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mschlat 's review for:
Brighter Than You Think: 10 Short Works by Alan Moore: With Critical Essays by Marc Sobel
by Marc Sobel, Alan Moore
This is a collection of Alan Moore short stories (written between 1986 and 2003) with copious commentary from Marc Sobel. The stories are basically all from anthologies and would be pretty hard to find today; at the very least, Sobel should be feted for putting all of these in one volume. (I'm a pretty big Moore fanboy, and I think I had only read four of the ten.) The volume includes "In Pictopia", the Moore ur-story where fictional beings live in a shared universe, "This Is Information", a response to 9/11 with a huge dose of Moore's focus on symbols and recurrence, "The Mirror of Love", Moore's poem on the history of repression and freedom for the LBGT community, and "I Keep Coming Back", an autobiographical coda to [b:From Hell|23529|From Hell|Alan Moore|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327894621s/23529.jpg|191464] and my favorite discovery.
One note on production values: perhaps it was only my copy, but the pages reprinting "In Pictopia" were quite dark, making at least one page hard to read. (You can find a better version in [b:The Best Comics of the Decade, 1980-1990 Volume One|6430242|The Best Comics of the Decade, 1980-1990 Volume One|Gary Groth|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1332649124s/6430242.jpg|6619691].) I didn't see any issues with the other stories, and the first tale (a piece from Epic from Moore and Veitch) is just plain gorgeous.
Now, over half the book is commentary, and it's a mixed bag. Sobel does his best work in the foreword, where he emphasizes how Moore's early work on short stories prepped him for his longer pieces. These days, a new writer in the genre can spring forth with a graphic novel, but that wasn't an option for Moore, and his regular work on short pieces shaped how he approached longer works. A chapter from Moore is often a work unto itself, with its own tone and aesthetic. (Think of the "Fearful Symmetry" issue of Watchmen or Gull's tour of London in From Hell.)
But the commentary for each story often falls flat. Sobel spends much of his time on the publishing history behind each story (something a Moore fan would probably already know) and then summarizes the story you just read. There are a few attempts to provide copious annotations (a la [a:Jess Nevins|61920|Jess Nevins|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_50x66-82093808bca726cb3249a493fbd3bd0f.png]), but they occur mostly in the footnotes, often to perplexing effect. For example, in reviewing "Tapestries", an antiwar piece from a veteran's viewpoint, Sobel leaves Kurtzman's war work for E.C. in the footnotes, when making that connection more explicit could tie Moore's work to earlier comics skeptical of warfare. And, in the same essay, Sobel shows a picture of [b:Brought to Light|358862|Brought to Light|Alan Moore|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1238677677s/358862.jpg|348987] (Moore's volume on CIA propaganda), but only mentions it in the footnotes. Overall, I had hoped for a more idiosyncratic critical voice than Sobel provided.
If you are a Moore fanperson, then you either already own this or should pick it up. If you're not but are interested in Moore, I'd suggest looking at his longer works first.
One note on production values: perhaps it was only my copy, but the pages reprinting "In Pictopia" were quite dark, making at least one page hard to read. (You can find a better version in [b:The Best Comics of the Decade, 1980-1990 Volume One|6430242|The Best Comics of the Decade, 1980-1990 Volume One|Gary Groth|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1332649124s/6430242.jpg|6619691].) I didn't see any issues with the other stories, and the first tale (a piece from Epic from Moore and Veitch) is just plain gorgeous.
Now, over half the book is commentary, and it's a mixed bag. Sobel does his best work in the foreword, where he emphasizes how Moore's early work on short stories prepped him for his longer pieces. These days, a new writer in the genre can spring forth with a graphic novel, but that wasn't an option for Moore, and his regular work on short pieces shaped how he approached longer works. A chapter from Moore is often a work unto itself, with its own tone and aesthetic. (Think of the "Fearful Symmetry" issue of Watchmen or Gull's tour of London in From Hell.)
But the commentary for each story often falls flat. Sobel spends much of his time on the publishing history behind each story (something a Moore fan would probably already know) and then summarizes the story you just read. There are a few attempts to provide copious annotations (a la [a:Jess Nevins|61920|Jess Nevins|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_50x66-82093808bca726cb3249a493fbd3bd0f.png]), but they occur mostly in the footnotes, often to perplexing effect. For example, in reviewing "Tapestries", an antiwar piece from a veteran's viewpoint, Sobel leaves Kurtzman's war work for E.C. in the footnotes, when making that connection more explicit could tie Moore's work to earlier comics skeptical of warfare. And, in the same essay, Sobel shows a picture of [b:Brought to Light|358862|Brought to Light|Alan Moore|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1238677677s/358862.jpg|348987] (Moore's volume on CIA propaganda), but only mentions it in the footnotes. Overall, I had hoped for a more idiosyncratic critical voice than Sobel provided.
If you are a Moore fanperson, then you either already own this or should pick it up. If you're not but are interested in Moore, I'd suggest looking at his longer works first.