Alan Moore’s 7 Best Stories (That Aren’t Watchmen)

Alan Moore took comics in directions that no one ever thought they’d go. Moore began his legendary career in England, writing for Warrior and 2000 A.D. before coming to DC and taking over Saga of the Swamp Thing. What followed was a book that changed comics forever, and led to Moore becoming DC’s most brilliant writer. This led to Watchmen, and comics finally had their book that could rival even the most complex literary offerings. Watchmen is widely considered the best comic ever, and it Moore’s claim to fame. However, Moore invested all of his work with the kind of meticulous detail, brilliant plots, and compelling characters that made Watchmen an instant classic.

Moore has left the comic industry behind, but what he’s left is a catalogue of some of the best comics ever written. Basically every comic fan at one time or another will marvel at Watchmen, but only reading that storied volume is the height of folly. These seven Moore stories are the heights of the writer’s virtuosity, and any serious fan of Moore needs to check them out.

Jerusalem

We start this list of best Alan Moore stories with his difficult, esoteric 1266 page novel Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a story told in three parts in the section of Northampton where Alan Moore grew up, the Boroughs. The book follows the Vernalls, a family with a special destiny of some sort through their lives, while also digging into the history of the Boroughs and Northampton. It’s a complex story with no obvious pay-off — there’s no big moment at the end that lets you know the main plot has been resolved in any kind of satisfactory way — and that’s the beauty of it. It’s a book that’s more about the journey than the destination, introducing readers to characters that they instantly feel like they know. It’s easy to read the prose and hear Moore’s voice narrating, his distinct Northampton accent coloring the story just right. It’s a sumptuously written piece, Moore’s paragraphs drawing readers in with a sea of poetic prose. Moore tests the limits of what a novel can be with Jerusalem; there is a poem chapter, a chapter written from the point of view of someone insane in coded jibberish, and a chapter that is meant to be a stage play. It’s a magnificent but difficult work, one that won’t work for every reader. However, for the people it’s for, Jerusalem is a masterclass in writing telling a story of the power of people in a cruel world.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

The full tale of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen runs across multiple series — League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 2, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Nemo Trilogy, and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Tempest. Moore worked with artist Kevin O’Neill on this landmark series, one with the rather simple goal of creating a universe that contained every character in pop culture that Moore wouldn’t get sued if he used them, and some that he certainly could have. It’s an engrossing epic that spans over a hundred years of history and takes readers back into the olden days of the British Empire to reveal the origins of the League over the centuries, while taking the characters into the 20th and 21st centuries. It’s an extraordinary work, one that readers will pour over and over again, trying to find every reference in O’Neill’s flawless art. It’s hard to pick the best one, but The Nemo Trilogy is probably the most beautiful, a tale of love, loss, and life that will leave readers with a new view on mortality.

V for Vendetta

V for Vendetta, by Moore and artist David Lloyd, is one of Moore’s better known series, having been adapted into a film in 2006. V for Vendetta takes place in an alternate 1997 where Britain choosing to harbor American nuclear missiles led to a limited nuclear exchange, one which the UK survived. A fascist sect, Norsefire, was able to take power in the country, creating a dystopian future based on religion, racial purity, and heterosexuality. One night, a young girl named Evey goes out after curfew and is accosted by fingermen, twisted policemen who are dispatched by the mysterious V. Evey is drawn into a world of anarchy and violence, as V pursues a mysterious personal vendetta against the government. V for Vendetta is a groundbreaking work of anti-fascist literature, showing the ways that free societies willingly give themselves up to those who claim strength and righteousness and the cost of their actions. It’s a white hot political polemic from Moore, and it remains just as prescient today as it did forty years ago.

“American Gothic”

Alan Moore’s run on Swamp Thing is pretty much uniformly brilliant, and honestly, the whole thing should probably be on this list. However, there’s one story in Moore’s run that really personifies everything great about Moore’s time writing Swamp Thing, and that’s “American Gothic”. “American Gothic” is by far Moore’s longest Swamp Thing tale, spanning issue #37 to #50. Moore worked with Steve Bissette, John Totleben, Rick Veitch, Stan Woch, Ron Randall, and Tajtana Wood, on this story, one that sees John Constantine recruit Swamp Thing to help him stop a powerful tribe of South American magic users from summoning the Great Darkness and destroying all of existence. It’s a story that digs deep into the American psyche to find its horror, taking readers from twisted Americana to Hell itself in its epic scope. It is Moore at his best, telling a brilliant tale that constantly surprises the reader with its complexity and the meaning invested by Moore into its multiple layers. It’s a masterpiece of a story.

WildC.A.T.s (Vol. 1) #21-34

Alan Moore’s time writing WildC.A.T.s doesn’t get talked about much. It’s not a groundbreaking work that changed comics forever and all that. Some would even argue that Supreme is better. They may be right but Moore’s WildC.A.T.s is an example of what a great writer can do with the rather anemic set-up of the WildC.A.T.s. Moore, working with artists Travis Charest, Jim Lee, and several back-up artists, created a second team to replace the original team that was thought dead, but really went to the Kherubim homeworld at the end of Sword of Damocles. While the new team fought bad guys, the original team was in an alien empire, coming face to face with the harsh realities of who the Kherubim are. Eventually, the two narratives combine as an unforeseen threat starts to play them all like chess pieces, in a game that the only player understands. Moore does more with the characters than anyone else has, and created several extremely memorable characters, like Ladytron and TAO. It’s just plain good team comics, with Alan Moore showing off what he can do with a property that was never going to win any awards for depth. It’s phenomenal in its way, and deserves to be talked about way more than it is.

Miracleman

When people think of Alan Moore and superhero deconstruction, they usually think of Moore’s work on Watchmen. However, arguably his best superhero destruction was started years before Watchmen, when Moore was still in the UK. That is Marvelman, a story that took a British rip-off of Captain Marvel and injected gravitas and complexity into the character and his history. It would come to the United States as Miracleman, and Moore’s run on the book gave readers an epic like they’d never seen before, one that cut to the nature of what a superhero would be in a world much like our own. It’s a dark, hopeful, and altogether complex book, peeling away the layers of meaning to find the heart of what a hero is and how that can turn so wrong. Moore worked with legends like Gary Leach, Alan Davis, Rick Veitch, and Jon Totleben, as well as future bad comic writer Chuck Austen, giving readers some of the most breathtaking visuals imaginable. Totleben is especially impressive, especially the double page spread that shows the aftermath of a superpowered rampage and the reveal of Miracleman’s Olympus. It’s a story that can alternatively be chilling and life-affirming, a tale that takes the superhero to its ultimate conclusion in a bittersweet ending for the ages. Miracleman is something special.

From Hell

From Hell saw Moore team up with artist Eddie Campbell to tell the story of Jack the Ripper’s rampage through Whitecastle. From Hell is told from the perspective of several characters — the Ripper’s victims, Sir William Gull, the royal surgeon and Freemason that Moore posits as the killer, Inspector Abbeline, and many more — and takes readers into the darkness of the end of Victorian England. It’s a haunting tale of power and its consequences for the poor, as well as a treatise on the birth of the modern world. From Hell is a perfect comic; there’s really no other way to describe it. Every page is bristling with detail and dripping with character, a dark swirl that works its way into the reader like a razor sharp knife wielded by a seasoned professional. Moore’s meticulously researched tale will suck readers into London of the 1888, and Campbell’s black and white art will take readers into a world of shadow and darkness, of grit and grime, of elegance and power. From Hell can be easily be counted as Moore’s best work, a completely engrossing tale about a story that nearly everyone knows.