Books: DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore

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DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore
Written by Alan Moore
Art by various artists
2006




Available now from Islington Libraries
You can reserve this item for free here:
http://www.library.islington.gov.uk/TalisPrism/

Alan Moore hasn't always been able to write about whatever takes his fancy - a long time ago he was a jobbing writer at the beck and call of DC - one of the world's major comic book companies. But then just because he was stuck writing superheroes - doesn't mean that he couldn't write some damn fine stories. DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore collects some of his best work and includes at least 2 or 3 stone cold classics that should be read by anyone who enjoys comic books. This includes the two the seminal Superman stories: For The Man Who Has Everything (with Dave Gibbons) and Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow? (with Curt Swan). The former is a mind bending trip that has Superman in a world where Krypton never exploded and is full of nice little details including Batman, Robin and Wonder Women worrying about what gift to get him - while the latter is 'The Last Superman Story Ever' specifically: the Superman of the 'Silver Age' the carefree joyful era of comic books before everything got dark, grim and gritty. There's also the massively critically aclaimed The Killing Joke where Moore and artist Brian Bolland took on Batman and The Joker. Although Moore has since said that the story is "clumsy, misjudged, and [devoid of] real human importance" it's pretty acknowledged as the definitive Batman/Joker face-off, contains events that are forever embedded in DC mythology and supposingly was one of the main creative inspirations for both Tim Burton's and Christoper Nolan's Batman movies. I would also recommend The Jungle Line which matches up the Man of Steel with the character that first made Moore famous - Swamp Thing and the two Green Latern stories are pretty cool too - even if they are slightly slight.

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Links: Sean T Collins Review, IGN Review, The M0vie Blog Review of Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow, The M0vie Blog Review of The Killing Joke, Mindless Ones Analysis of The Killing Joke, Comics Cube Review of Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow, Comics Cube Article: The Killing Joke: A Different Way to Read It.

Further reading: Swamp Thing, The Complete Future Shocks, Neil Gaiman's Midnight Days, Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?, Green Lantern: Secret Origin, Tom Strong, Watchmen, Supreme.

Profiles: Alan Moore.

All comments welcome.