Aren't league of extraordinary Gentleman characters those out of literature?
I see them more as being out of popular fiction.
I think that any modern day League of Extraordinary Gentleman, and will be getting some of that in the newer comics to be put out by Top Shelf, should be a combination of literary and popular entertainment (TV/Film and comics).
After all, the characters selected for the comic series were from some of the more popular literature of the time and later books that still fit within that time period (Fu Manchu, Hornblower Square, etc.)
Moreover, John Drake (
Secret Agent Man/
Danger Man, and if you are so included, Number Six from
The Prisoner) makes a cameo in
Black Dossier as do other pop British characters like Dan Dare (or at least his space organization). Oh, and Jimmy Bond, descendant of Champion Bond.
So any modern League would have a combination of literary and pop culture characters.
People read back then. Now, not so much.
This is a major fallacy and a gross generalization.
Reading isn't dying out and people aren't reading less. Publishing still remains a big business, even though it's taken a hit much like any other business during these economic times.
In the recent decades, there has been a proliferation of big-box booksellers to the unfortunate affect of putting smaller, independent book stores out of business. There has been an explosion in children's literature with the
Harry Potter and
Twilight series of books. Popular fiction remains well... popular. Contemporary literature is a competitive occupation, everyone grasping for that front table of Borders and Barnes & Noble.
When someone cries that reading isn't being done anymore, I say hogwash. It's been said since the advent of film, then again with television and once more with the internet. The book remains and has yet to be buried underneath god's green Earth.
