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The Complete Alan Moore Future Shocks

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VampireBuddha Calendar enthusiast from Ireland (Wise, aged troper) Relationship Status: Complex: I'm real, they are imaginary
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#1: Apr 13th 2012 at 7:05:30 AM

I picked up this item about a week ago. It's a collection of Alan Moore's very earliest professionally-published work from the early 80s, and I have to say, it's aged remarkably well.

Contrary to what the title says, this volume does not in fact contain all of Moore's Future Shocks; there's no sign of "DR And Quinch Have Fun on Earth" here, presumably because that's already reprinted in The Complete DR & Quinch. It's also not just Future Shocks; there's also all of Moore's Time Twisters (which are Future Shocks with time travel), some one-offs which seem to have been Future Shocks that weren't called Future Shocks, and also the complete run of Abelard Snazz, on which more in a moment.

The actual Future Shocks are probably the weakest of this volume. They are the work of a man who still seems to be learning his craft, and is also trying to work within the constraints which Tharg imposed in the 80s. As well, some of them seem a bit clichéd and stilted to a 26-year-old man in 2012 who spends way too much time on TV Tropes, but that's not to say they're bad, just not as good as the rest of the stuff. Even in these, Moore comes up with some very cool ideas, such as aliens as annoying tourists that has a surprise metaphor for the plight of the Native Americans thrown in, or the evil empire that sent a fleet to the edge of the universe to conquer everything in its path, only for it to loop back around and conquer the parent civilisation. In others, Moore shows his skill with tight writing, managing to get out several complete stories in just two pages, which is impressive. The stories improve somewhat as time goes on, as Moore manages to stop relying on twist endings and instead just present a bizarre situation, which he then expounds on for all it's worth.

The Time Twisters are much more accomplished. The sentences are all sharper, and the storytelling is overall superior. Moore really goes to town here, with ideas like a giant clock where people mine and process pure time, crazy, hilarious, and disturbing variations on the stable time loop, and the absolutely heartbreaking "The Time Machine"; all add up to a man who can equally make you laugh, cry, scream, and cheer.

Then there are a few one-off stories, which tend to involve time travel. One of the most interesting is the scientifically ludicrous but very creative one set during the heat death of the universe, when there is so little energy to go around that it takes weeks just to travel a few kilometres, and boulders take minutes to fall down sheer cliffs.

Interestingly, a few of these stories prefigure the structure of the pirate comic in Watchmen, utterly lacking speech bubbles and being told entirely with narrative boxes. It works pretty well.

And then there's Abelard Snazz. Hoo boy. This series started out as a Robo-Tale (Future Shocks with robots), which graduated into a sporadically-appearing ongoing series that, despite a low page count, has an unusually strong continuity. Snazz is a mutant genius who has an ego the size of VY Canis Majoris and utterly lacks anything resembling common sense; as such, whenever he comes up with a solution to a problem, it inevitably backfires and makes things worse for everybody, especially himself. It's utterly laugh-out-loud funny, and deserves to be better known.

Well, I do seem to have rambled on. Anyone else read this? And for those who haven't, here's a preview of the sort of thing in store (link originally posted on the thread about Moore's Kool-Aid Man comic).

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Gvzbgul from Middle Earth Since: Jul, 2010
#2: Apr 14th 2012 at 8:51:38 PM

I read it about the time the Green Lantern "Trimph of the Will" thing happened, and was surprised to find one of the stories' titles was "The Final Solution". Not that I found it offensive, just a bit weird of Moore (the title had nearly nothing to do with the story) and a coincidence for me to have read it around the same time.

You're spot on about the stories. They're no great stories, but the fact they were usually short and had a lot of variation made them interesting to read.

The 'tourist aliens' one was great, mainly because it plays as a common tourist style story and then, well, not twists it but it surprised me and made me think.

A couple of other ones were particularly good but I can't remember them, so they can't have been that good. The army which sets off for the edge of the universe stuck with me, though probably due to its simple story.

Most of the strength of the stories came from it's anthology-like nature. Easy to read, easy to enjoy and lots of variety.

edited 14th Apr '12 8:55:34 PM by Gvzbgul

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