LXG Background Information

[J320]

Can someone post some background info on the characters of LXG please.

I know some of them, and recognize the name of others but I don't really know who they are or where they come from.

Please post the info.

P.S. Include Moriarti too.

[corfy]

Well, I haven't seen the movie, nor am I familiar with the comic books, but I can fill in on a couple of the literary characters that I know about.

Allan Quatermain - "Hero" in a series of novels by H. Haggard, most notably "King Solomon's Mines." I just finished reading the book. Quatermain is an elephant hunter than gets caught up in a search for the mines because one of his friends' brothers went missing while looking for the mines. Along the way, they help a lost tribe of Zulus go through a civll war. One of the few cases where I hope the movie improves the character over the book, but then it is played by Sean Connery, so I can't imagine it being all that bad.

Captain Nemo - I am a little fuzzy on this character, because it has been a few years since I read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne, but from what I remember, he hated humanity so much he built a submarine and lived a life on and under the ocean, never touching land and rarely if ever coming in contact with other humans other than those on his electrical underwater submarine, the Nautilus.

Tom Sawyer - One of Mark Twain's two most famous creations (the other, of course, being Huck Finn). Again, my memory of him is rusty because it has been even longer since I have read that book. All I remember is Sawyer tricking someone else to whitewash a fence, and the fact that he ran off with a slave or former slave. I don't remember which off hand. Sorry.

Dorian Gray - I have never read this book by Oscar Wilde, but from my understanding, somehow a portrait made of Dorian Gray prevents him from getting sick or aging. I actually have this book on reserve at the library, and may be able to tell you more later.

Dr. Jeckyl - Robert Louis Stevenson's character of a doctor who tried to improve himself by creating a new medicine, only to create a monster by releasing everything that he had tried to supress within himself. Although if I remember correctly, he didn't change in appearance that much in the novels other than a few cosmetic changes (grimacing, squinting, etc.), although he acted like a completely different, and evil, person.

Mina Harker - Love interest in Bram Stoker's Dracula. The book ended with her being cured of "vampirism," but subsequent books and movies by other authors speculate that maybe she wasn't as cured as we were led to believe.

The Invisible Man - Unfortunately, I can't help you too much on this one. The original book was by H.G. Wells, and featured a scientist who turned himself invisible and struggled to turn himself back before he was discovered. However, from what I have heard, due to licensing rights, they used a completely different character in the movie, despite the fact that he is also invisble.

Moriarity - Sherlock Holmes' greatest adversary and his intellectual equal in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's series. Moriarity was to crime what Holmes was to crime fighting. Supposedly died when he and Holmes fell in Riechenback Falls, although Holmes later returned, so I see no reason Moriarity couldn't have survived as well.

Hope this helps. If there are any more characters you want to hear about, let me know, and I will see what I can do.

[corfy]

OK, I saw LXG this weekend, and I have two more characters to add.

The Phantom - From the famous "Phantom of the Opera" by Gaston Leroux and, more recently, the Broadway musical by Andrew Lloyd Weber (and the villian in Nicolas Meyer's "modern" Sherlock Holmes novel "The Canary Trainer," but that was written in the 1970s, so that doesn't count). The Phantom was a former Opera star who was severely disfigured during a construction accident and lived in the "basement" of the Opera house. The only time anyone ever saw him was when he was wearing a mask covering part of his disfigured face.

Ishmael - He was the "storyteller" for Herman Melville's "Moby Dick." Although the entire story is about Capt. Ahab's obsessive search for the white whale, the entire story takes place through Ishmael's eyes.