ²⁶ In the Preface of Micrographia (1665) Robert Hooke comments on the capacity for “artificial instruments and methods” to repair “the mischiefs and imperfection” of human thinking and grant “power over natural causes and effects.” Contrary to this conception, Cavendish objects that “neither can natural causes nor effects be overpowered by man…he cannot have a supreme and absolute power” (Observations, 49). Cavendish claims that arts and experimental philosophy cannot correct for problems in reason without the help of reason itself, and thus are not “above” reasoning. Cavendish argues that, given the variability and unverified aspects of observations made through microscopes and to some extent telescopes, experimental philosophers have overstated the benefits of their art, which “…intoxicated so many men’s brains, and wholly employ their thoughts and bodily actions about phenomena” (Observations, 51). This is not to say that she condemns experimental philosophy in general for “…could experimental philosophers find out more beneficial arts than our forefathers have done, either for the better increase of vegetables and brute animals to nourish our bodies, or better and commodious contrivances in the art of architecture to build us houses…” then they would have reasons to continue their work (Observations, 52). Even so, she describes its practitioners as “…boys that play with water bubbles or fling dust in to each other’s eyes, or make a hobbyhorse of snow are worthy of reproof rather than praise” (Ibid.). ²⁷

In Blazing World, Cavendish is plausibly seen as taking satiric aim at experimental practices of this sort when, the bear–men ask the Empress to let them keep their telescopes as toys, saying “The Bear–men being exceedingly troubled at her Majesties displeasure concerning their Telescopes, kneel’d down and in the humblest manner petition that they might not be broken; for, said they, we take more delight in Artificial delusions, then in natural truths” (79). This contrasts with the Empress’s remarks regarding the differently characterized society of worm–men (the fictional natural philosophers) who make different observations about the application of art to the Earth. Of their practices, the Empress says “many times there are factions and divisions, which cause productions of mixt species; as for example, weeds, instead of sweet flowers and useful fruits; but Gardeners and Husbandmen use often to decide their quarrels, and cause them to agree…and having taken much satisfaction in several of their answers, encouraged them in the studies and observations” (90–91). ²⁸ I have traced Cavendish’s account of artifacts and perceptual processes that employ them in experimental practices by experimental philosophers to clarify the role of natural–artificial mixtures in Cavendish’s thought precisely because we encounter these elements—natural and artificial hybrids, hybrid viewing technology, and finally, scientists with suspect motives—in Volume II and The Black Dossier.

c. Natural bear–men, worm–men, and louse–men in The Black Dossier

The distinctions between natural and artificial effects, and different conceptions of matter, find expression in Moore and O’Neill’s curious depiction of hybrid animals. In The Black Dossier, upon arriving in the Blazing World, Mina and Allan are greeted by Cavendish’s animal hybrids (Figure 2):

Figure 2. The panels on the left (Moore & O’Neill 2007, 170) and right (171) feature bird–men, fish–men, and worm–men, among others, some of which wave and greet the newcomers.

Allan Quartermain: “Mina, look at all the animal people….”

Mina Murry: “Yes, yes, and all the worm–men and louse–men look so natural, don’t they? Not like Dr. Moreau’s poor beasts, all those years back.” (2007, 171)

Murray’s remark purports to remind the reader of the events of Volume II, which include an encounter with Dr. Moreau who, in keeping with H. G. Wells’ Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) is experimentally and surgically generating hybrid animals. ²⁹ Each of Moreau’s creations has a name featuring a number, the bear–man is H-9, and Moreau explains that “the H stands for hybrid” (Moore & O’Neill 2003, 120) (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Dr. Moreau standing amongst his animal creations (Moore & O’Neill 2003, 120).

The resulting creatures are portrayed as creepy, strange, unhappy, and struggling to communicate and stand “correctly” (121). Murray exclaims to the bear-man “Sir, we are human beings, and unlike yourselves we are meant to talk!” The bear–man replies “Not to talk! Not to talk!” (Figure 4) (Volume II “Red in Tooth and Claw,” 2003, 118).

