Tharg's Future Shocks

Cover to Alan Moore's Shocking Futures. Art by Kevin O'Neill.

Tharg's Future Shocks is the name given to a long-running series of short strips in the weekly comic 2000 AD in 1977. The name originates in a book titled Future Shock, written by Alvin Toffler, published in 1970.

Publishing history

The series began in issue 25 of 2000 AD titled Tharg's Future Shocks in a single short story written by Steve Moore, who also created the format. This established the pattern of the series which would be two or three page short stories which were normally self-contained.

These stories would be a testing ground for new artists and writers and creators resulting in the stories having a very mixed level of quality.^[1] Some successful authors such as Peter Milligan, Alan Davis, Alan Moore and Grant Morrison found some of their earliest work published as Future Shocks.

Spin-offs

Some characters proved popular enough to spin into their own ongoing story in 2000AD, D.R. and Quinch being one of the most notable examples.

Other similar series

2000 AD also began several other science fiction and horror short stories under several different titles, Time Twisters being the best known. However Future Shocks remains the best known of all of 2000 AD's series of short stories. Examples of the others include:

• Future Shorts, single page Future Shocks ^[2]
• Past Imperfect ^[3]
• Pulp Sci-Fi ^[4]
• Ro-Jaws Robo Tales, stories presented by Ro-Jaws ^[5]
• Tales from Beyond Science, a short run series all drawn by Rian Hughes ^[6]
• Tales from the Black Museum, an equivalent set in Mega-City One ^[7]
• Tharg's Terror Tales, Future Shocks evil twin, covering horror, that still occasionally appears ^[8]
• Time Twisters ^[9]
• Vector 13,^[10] although wrapped in its own story stretching beyond the series, it still featured one off stories largely focused on anomalous or paranormal phenomena.

Collected editions

The stories have been collected into a number of trade paperbacks:

Two collections of Alan Moore's Future Shocks (Alan Moore's Shocking Futures) and Time Twisters (Alan Moore's Twisted Times) stories were released by Titan Books in 1986:

• Alan Moore's Shocking Futures (1986), Titan Books; reprints a selection of Future Shocks short strips originally published in 2000 AD between 1981 and 1983, with various artists. ISBN 0-907610-71-4
• Alan Moore's Twisted Times (1987), Titan Books; reprints almost all of Moore's Abelard Snazz strips, and a further selection of Time Twisters short strips originally published in 2000 AD between 1980 and 1983, with various artists. ISBN 0-907610-72-2

The contents of those two volumes has now been collected together into a single volume, along with additional material from Moore:

• The Complete Future Shocks (tpb, Rebellion, 2006 ISBN 1-904265-88-X)

(Note: despite the title, this is not a complete collection of all Future Shock stories from the comic, only all of the stories in the 1986 and 1987 books described above.)

All the Future Shocks written by Peter Milligan, John Smith and Neil Gaiman and around half of Grant Morrison's were collected in:

• The Best of Tharg's Future Shocks (160 pages, November 2008, ISBN 1-905437-81-1)

References

External links

• Complete list of Future Shock stories at the official 2000 AD website
• 2000AD fansite
• Alan Moore at fourcolorheroes.com