Tor.com comics blogger Tim Callahan has dedicated the next twelve months to a reread of all of the major Alan Moore comics (and plenty of minor ones as well). Each week he will provide commentary on what he’s been reading. Welcome to the 34th installment.
As I mentioned two weeks ago, Spawn #8 may have beat this series to the comic book shops by a month, but Alan Moore wound up writing for Image because of his work with a bunch of former collaborators on the retro-superhero series called 1963.
Printed on newsprint with flat colors and mimicking the sensibilities of early Marvel comics, 1963 was designed to be a loving tribute to the imaginative, over-dramatic stories of the past, and to provide a contrast to the gun-toting anti-heroes of the time in which it was published.
It not only sharply contrasted with every other Image book on the stands next to it, but it was conceived of as a work that would bridge the days of yesteryear with the comic books of today (or, what was “today” in 1993), and culminate in a massive 80-page 1963 Annual in which the old-fashioned pastiche characters would meet up with the Youngbloods and Spawns and Savage Dragons of 1993. Though all six issues of 1963 were released, the cliffhanger in the final issue – with the reveal of Rob Liefeld’s Shaft in front of a high-tech monitor board – was the last we saw of 1963. The Annual was never completed. Never will be completed.
The story remains unfinished.
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