Figure 4. Both Mina and the bear–man emphasize a contrast in the communicative capacities and norms of humans and Dr. Moreau’s creations (Moore & O’Neill 2003, 118).

Moore and O’Neill emphasize the naturalness of hybrid animals that can speak and reason when they adapt Cavendish’s Blazing World into The Black Dossier. These hybrid animals stand in stark contrast to the animals from Volume II, and the divide parallels not only the source fictions (the Island of Doctor Moreau and the Blazing World), but also the distinction between natural and artificial hybrids drawn by Cavendish. Moreau’s bear–man has a limited capacity for language, either qua passive unthinking matter or qua artificial-natural hybrids, whereas the bear–men of the Blazing World form intellectual societies. Further, Mina’s emphasis on the naturalness of the worm–men and louse–men upon arrival in the Blazing World, in contrast with Moreau’s bear–man H-9, echoes the Empress’s praise of the society of the worm–men in their art in contrast with the society of bear–men who keep their telescopes as mere toys. Moore and O’Neill thus adapt not only characters and setting, but also a central philosophical theme from Cavendish: the contrast of natural creatures and irregular ones created by experimental methods to get the best of nature.

4. Landscapes, Worlds, and 3-D Glasses

Artifacts for enhancing vision figure heavily in The Black Dossier, as Moore and O’Neill explore the idea that aspects of a world might be undetectable without the aid of lenses for optical assistance. This theme is explored largely through the inclusion of a pair of 3-D glasses for readers that match those correspondingly employed by characters. ³⁰ Moore and O’Neill imply that the 3-D glasses serve those who cannot otherwise view the Blazing World (League Volume II, 161). Within Moore and O’Neill’s Blazing World, 3-D glasses prove necessary both for readers and for characters in detecting aspects of the world, and the many worlds (and dimensions) it is connected to. This decision is striking not only in its effect on the reader experience, but also constitutes another metatextual homage: the narrative of The Black Dossier is set primarily in the 1950s and the first 3-D comic in the United States, Three Dimension Comics (St John), was released in 1953. ³¹ Moore and O’Neill do not entertain questions about perception via glasses and artifice at length, although Prospero’s notes from the “Travel Almanac” compare viewing the shifting landscape to “imps seen in a scrying-glass” (League Volume II, 161). Even so, the end to which they use the 3-D glasses reveals important aspects of the structure of the Blazing World and its relationship to associated fictional worlds in The Black Dossier.

Upon arrival in the Blazing World of the Black Dossier, we learn it is co-located with a world at the South Pole, alongside several other worlds that can be accessed through portals or “apertures,”

(Orlando) “Oh, haven’t you seen those? They’re rather good. They’re apertures into all the overlapping dimensions that the Blazing World connects to. I think these lead simultaneously to the swine-things’ borderland and the various realms of that peculiar tree in Buckinghamshire. Apparently the trick is to close one eye then the other, so that you can see the coexistent zones separately.” (The Black Dossier, Moore & O’Neill 2007, 174–175, emphasis added).

These instructions are intended for the reader, too, yielding one of the comics most striking elements: by alternately viewing the portals through just one colored lens of the glasses two different scenes are seen through the apertures (Figure 5). Viewed through the green (or cyan) lens the reader sees a beast approaching the portal (Figure 6), while viewed through the red lens, the reader sees a series of elves (Figure 7).

Figure 5. The portals or “apertures” appear across pages 174–175 (Moore & O’Neill 2007).

Figure 6. Viewing the panels through the green or cyan lens portrays a world with a beast hurrying toward the portal, eventually menacingly peering through, from W. H. Hodgson’s The House on the Borderland (Moore & O’Neill 2007, 174–175, colours edited for effect).

Figure 7. Viewing the panels through the red lens depicts elves from Enid Blyton’s The Faraway Tree (Moore & O’Neill 2007, 174–175, colours edited for effect).

Just as the fictional worlds are connected and overlap at the portals, the visual depiction of the portals occupies the same space on the page, each accessible depending on which eye the reader closes. In this way, the 3-D elements of The Black Dossier offer visual portal for the reader to peer into, through the Blazing World, into other worlds.

