How ‘Bout That Alan Moore

I am once again reminded of why the guy is a genius.

I know it’s been out for a little while, but I myself only got around to picking up this compilation of DC comics written by the man that changed comics.

It’s called DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore.

In it lie a few full on issues and a few shorts done by Moore over the years when he and DC were still friends, or more to the point, when he still respected them as the guys that entertained him with Batman and the Justice League rather than as a large corporate entity that dragged his creative impulses through the mud and profited from it.

Reading once again brought home Moore’s two greatest strengths, things that it is easy to say, but more difficult to cultivate. First, he’s a bloody, bloody clever writer. His ideas are just GOOD and original, such as the really fun short, Mogo Doesn’t Socialize about one of the less amiable members of the Green Lantern Corps. But then there’s the other quality, which is that he’s incredibly audacious. Where most people would come up with an idea and go “Nah, that’s too much,” he’ll just pick it up and start running. The perfect example of this is the fact that they included the now out of print The Killing Joke, originally a Prestige Format release by DC in which they let Alan Moore do the unthinkable; he proposed that since the Joker was a violent psychopath, it was time to take the gloves off and let him start acting like one, as in violently and psychotically, rather than simply be a bad guy with clown make up but a clear sense of ethics. The result was one of the more shocking events of the 80′s, particularly if you were a Batgirl fan, but I won’t go into it here.

Another very strong story is Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow, which was one of the final issues of the traditional “silver age” Superman that was done before John Byrne did his ret/con in the wake of the Crisis On Infinite Earths maxi-series. Here once again, Moore proves that with a good idea and a willingness to go where no one else will, you can do what most people claim is impossible these days, and tell a compelling story about Superman. Remember, this was Superman at the height of his powers, before John Byrne’s de-powering of the man. He was still capable of time-travel, pushing planets and was for all intents and purposes a god. Moore makes him very vulnerable and very human. And it’s so painfully obvious how he did it once you read the story you wonder why more people don’t take this tack. Of course, if you were to do it now, you’d merely be aping Moore, but oh well…

Suffice to say, MAN… That bastard can WRITE…