Review: The Complete Alan Moore: Future Shocks

By Alan Moore with John Higgins, Dave Gibbons, Alan Davis, Brendan McCarthy and Steve Dillon

2000AD, out now

A compilation of Moore’s short but very snappy tales.

It’s a cliché to say that Alan Moore’s comic book work stood out from his very first sale, but it’s certainly true that there’s a certain style, both in terms of the nature of the tales and the way that they’re told, that had a certain imprimatur from very early days.

These bite-size stories – the original Future Shocks and Tharg’s Time Twisters form the majority of the book, with a few others tacked on at the end – range from the highly predictable (particularly those that have a very Roald Dahl / Stephen King feel to them) to a few of the “whoah, I didn’t see that coming” variety . They’re never less than entertaining, even when you can tell from the first or second panel what’s coming, and Moore is served well by the artists with whom he worked, including John Higgins, Dave Gibbons, Alan Davis, Brendan McCarthy and Steve Dillon.

Verdict: An enjoyable omnibus to dip into rather than read cover to cover. 7/10

Paul Simpson