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What a curious beast, this Black Dossier. Within its pages, writer-savant Alan Moore runs amok -- not that that's a bad thing. The third volume in Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series contains the same mind candy found in the first two adventures, but not exactly the same brand of rollicking fun.

Those first two action-packed adventures -- banding together the motley group of Mr. Hyde, The Invisible Man, Captain Nemo, Allan Quatermain and Mina Murray (formerly Mina Harker, of "Dracula" legend) -- delivered smart versions of these public-domain characters, thrust into high-stakes missions with thrilling plot twists. This time, writer Moore and artist Kevin O'Neill deliver a book you can admire for its artistry and cleverness, but it's so dense with cultural references, you'll be tempted to stop reading every third panel to look something up on Wikipedia. Mixing straight prose with sequential art, Moore and O'Neill riff on everything from the London Underground map to James Bond to Orwell's 1984 to Wodehouse's Wooster to Tijuana Bibles. The book simply begs for an annotated version.

Delving into his bag of now-standard storytelling devices, Moore engages in a fanciful recasting of erotica, incorporating humor and artistry to elevate "X-rated" material. It's like Lost Girls lite. And while he's tossing in everything plus the kitchen sink, Black Dossier concludes with a trippy 3-D sequence, recalling the monumental J.H. Williams III Promethea series in its fantastical scope.

Most significantly, as he did between chapters of his seminal Watchmen 20 years ago, Moore inserts straight prose into the book, allowing the reader to study the actual dossier that Mina and Allan steal. (Other League members only appear in flashback versions in these pages.) This device gives O'Neill a nice opportunity to show artistic range, but in its length and pacing, the dossier teeters on the edge of self-indulgence. Given the mental gymnastics required to enjoy it all, it's safe to recommend this ambitious work to anyone seeking out a graphic tome.