So I may have dicussed this in previous blog posts, but I read League of Extraordinary Gentlemen before reading any of these books. It gave me a few preconcived notions about the characters when reading the books, especially the invisible man and Edward Hyde. The invisible man is portrayed in the graphic novel as a rapist, traitor, murdered and all around not nice guy. In the book, he’s just kind of a dick. Griffen (The Invisible Man) only uses his invisiblity powers to avoid people and steal things, and ends up getting beaten to death by the townspeople. He IS a coward, which is present in the graphic novel, but in the novel he hides his true cowardice by just being invisible…most of the time. Because what do you need to be scared of if no one can see you? He is untouchable, but only because he can go where ever he wants undetected. But everything he does is motivated by cowardice, greed, pleasure, or simply by wanting to be on the winning side. In the first book, he technically saves the day by spying on Campion Bond meeting with Moriarty as he monologues, which seems odd for a coward. But it was fun! he got to kill a policeman and spy on people and be a sneaky snake which is what he does best. It wasn’t to help the team, he just found it fun. He also immediately turns on the team and the entire human race in the second book upon seeing the martians in action. We only hear true terror in his voice when he realizes that Hyde can see him… and has come to kill him.
I enjoy what Moore did by expanding on the fears and instability of the invisible man and turning him into a horrible monster. Moore was definitely writing his story in a world where you can get away with saying a lot more and in much more obvious ways, and he used that to free Griffen to be exactly the kind of person an unstable albino scientist who has suddenly acheived invisibility would be.
