Alejandro's Reviews > DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore

It’s impressive how much greatness in one book!


This TPB collects the most popular stand-alone stories by Alan Moore, previously published in several DC titles.


The general rating is an average sum of the ratings given to each story contained in this book.


FOR THE MAN WHO HAS EVERYTHING

Rating: ***** ( 5 stars )

Writer: Alan Moore

Illustrator: Dave Gibbons

Originally published in “Superman Annual” #11.

Do you understand what you did to me?

Superman is celebrating his birthday, and Batman, Robin (Jason Todd) and Wonder Woman are coming to his Fortress of Solitude with gifts. Yes, I know, this sounds like something out of Superfriends (and hey, I love Superfriends!) but…

…people, it’s Alan Moore writing…

…so, don’t worry, this birthday party will be epic!

The Dynamic Duo and the Amazon Princess found the Man of Steel under a trance due an alien flower known as “Black Mercy”, courtesy of Mongul, one of the most powerful enemies of Superman.

The “Black Mercy” provokes the worst thing that you can experience…

…your deepest desire in life.


NIGHT OLYMPICS (Parts 1 & 2)

Rating: **** ( 4 stars )

Writer: Alan Moore

Illustrator: Klaus Janson

Letterer: Todd Klein

Originally published in “Detective Comics” #549-550.

I’ll be back in ten minutes with two ambulances.

…two?

Yeah. One for you… one for him.

In a night routine patrol around the city, Green Arrow and Black Canary meet a crazy criminal armed with bow and arrows.

The criminal thinks that super-heroes are hoaxes and all those super-villains are hired to perform false arrests.

To prove his theory that super-heroes aren’t the real thing…

…he shoots an arrow against Black Canary, seriously injuring her.

The criminal made a grave mistake…

…and Green Arrow will prove him how real thing can be!!!


MOGO DOESN’T SOCIALIZE

Rating: ***** ( 5 stars )

Writer: Alan Moore

Illustrator: Dave Gibbons

Letterer: Todd Klein

Originally published in “Green Lantern” #188.

…he intended to cap his dubious career by challenging the most feared and mysterious being of them all… …the Green Lantern known as Mogo.

Arisia, a young Green Lantern, is learning about the history of the Corps, when Tomar-Re tells her an old tale about the most powerful of all Green Lanterns…

…Mogo.

And how foolish was the challenge made by Bolphunga the Unrelenting, a nasty space gunman, against Mogo.

Bolphunga didn’t know, but…

…he already lost since the very moment that he thought about such challenge.


FATHER’S DAY (Parts 1 & 2)

Rating: ***** ( 5 stars )

Writer: Alan Moore

Illustrator: Jim Baikie

Originally published in “Vigilante” #17-18.

They’ll bust your ass outta the Justice League of America…

I’m not in the Justice League of America…

Oh, they threw you out already, huh?

Adrian Chase, Manhattan District Attorney by day…

…The Vigilante by night.

You get all the messy real life here, in this story, as only Alan Moore can tell it.

A dangerous killer is on a rampage to find her young daughter and killing her mother or any prostitute daring to protect her won’t be much trouble.

The Vigilante makes an alliance with Fever, a prostitute, to find the girl before the father would do anything bad to her.

While the security of the young girl is the essence, as I told you, this is real life and it’s messy and The Vigilante and Fever will realize too late that blood is thicker than water… or tears… or justice… or common sense.

A stranger who mess into family matters…

…got screwed.


BRIEF LIVES

Rating: *** ( 3 stars )

Writer: Alan Moore

Illustrator: Kevin O’Neill

Letterer: Todd Klein

Originally published in “The Omega Men” #26.

Life’s too short.

Everything is about perspective!

A wacky short tale about how different life can be perceived depending of your position in the circle of life…

…or your size on it!


A MAN’S WORLD

Rating: *** ( 3 stars )

Writer: Alan Moore

Illustrator: Paris Cullins

Letterer: Todd Klein

Originally published in “The Omega Men” #27.

We’re both humanoids, aren’t we? Even though I come from other-place-up-in-sky? We’re nearly the same.

Ha! You not-feller, Leeyo. Have body different than any-feller we ever see.

That’s because I’m a woman, Mopi. A woman is… well amongst other things, it’s something that has babies. You know? Babies? Little-tiny-feller-look-same-as-us? Babies come from women.

How?

Leeyo is a space explorer doing a anthropological study in the planet of Culacao, where there is a strange race that it seems no having female beings.

Leeyo forms a friendship with Mopi, one of the local Culacaons.

Mopi is naive and with a clean soul.

However, inter-cultural issues can take a very wrong turn, in special when it’s about two species from totally (and literally!) different worlds.

“Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” gets too short in this wacky but chilling tale.


THE JUNGLE LINE

Rating: ***** ( 5 stars )

Writer: Alan Moore

Illustrator: Rick Veitch

Originally published in “DC Comics Presents” #85.

The most powerful creature on the planet has gone mad.

In this story The Swamp Thing is helping Superman, but the task isn’t easy at all.

