League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 2 1

"Phases of Deimos": On the planet Mars, Gullivar Jones flies a magic carpet to an encampment where he meets with John Carter to coordinate a war against a non-Martian species called "Molluscs" (who are the aliens from H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds), wh

"Phases of Deimos"
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 2 #1
September, 2002
Publisher	America's Best Comics
Executive Editor	Jim Lee
Cover Artists	Kevin O'Neill Benedict Dimagmaliw
Phases of Deimos
Writers	Alan Moore
Pencilers	Kevin O'Neill
Inkers	Kevin O'Neill
Colorists	Benedict Dimagmaliw
Letterers	Todd Klein
Editors	Scott Dunbier
Next Issue	League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 2 # 2

Oh God. Gullivar, it's an armada. Those photograph cubes. That egg. They know where we come from. Earth. They're heading for Earth.

— John Carter

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Volume 2) #1 is an issue of the series League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Volume 2) with a cover date of September, 2002. It was published on July 24, 2002.

Synopsis for "Phases of Deimos"

On the planet Mars, Gullivar Jones flies a magic carpet to an encampment where he meets with John Carter to coordinate a war against a non-Martian species called "Molluscs" (who are the aliens from H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds), which have been bedeviling the native Martians. Gullivar and Jones had assembled an alliance between Mars's native inhabitants and ride into battle. After a great battle in which the tide turned favor for the Martian forces after the Sorns finally entered into the fray and crippled the invaders' tripods, the Molluscs take off from Mars in spaceships. John postulates that they have left for Earth, because they had determined that is where the humans on Mars came from.

On Earth, the members of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen step out of a coach in Horsell Common, where an impact crater can now be seen where one of the ships landed.

Appearing in "Phases of Deimos"

Featured Characters:

• John Carter
• Lt. Gullivar Jones (First appearance) (Single appearance)

Supporting Characters:

• Tharks
• Hither People
• Sorns

Antagonists:

• Molluscs

Other Characters:

• Murray Group
  • Wilhelmina Murray
  • Allan Quatermain
  • Captain Nemo
  • Henry Jekyll/Edward Hyde
  • The Invisible Man
• Dejah Thoris (Mentioned only)

Locations:

• Mars
• England
  • Surrey
    • Horsell Common

Vehicles:

• Magic Carpet
• Martian Cylinder
• Tripods

Concepts:

• Magic
  

Notes

• Gullivar Jones is the creation of Edwin L. Arnold and appeared in Lieutenant Gullivar Jones: His Vacation.

• The Martian coalition consists of Thoats, the mounted beasts ridden by John Carter, and the Green Martians from the Barsoom series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the Hither people from Lieutenant Gullivar, and the Sorns from Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis.

• The Martian dialogues are mostly written backward in English in which it can be translate with a mirror. The scene where the first tripod appeared, the Green Martians' words are translated as: "Shit!" "Look out!" "Oh, fu*k!" And the scene where the Mollusc escaped Mars, a Green Martian's dialogue translate as "Look!"

• The premise of H.G. Wells' Martians as being non-native to Mars has been previously depicted in several fictions such as Sherlock Holmes' War of the Worlds, Scarlet Traces, and War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches. Moore had confirmed this during an interview that "H.G. Wells' Martians, they are not from Mars. They are from some other galaxy. And they tried to take over Mars but have been driven out by the combined Martian resistance. You know, and that's when they come to Earth."

Trivia

• The intro of this issue is reminiscent of the first page of Watchmen, which was also created and authored by Alan Moore.

• Negalu, Varnal, the Green City and Michael Kane from Michael Moorcock's Mars series are referenced in a discussion between Carter and Gullivar.

• Gullivar tells Carter that he is "terribly sorry to hear about the princess". Carter's wife was Dejah Thoris, Princess of Mars. Annotator Jess Nevins supposes that this scene takes place between Gods of Mars and Warlord of Mars, when Dejah Thoris was imprisoned by her and Carter's enemies and feared dead.

• Carter is a self-proclaimed worshiper of Mars/Ares, the Greek war god, which he bids Gullivar with a raised fist salute.

• The "crystal egg" found by Gullivar and Carter is a reference to H.G. Wells' The Crystal Egg, where a dealer in antiquities looks through the egg and sees the planet Mars. Coincidentally, the story was published in the same year in which Wells was serializing The War of the Worlds, and, due to vaguely similar descriptions of the Martians and their machines, implying The Crystal Egg to be a precursor to The War of the Worlds. This concept had also been used in Manly Wade Wellman's Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds and Kevin J. Anderson's The Martian War.

• Wells' Martians' use of launching their space vessels is hinted in Chapter One of The War of the Worlds in which the Martians are using cannons to propel their ships to Earth, in much the same way that the Baltimore Gun Club sends a manned capsule to the moon in Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon.

• The "V.R." on the side of the carriage, which the League unoccupied, stands for "Victoria Regina," "Queen Victoria," and was a kind of official emblem for the British government. It is sometimes seen as "V.R.I.," or "Victoria Regina Imperatrix" (Victoria Queen and Empress).

• The "smug Frenchman, licentious Spaniard, and the blustering Hun" text in the next issue panel is typical nineteenth and twentieth-century boys' story text, describing the French, Spanish, and Germans in a stereotypical manner.

See Also

• Cover gallery for the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series
• Images from League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 2 1

Recommended Reading

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 1