Hypothetical Lizard” – The oldest story in the collection and also the only that isn’t wholly a Moore original – written as part of some shared universe anthology in the 1980s, of which I know jack sh! The collection as a whole demonstrates that although Watchmen may be Moore’s best-known work, his storytelling has transcended its origins in the vexed commercial medium he now conscientiously eschews.

Some plots are sardonic dissections of pretense, exposés of the subterfuge hiding behind the social contract. In "A Hypothetical Lizard," two concubines in a brothel of fantastical specialists fall in love with tragic ramifications. Alan Moore has a way of weaving medical horrors grounded in Sci-Fi into everyday life in a way that is disturbing and completely unforgettable. It’s a lightly fictionalized account of the US comic book industry from the 50s to the present, full of very thinly veiled versions of characters and their creators. The pace of the book and some stories in this collection is sometimes slow but if you like a story that builds in intensity, you will love it.A bit of a mixed bag, but a mostly solid collection of stories, I can say that even the installments that didn't really ring with me were still addictively written and I didn't find my interest waning throughout this book. But as I hope I have shown exhaustively in my past writings on Moore, his greatest graphic novels in and out of the superhero genre can hardly get their narratives started without Moore's investiture of generative man-gods, fascist perverts, and misogynist murderers with visionary authority, no matter what bien-pensant self-congratulation he blathers to the credulous readers of the Guardian.

Only pop-culture fandoms insist that their objects of aesthetic interest must possess political and ethical rectitude.His punishment for this desire, should he achieve it, will be to leave behind, down in the Marvel Bullpen, the merely conflicted liberalisms of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby for the much more exalted slopes of Parnassus, where figures as troubling (and as obsessed with heroism) as Blake, Nietzsche, and Yeats will tell him what Walter Benjamin long ago told us all: "There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.

I kept stopping to absorb and appreciate the exact way he spins a phrase or the way in which he reveals the mind of a character, all the subtle and indirect associations that give us a true insight into the meaning behind each story. There was a sense of real, horrifying danger that underlies Moore's imagination and it is visible from the very first page. A few are stories I've loved for years (in one case, for decades), some were new to me, often managing to be both mind-expanding and cosmic while utterly rooted in our urban reality, written in language that coruscates, concatenates and glitters. Like some of the other stories, pretty clear where it’s going, and like other ones, probably hornier than it needs to be.Not least because he's amped up just enough of what is on the record that he has cover beyond the changed names for what isn't. Themes and concepts that should be familiar to any casual Moore reader are simpatico with what’s here – if not outright recycled. I would read more of this though, as I feel it has potential (uuugggghhhhh and now I just feel pretentious saying that about Alan Fucking Moore! So I've taken my time with it; when someone takes 40 years writing before they get a collection out, binging it would be as foolish as gulping a new Ted Chiang book.