Popular Culture Review Vol. 23, No. 1, Winter 2012 | Page 36

32 Popular Culture Review dialogue, much of which has more or less been lifted straight out of “The Final Problem,” and nearly all of which serves to demonstrate their all but identical cognitive capabilities. Though emphasized throughout Moriarty’s flashback explanation of the Reichenbach incident, this striking resemblance is understated in the arc of the main story, which proves otherwise devoid of anything more than wistful allusions to the, presumably, dearly departed detective. In an ironic inversion, Moore allows James to survive when Sherlock, apparently, does not. “It’s James. Call me James,” Moriarty states in the concluding panel of the fourth serial installment of The League o f Extraordinary Gentlemen. He speaks to a colleague—his close second. Campion Bond—a figure who in Moore’s representation supplants Col. Sebastian Moran’s position in the professor’s nefarious circle. Goldman notes that, “Within the narrative, Moore incorporates moments of recognition into the narrative, making the intertextual contexts of the characters essential to the plot” (146). What Goldman implicitly argues here is that this comic relies on intertextuality as exposition; as he goes on to st