Betrayed by Time:

Steampunk & the Neo-Victorian in Alan Moore’s Lost Girls and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Abstract

Alan Moore’s neo-Victorian comics Lost Girls (2006) and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (1999-) dramatise enigmatic aspects of temporality, narrative, and history. In particular, the steampunk elements of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen highlight history’s ‘extimate’ quality, neither internal to nor wholly outside the subject. In so doing, they suggest a more conflicted approach to progress and freedom than is usually acknowledged.