Moore and O’Neill introduce additional layers of complexity as the panels also represent variation or reversal in the flow of time at worlds—for example, with directions reversed at the South Pole from the Blazing World at the North Pole. We learn this via YRAM (“Mary” spelled backwards) in the panel depicting the portals (174–175). Upon announcing that she must be off, she proceeds to depart from right to left across panels the in opposition to standard reading order. Mary’s apparent travel in the opposite direction of the narrative across the panels thus portrays the directional reversal of time. ³²

While 3-D renderings often give the effect of images “popping out” of the page, in contrast, the initial 3-D elements in The Black Dossier’s Blazing World generate a sense of depth, into and beyond the white gutters surrounding the panels, presenting each panel as portal into another world (in addition to the fictional portals to other worlds). ³³ Eventually, the 3-D elements overtake the white gutters between the panels, emerging from the page when viewed in 3-D, including Prospero, peering back over his own 3-D glasses at the reader (Moore & O’Neill 2007, 181–184). As Prospero transitions in the apparent visual field toward the reader, the dialogue shifts to a monologue from Prospero regarding the nature of imagination, fiction, and authorship (which I will return to shortly).

5. Place and World Adaptation

Moore describes the League as a “crash of different people’s worlds and characters,” and I have examined one of those worlds, the Blazing World, as a form world adaptation across mediums. Livingston (2010) explores the importance of observing both the overlap and the differences between adaptations in their source and target mediums,

…the very category of adaptation designates works that are meant to retain recognizable elements of a literary source. It follows that if a given adaptation is to be appreciated as a successful instance of adaptation, we should ask in what sense it has (and has not) remained faithful to the source, at least in the sense of presenting characteristic features belonging to the same type as those of the source (112). ³⁴

In Moore and O’Neill’s adaptation, the recognizable elements of the Blazing World include its “discoverer” (Cavendish), some of the world’s inhabitants, and, as I have argued, philosophical theses and themes that were themselves translated across Cavendish’s works of philosophy and fiction. Moore and O’Neill first provide a map of the Blazing World, complete with bear–men, parrot–men, fox–men, and lice–men iconography as part of the dossier (88). When the narrative itself occurs at the Blazing World, they offer a 3-D experience that emphasizes the naturalness of the hybrid creatures with the help of 3-D glasses to peer through and at multiple intersecting worlds. However, the 3-D elements of The Black Dossier also differentiate the geography of the Blazing World from Cavendish’s version. Cavendish’s Blazing World is connected to other worlds through passages at the North Pole, whereas Moore and O’Neill locate the Blazing World between the British Isles and the North Pole, and co-located with the South Pole as well (The Black Dossier 88, and League Volume II 161).

Despite differences in geographic details, Blazing World shares thematic source material with later installments of the series, through lunar travel literature and astronomical observations. Cavendish’s treatment of multiple worlds in Blazing World is a departure from her previous treatments of worlds in Poems and Fancies (1653). In that work, she describes multiple worlds as spatially related through differences in magnitude (smaller worlds inside of larger ones). ³⁵ In the poem “A World in an Earring,” meteorological events in a world inside an earring are never experienced at the macroscale by the wearer of the earring: “And lightning, thunder, and great winds may blow/Within this earring, yet the ear not know” (Cavendish 2019, 11–12). The shift away from tiny worlds within worlds might have been inspired by comets, also known as blazing stars, visible to the naked eye that appeared in the sky in 1664 and 1665, sparking discussion and debate amongst intellectual societies including the Royal Society of London. ³⁶ Cavendish’s Blazing World might very well have been shaped and distinguished (and named after) astronomical observations, and inspired by fictions of travel to worlds in outer space. These features are not part of Moore and O’Neill’s adaptation in The Black Dossier itself, however, the astronomical influences on Cavendish’s Blazing World foreshadow the subsequent narrative in Volume III of the League, Century, which draws on literature that imagines life on the moon (Moore & O’Neill 2009). Moore mentions Godwin’s The Man in the Moone: Or A Discourse of a Voyager Thither (1638) as an inspiration for the narrative of League Volume III, Century, and Godwin’s work likely influenced Cavendish’s Blazing World too. ³⁷ Though travel routes and methods depart from Cavendish’s version of the Blazing World, the League and Blazing World share inspiration in literary stories about travel to outer-space.

