My recent rereading of Alan Moore’s Miracleman got me thinking about his impact on comic books.
Alan Moore is considered by many to be the greatest comic book storyteller of the medium, an assessment that I believe is difficult to argue against. The modern view of Alan Moore has him oscillating somewhere between being a prophetic auteur of the medium or as a curmudgeon whose best days have long since passed. Regardless of how one feels about Moore, his approach to comic books deftly mixes mature themes with a suspicious eye towards the concept of heroism in a way that his made him stand well above any of his other contemporaries..
A cursory look at his work finds some of the biggest and most beloved stories in the comic oeuvre:
- Watchmen
- Killing Joke
- Swamp Thing
- V for Vendetta
- Marvelman/Miracleman
- From Hell
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
These aren’t simply great stories so much as they are required reading for any serious comic book fan. Moore tends to stretch the vocabulary and boundaries of the medium with each work he publishes.
Writing such titans of the genre can make it easy to overlook other works that don’t quite pack the same commercial wallop. With such an omnipresent catalogue of books, there are bound to be works that get lost in the shuffle. Moore’s career has had him write for virtually everyone, including Marvel, DC, Image, and slew of other indie publishers.
Today, I want to offer up seven stories comic book readers might not have read from Alan Moore. And no, I won’t be recommending his time with WildC.A.T.S. from Image, but yes, that was an actual thing Moore did in the 90s.
It’s tough to pick seven books from Alan Moore to recommend without hitting the usual suspects. As a huge fan, I’m of the general opinion that readers can’t really go wrong with picking up any book that has Alan Moore’s name on the cover. You might not like the book overall, but Moore has a way of challenging the conventions of the medium as much as he is challenging us as readers.
I tried to recommend a variety of books that showcase Alan Moore’s ingenious, multifaceted talents in his approach to writing comic books. I hope there is at least one book that sounds interesting to our readership!
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