Clark Kent attends a scientific exposition where a sample of a Kryptonian fungus, the Bloodmorel, native of the famous Scarlet Jungle (in Krypton), sickening him.

The symptoms are: Fever, bouts of incapacitation, hallucinations, chronic overexertion, and eventually…

…death.

This is not a job for Superman, since he is the victim…

…this is a job for the Swamp Thing!!!


TYGERS

Rating: **** ( 4 stars )

Writer: Alan Moore

Illustrator: Kevin O’Neill

Originally published in “Tales of the Green Lantern Corps” Annual #2.

I merely speak that which is true.

In a lost tale of the Green Lantern Corps, Abin Sur, previous GL of Sector 2814, found Qull of the Five Inversions.

Qull told Abin Sur about lost prophesies, that even the Guardians of the Universe fear.

The first seeds of wars of willpower against fear and death are spread.

Their growing are now unavoidable…

…the prophecies would happen in the future of the Green Lantern Corps, endangering its status quo and nothing would be ever the same!


WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE MAN OF TOMORROW?

Rating: ***** ( 5 stars )

Writer: Alan Moore

Ilustrator: Curt Swan

Inkers: George Pérez & Kurt Schaffenberger

Editor: Julius Schwartz

Originally published in “Superman” #423 & “Action Comics” #583.

Nobody has the right to kill. – Not you, not Superman… Especially not Superman!

It’s 1997, ten years later of the last sighting of Superman. Lois Lane got married, now she is Mrs. Jordan Elliot, and she had a child. A young reporter from the Daily Planet interviews her about her recollections of the last days of Superman…

The goofy enemies of Superman like Bizarro, The Prankster and Toyman gone berserk in an unbelievable outbreak of genocides, homicides and even suicides. And the close people to Superman were starting to get killed since his secret identity was exposed in the middle of all that crazy violence. So, the menace was clear, if the “absurd” villains were able of such gruesome acts…

…how far could go his greatest foes?

Lex Luthor, bald mad scientist (still Silver Age, remember?) is assimilated against his will, into an unholy fusion, with Brainiac’s brain, evolving him in the worst of both worlds, with a clear goal…

…to kill Superman and all his loved ones without mercy!

The Legion of Super-Villains made a time trip from the 30th Century, to have front seats in the fall of Superman, since it’s an already historic fact in their time period!

And the worst is still to come!


FOOTSTEPS

Rating: *** ( 3 stars )

Writer: Alan Moore

Illustrator: Joe Orlando

Originally published in “Secret Origins” #10.

Lonely inside our separate skins, we cannot know each other’s pain and must bear our own in solitude.

The Phantom Strangers walks in silent through a bizarre tale filled of angels and demons, men and monsters, life and death, life and pain.


IN BLACKEST NIGHT

Rating: ***** ( 5 stars )

Writer: Alan Moore

Illustrator: Bill Willingham

Originally published in “Tales of the Green Lantern Corps” Annual #3.

It just couldn’t translate the words “Green” or “Lantern” into a language with no concept of color or light.

Katma Tui, Green Lanter of Space Sector 1417, is sent by the Guardians of the Universe in a mission to recruit a worthy candidate to become the Green Lanter of the space sector known as the Obsidian Deeps, where is a lightless void, without any single star, an absolute darkness, an eternal night, the ultimate obscurity.

Finding even a planet in such vast absence of light proves to be tricky, but being able of explaining to the selected lifeform what is a “Green Lantern” will be a real challenge for Katma Tui.


MORTAL CLAY

Rating: ***** ( 5 stars )

Writer: Alan Moore

Illustrator: George Freeman

Originally published in “Batman” Annual #11.

I still loved her… …after all she’d done to me.

The third incarnation of Clayface (aka Preston Payne), who unlike previous versions of Clayface (Basil Karlo, first version. Matt Hagen, second version) that they can mold their bodies into other forms, Preston Payne (due a tragic experiment with Matt Hagen’s blood) lives permanently as a deformed man but he needs to keep his body in an isolated body-suit since his touch can transmit his decease and killing people turning them liquid protoplasm.

In this crafty tale, Clayface III, falls in love with the perfect woman (for him)…

…a mannequin in a department store.

Sadly, even in this bizarre and insane love couple, there’s not such thing as happily ever after.
In love and madness...

…everything goes!


THE KILLING JOKE

Rating: ***** ( 5 stars )

Writer: Alan Moore

Illustrator: Brian Bolland

Colorist: John Higgins

Originally published in “Batman: The Killing Joke” Prestige Format Book.

Nothing’s going to be the same… …not ever again.

The Joker kills people in very theatrical ways.

The Batman protects people in very theatrical ways.

Gotham City is in the middle…

…in the hands of murdering clowns and costumed vigilantes…

…in the hands of mad men.

The only one that keeps Gotham City from falling deep into madness?

James Gordon.

The Joker will do everything (and I mean EVERYTHING!) to give to James Gordon, a bad day, a very bad day, and turned him crazy.

But that’s not the scariest thing…

…oh, no…

…that isn’t the killing joke.

The scariest thing is when two people, supposed to be opposites…

…they laugh for the same joke.