Lastly, in The Black Dossier, the Blazing World is both a setting and a symbol; a utopia for fictional characters to seek refuge from their previous narratives, including those of Moore and O’Neill thus far in the League series. Moore remarks, “…A Blazing World, seems to sum up the essential nature of what our originally simple idea of a Victoria hero-team has evolved into, with the Duchess of Newcastle’s visionary allegorical terrain become a symbol for the entire blazing landscape of the human imagination that The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is now dedicated to excavating and exploring” (Introduction, Nevins, 2004, 12). In the intellectual context and origin of the Blazing World, it is a place where both the Empress and a fictionalized Margaret Cavendish (employed as the Empress’s scribe) engage intellectual societies, develop their own philosophies, and create fictional and philosophical worlds. Cavendish, as author, emphasizes this element of world creation too, noting that Blazing World is a material work of her mind,

By this poetical Description, you may perceive, that my ambition is not only to be Empress, but Authoress of a whole World; and that the Worlds I have made, both Blazing and the other Philosophical World, mentioned in the first part of this description, are framed and composed of the most pure, that is, the rational parts of Matter, which are the parts of my Mind (Blazing World, Epilogue to Reader). ³⁸

Moore and O’Neill emphasize the material significance of fiction too. Prospero concludes The Black Dossier with commentary on the mutual influence of fiction, authors, and audience:

If we mere insubstantial fancies be, how more so thee, who from us substance stole?…two sketching hands, each one the other draws: the fantasies thou’ve fashioned fashion thee. (Prospero, Moore & O’Neill 2007, 181)

Moore explains that fictions have the formative effects on authors and readers:

We have depended upon [fictional characters] and to some degree the fictional world is completely intertwined and interdependent with the material world…Yes, it is real flesh-and-blood people who create these fictional beings, but the fictional beings create us as well. (Alan Moore, interview with Kurt Amacker, 2012) ³⁹

Moore and O’Neill do not adopt all of the geographic features or inhabitants of Cavendish’s world, nor do they take a skeptical position on the epistemic reliability of technologies, nor do they highlight Cavendish’s role as author explicitly. ⁴⁰ However, they onboard themes regarding naturalness, experimentation, technology-aided perceptual processes, and travel to intersecting worlds in their adaptation of Cavendish’s Blazing World. Moore’s approach to character adaptation does not translate to world adaptation in this instance. If there is a Platonic ideal of the Blazing World, Moore and O’Neill’s version departs from it in many ways. Despite these differences, the Blazing World is more than a backdrop or fleeting literary reference in the culmination of the The Black Dossier. It signals a utopia, refuge, and travel hub for fictional characters, serves as source-material linking themes from previous and subsequent League volumes, and, like Cavendish’s original, prompts authorial reflection on authorship and world-creation.

6. Conclusion

Moore and O’Neill fashion fictions from Cavendish’s philosophical fiction, and adapt Cavendish’s Blazing World into The Black Dossier, along with some of its inhabitants and worldviews. I have characterized the appearance of the Blazing World as an instance of world adaptation that includes worm–men, lice–men, fox–men, and bear–men, Cavendish’s distinction between what is natural and artificial in a world of self-moving matter, and the naturalness of animal hybrids in contrast with the experimental creatures of Dr. Moreau. Moore and O’Neill innovate through distinctive formal choices by rendering the Blazing World using 3-D glasses which create portals across panels, both into the Blazing World and overlapping worlds through travel portals on the page. Although these elements depart from details of Cavendish’s Blazing World, I have underscored the significance of Moore and O’Neill’s presentation of the Blazing World via 3-D glasses as a strategy for adapting components of both historical and philosophical context of Blazing World. In The Black Dossier, The Blazing World functions as a utopian setting for fictional characters and worlds to congregate, contributes to The Black Dossier as a sourcebook bridging volumes of League, and serves as an opportunity for Moore, through Prospero, to reflect on the materiality and influence of authorship.