Since announcing his retirement from writing comic books, Alan Moore has been hard at work concentrating solely on the written work, with short-story compendium Illuminations being the first offering of his new image-less era.
As is always the case when it comes to Moore, however, nothing is as it seems. Of the nine instalments in this book, one of them – What We Can Know About Thunderman – takes up half the volume. But more on that later.
Not all of them are new works – the first five tales were included in previous anthologies, with opening story ‘A Hypothetical Lizard’, described by Moore as “my first serious attempt at short prose fiction”, penned back in 1987. While its quintessentially sci-fi tale of a mysterious cult that hones its members’ specialist skills is evocative enough, it’s clearly the hallmark of a creative talent dipping his toes into another medium.
‘Location, Location, Location’ has a similarly intriguing gimmick, taking the Benjamin Button story trope of living life backwards and making it literal. ‘Not Even Legend’, about a seemingly eventless UFO discussion group, isn’t as memorable, but the craftsmanship and shock factor Moore is known for is clearly present. ‘Cold Reading’, meanwhile is arguably the pick of the existing stories, a haunting tale of a fraudulent psychic who gets more than she bargained for. The ending will be pondered on long after reading. Finally, ‘The Improbably Complex High-Energy State’ is harder to pin down: abstract, and with more than a bit of old-fashioned Lovecraftian dread about it.
Onto the newbies! Title track ‘Illuminations’ bucks the trend by appearing to tell a story we can instantly relate to: revisiting childhood. This is attempted by a recent divorcee who visits the old caravan park he regularly frequented in his childhood. He isn’t sure what he’s expecting to find, but doesn’t expect to find what he does. To say any more would be to spoil a truly haunting story.
By far the longest story here, the 200+ pages of ‘What We Can Know About Thunderman’ serves as a chronicling of the comic-book industry that birthed the titular fictional character and subsequently grew around it as the character’s popularity exploded.
Of course, it’s a paper mint-thin parody of a certain caped superbeing, and Moore makes no attempt to disguise this. Whether he’s looking at the chaotic private lives of the character’s creators, ranking his favourite in-universe movies (just switch ‘Thunder’ for ‘Super’) or slamming the lack of credit the creatives received for their efforts (it’s impossible not to read this as a comment on the author’s own perceived treatment at the hands of various comics companies) or critiquing the state of the industry today, it’s clear that while Moore may be finished (for now) with writing comics, he sure as hell isn’t done writing about them.
After such a marathon, the remaining stories struggle to match up. ‘American Light - An Appreciation’ spins a publishing industry yarn that simply doesn’t grab the attention in the same way that the rest of the anthology does, and ‘And, At the Last, Just to Be Done with Silence’ feels hard to judge on its own, feeling more like a summary of what has come before.
As you’ve probably gathered, “Illuminations” is piecemeal by its very nature, and as such is invariably hit-and-miss. But it also showcases one of the greatest creative talents working today doing whatever the hell he wants. On balance, that has to be seen as a good thing.
- Stephen
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