Nemo: The Roses of Berlin out in March

By John Freeman on January 4, 2014

When Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill followed up their League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century trilogy with 2013’s spinoff Nemo: Heart of Ice, critics hailed it as a return to form, “a throwback to the high adventure of the initial series,” and a “late-career masterpiece, with a chiseled veneer of cracked adventure on the surface and a bubbling enthusiasm for the magic of storytelling welling up inside.”

Now saddle up your submarines and study up on your silent films, because the new Nemo tale, The Roses of Berlin, on sale in March 2014, is now available for pre-order.

Or, pre-order it from this month’s Diamond Previews catalogue at your local comic shop.

16 years ago, notorious science-brigand Janni Nemo journeyed into the frozen reaches of Antarctica in Heart of Ice to resolve her father’s weighty legacy in a storm of madness and loss, barely escaping with her Nautilus and her life.

Now it is 1941, and with her daughter strategically married into the family of aerial warlord Jean Robur, Janni’s raiders have only limited contact with the military might of the clownish German-Tomanian dictator Adenoid Hynkel. But when the pirate queen learns that her loved ones are held hostage in the nightmarish Berlin, she has no choice save to intervene directly, travelling with her ageing lover Broad Arrow Jack into the belly of the beastly metropolis.

Within that alienated city await monsters, criminals and legends, including the remaining vestiges of Germany’s notorious ‘Twilight Heroes’, a dark Teutonic counterpart to Mina Murray’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. And waiting at the far end of this gauntlet of alarming adversaries there is something much, much worse.

Continuing in the thrilling tradition of Heart of Ice, Moore and O’Neill rampage through twentieth-century culture in this blazing new 56-page adventure, set in a city of totalitarian shadows and mechanical nightmares. Cultures clash and lives are lost in the explosive collision of four unforgettable women, lost in the black and bloody alleyways where thrive The Roses of Berlin.

• The Roses of Berlin by Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill. Co-Published by Top Shelf Productions & Knockabout. The UK Knockabout edition is already being solicited on amazon.co.uk (and you can order it from your local bookshop).

• If you live in the US you can pre-order it here on co-publisher Top Shelf’s web site.

John Freeman

The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.

He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.