Tharg's Future Shocks

For other uses, seeFuture Shock (disambiguation).

Tharg's Future Shocksis a long-running series of short strips appearing in the British weeklycomic2000 ADsince 1977. The name originates from the fictionaleditor of 2000 ADand the book titledFuture Shock,written byAlvin Toffler,published in 1970.

Cover toAlan Moore's Shocking FuturesbyKevin O'Neill.

Publishing history

The series began in issue 25 of2000 ADtitled "Tharg's Future Shocks" in a singleshort storywritten bySteve 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.Authors such asPeter Milligan,Alan Davis,Alan Moore,andGrant Morrisonfound some of their earliest work published asFuture Shocks.

Spin-offs

Some characters proved popular enough to either appear in their own stories, or have multiple appearances inFuture Shocks,such as Alec Trench, Bradley,D.R. and QuinchandAbelard Snazz.

Similar series

2000 ADalso begat several otherscience fictionandhorrorshort stories under several different titles, includingTime Twisters.Examples of the others include:

• Bob Byrne'sTwisted Tales
• Future Shorts,single page Future Shocks
• Past Imperfect
• Pulp Sci-Fi
• Ro-Jaws Robo Tales,stories presented byRo-Jaws
• Tales from Beyond Science,a short run series all drawn byRian Hughes
• Tales from the Black Museum,an equivalent set inMega-City One
• Tales of Telguuth,a series of fantasy tales set on a distant planet, written bySteve Moore
• Tharg's Terror Tales,covering horror, that still occasionally appears
• Time Twisters,single episode stories, with a focus on time travel and subsequent paradoxes
• Vector 13although 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 oftrade paperbacks:

Two collections of Alan Moore'sFuture Shocks(Alan Moore's Shocking Futures) andTime Twisters(Alan Moore's Twisted Times) stories were released byTitan Booksin 1986:

• Alan Moore's Shocking Futures(1986),Titan Books;reprints a selection ofFuture Shocksshort strips originally published in2000 ADbetween 1981 and 1983, with various artists.ISBN0-907610-71-4
• Alan Moore's Twisted Times(1987),Titan Books;reprints almost all of Moore'sAbelard Snazzstrips, and a further selection ofTime Twistersshort strips originally published in2000 ADbetween 1980 and 1983, with various artists.ISBN0-907610-72-2

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

• The Complete Future Shocks(tpb,Rebellion Developments,2006ISBN1-904265-88-X)

Despite the title, this is not a complete collection of allFuture Shockstories from the comic, only the Alan Moore stories in the 1986 and 1987 books described above.

All theFuture Shockswritten byPeter Milligan,John Smith,andNeil Gaimanand around half ofGrant Morrison's were collected in:

• The Best of Tharg's Future Shocks(160 pages, November 2008,ISBN1-905437-81-1)

A series of paperbacks collecting allFuture Shocksis being published by Rebellion:

• The Complete Future Shocks Volume 1(320 pages, July 2018,ISBN1781085595) covers 1977–1981
• The Complete Future Shocks Volume 2(272 pages, August 2019,ISBN1781086834) covers 1981–1982

External links

• Complete list ofFuture Shockstoriesat the official2000 ADwebsite