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Quote1 I know that I am hideous and hateful. I am not loved, nor ever hope to be. Nor am I fool enough to think that what I feel for you is love. But in this world alone, I do not hate you... and alone in this world, you do not hate me. Quote2
-- Edward Hyde



Appearing in "People of Other Lands"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

Adversaries:

Other Characters:

  • Stent, the "Astronomer Royal"

Locations:

  • Horsell Common
  • Bleak House

Items:

  • Heat-Ray

Vehicles:



Synopsis for "People of Other Lands"

The League meets with Campion Bond and are told of the airborne object that arrived in England this morning. Mina asks if it could be a Military Intelligence project and Bond assures her that it is nothing of the kind. Bond mentions that the astronomer royal Stent believes it is life from another planet, but rejects that notion. The capsule opens to reveal an alien with multiple tentacles. The League and the onlookers back away from the pit containing the capsule and alien, wary of any danger it may present. The Royal Astronomer and a party of four approach the alien waving a white flag. The alien disintegrates the five people and emits some sort of heat ray that fries the crowd assembled on the outside of the pit.

The League takes cover and the flames cause Mr. Jekyll to change to Mr. Hyde. Mina calms Hyde down and the group returns to their inn for the night. Mina and Quatermain talk out on the porch and see the arrival of British troops. They return inside and discuss the day with the other members of the League. Griffin, the invisible man, sees another alien cylinder streaking through the night sky and Quatermain remarks that it looks as though it is heading toward Woking. While the others sleep, Mina lets herself into Hyde's room, where the beast is sitting up on the bed, doing nothing in particular. He hears her and invites her into the room. They sit and talk about their friendly relationship, something Hyde lacks with the others.

Meanwhile, Griffin has stolen into the pit and begins communicating with the aliens by drawing pictures in the sand and telling them that he will help them because he wants to be on the winning side.

Notes

  • The events of this issue faithfully occurs in The War of the Worlds: the Martian falling from the cylinder into the pit, and the man trying to crawl out of the pit occurs in Chapter Four of the novel; the narrator himself (who is uncanny resembles to H.G. Wells) talking to his neighbor, the expedition, with the lead man waving the flag, the group of bystanders, and the Heat-Ray occurs in Chapter Five; the soldiers, the "buggering noise and clanging from the Common," and the descending second cylinder occurs in Chapter Eight.
  • The Bleak House, where the League are staying is an actual coaching inn and hostelry, public house, etc., that has stood on the Woking to Weybridge road, the A320, for several centuries, and in fact, may have inspired Charles Dickens' Bleak House. Kevin O'Neill had went to Horsell Common, trying to find the sand pits, and rested at the Bleak House. He noted that the illustration of the interior and exterior of the Bleak House is based on pure invention and that the present inn was rather more recent than was called for.
  • Allan Quatermain's "this whole affair reminds me of a dream I once had" is a reference to his dream in Allan and the Sundered Veil from the first League miniseries.
  • Major Henry Blimp is a reference to Colonel Blimp, a cartoon character who was created by Sir David Alexander Cecil Low and appeared in various newspapers around the world in the 1930s, beginning with the London Evening Standard. Blimp seen here is a younger version who's yet to be promoted.

Trivia

  • Griffin is seen holding a newspaper that comes from The War of the Worlds. In that novel is the following passage: "A MESSAGE RECEIVED FROM MARS." and "REMARKABLE STORY FROM WOKING".
  • Bond refers to Mycroft Holmes as not traveling much is a part of Sherlockian canon that Mycroft does not like to travel.
  • The "Prussians" that Bond refers to were the Germans, rivals to the British Empire at the turn of the 20th century.
  • The head of Campion Bond's cane has the Morse Code for "007."
  • Blimp's expression "It'll all be over come Monday morning" is likely a reference to the expression "It will all be over by Christmas," which many British told each other in the opening days of World War One. A a young Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery was actually quoted in August 1914 as saying, "Fortunately the whole thing will be over by Christmas." In WotW, those people who had not seen the Martians themselves had an overly optimistic impression of how easily the Martians would be defeated. Near the beginning of Chapter Nine of WotW, the narrator's neighbor "was of the opinion that the troops would be able to capture or to destroy the Martians during the day (i.e. the Sunday following the first use of the Heat Ray)."
  • The game that Captain Nemo and Allan Quartermain are playing with the matchsticks is an answer to a riddling game.
  • The exchange between Hyde and Mina is reminiscent of Sydney Carton's farewell to Lucy Darnay in Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities.

See Also


Recommended Reading

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 1

Footnotes


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