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This volume collects Moore’s miscellaneous work for DC, from April 1985’s Green Arrow two-parter Night Olympics to 1988’s Killing Joke, along with a few thoughts from his collaborators such as Dave Gibbons and Brian Bolland. (And of course there’s a distinct lack of comment from Moore himself — understandable, considering his current relations, or lack of them, with DC.)

You get a real feel of Moore the jobbing writer from this book. The strongest of the short tales are those whose format most resembles the Future Shocks and Time Twisters of his early days with 2000A.D. — these being the Tales of the Green Lantern Corps, and the two Vegatales. But even Moore struggles to come up with something interesting to do with such nobodies as the Vigilante and Green Arrow. Both of these stories seem to be teetering on the edge of Moore going into a debate about the point of superheroes themselves, with the Green Arrow Night Olympics putting this most explicitly: “I don’t know… There’s something about crooks these days. They’re kinda pathetic…” (Which of course reflects on the heroes who fight them.) Whereas the Vigilante story never quite manages to get into the debate about authoritarianism versus liberalism that’s hovering on its sidelines. Perhaps Moore just knew he’d done all this, and far better, in Miracleman and V for Vendetta. (Watchmen was still in the future at this point.)

The Superman tales are much more successful, as Moore tries to find new directions in which to push the Man of Tomorrow to keep this, potentially the most bland (because so perfect) of heroes, interesting. In all three of the Superman tales collected here — For the Man Who Has Everything, The Jungle Line (also featuring Swamp Thing), and the two-part Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? — Superman’s real enemy is himself. In the first two, this is because Superman is locked in either a dream or a hallucination, and so is only battling himself. In the last, the tale in which we get to find out just how the career of the greatest of all superheroes comes to an end, it is Superman himself who lands the final blow.

The real standout of the book, though, is of course The Killing Joke, not only because of its stunning Brian Bolland artwork. Moore’s take on the Joker’s origins seems to have become a bit of an albatross around the great man’s neck, as he speaks elsewhere of how its success came to infect the whole comic book industry with a rather superficial echoing of its nihilistic darkness, leading him to feel everybody had somehow missed the point. But the story’s ending is really almost upbeat, as Batman and the Joker manage to communicate, sanely, for just a moment. The joke told at the end, about two loonies trying to escape an asylum, comes as a rather affecting commentary on Batman and the Joker’s relationship. In the joke, one madman escapes the asylum by jumping to a nearby roof. The other madman can’t make the jump, so the first turns on his torch and says he should walk along its beam. The first says, “What do you think I am, crazy? You’ll turn it off halfway!” Batman is the loony who escaped the insanity of his parents’ death and who is now offering to help the Joker escape, too. But the Joker can’t trust anyone — even someone as like him as Batman — not to take away the helping hand when it’s needed the most. He’s beyond help.

Every so often when I finish a book, I give a little nod and think, “Yeah, this could be a read-in-a-day book.” This is something that goes back to when I was a kid — when, that is, I was a lot more likely to actually have a whole day to dedicate to nothing but reading — though I think it was Garen who was the first to actually perform the feat, by getting through Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth in a single day. Naturally, I felt the need to rise to the challenge; my first book-in-a-day was Doctor Who and the Robots of Death. Since then, I’ve accumulated a short list of titles that can, if the need arises, be called on to be read in a single day.

Now, a read-in-a-day book doesn’t just have to be a short book. In fact, it shouldn’t be too short, otherwise reading it one day doesn’t really mean much. (The Mr Men books are out.) It has to be a book just long enough that reading it really does take most of a day. The most important thing about it is that it should really call out to be read in one day. In other words, it should be exciting, compelling, and absorbing.

I’m happy to say that Richard Matheson’s SF/horror classic, I Am Legend, is a definite addition to this category. The reasons:

First off, its basic premise. Robert Neville is the last human alive on a near-future Earth whose population has been turned into bloodthirsty vampires. Simple, immediately dramatic, and definitely appealing to my particular hunger for man-versus-monster situations (Alien, The Thing, etc.). (I’ve also had several dreams of being in a similar situation, which is always a plus point.)

Secondly, its prose is clear, but not so simple as to be boring. I’ve been reading some Hemmingway short stories recently, and I thought I detected a bit of influence there — though maybe that can be said of all mid-20th century American fiction, I don’t know. Anyway, the images flick off the page as effortlessly as frames in a film.

Thirdly, the story keeps moving. In some cases, there are the situations you just know, from the premise, are going to have to happen. For instance, we know at some point Robert Neville’s just going to have to get caught outside his vampire-proofed home when the sun goes down; it happens. It’s no surprise, but it’s still thrilling. Then there are the turns you don’t expect, and for me, this includes the ending, which I won’t give away, but I will say it was definitely a more intelligent conclusion than you’d expect from a pot-boiler. So this book, as well as being thrilling and readable, is also intelligent.

Thrilling. Readable. Intelligent. The perfect ingredients for a read-in-a-day book.

I Am Legend. I recommend it

I spent most of Sunday reading Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black, which I bought back in December of last year, because of the Philip Pullman quote on the front: “One of the greatest ghost stories in the language.” Once bought, it sat on my to-read shelf for about six months while I furiously disbelieved Mr Pullman and regretted buying it. It’s literary fiction — how can it be a great ghost story? Literary fiction most often doesn’t do stories, let alone ghosts, and when they do, they have to be all ironic and meta-para-textual about it.

But I saw Hilary Mantel interviewed on BBC2’s Culture Show a few weeks ago, and felt sufficiently re-enthused when it turned out she’d seen something like a ghost when she was a kid, so I picked up the book and gave it a go.

However, I didn’t spend so much of Sunday reading Beyond Black because it was necessarily page-turning. (It is well written, and quietly humorous.) Rather, it was because the middle section was a bit dull plot-wise and I wanted to get it over with so I could start Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend. However, it did at last repay the effort, as the ending provided a real sense of chill, as well as the possibility of emotional release for its long-suffering heroine, the psychic and medium, Alison Hart. (Real name Alison Cheatham. “I changed it,” she says. “Think about it.”)

The story really gets going when Alison’s live-in manager/business partner, the non-psychic and somewhat sour Colette, suggests they write a book to “flog” at the various psychic fayres and gigs Alison makes her living from. Taping interviews with Alison proves problematic, as her voice can sometimes be drowned out, on playback, by all sorts of whistles and whoops and other ethereal noises. But Colette pushes on, and we start to hear of Alison’s awful childhood. (The full revelation has to wait to the end of the book, as certain parts are a mystery to Alison herself.) Neglected by her prostitute mother, sexually and physically abused by the coterie of male hangers-on (all of them petty criminals) — this, most of all, is what haunts the sensitive Alison, as well as the feeling that she herself did something terrible, which has driven her, all her life, to try to do something equally good to balance it out.

Though humorous, it’s hardly a feel-good book. The language is generally soaked in a feeling of the drab futility of things, the essential difficulty and lack of fulfilment of life. But what came through for me was Alison’s faith in human nature and the need to do good despite all the wrong that has been done to her. The central idea, of Alison as a medium surrounded by so many spirits of the dead, is really used well by Mantel to bring out the emotional truth of her main character’s situation.

Worth it in the end.