If you can get past the annoying futurespeak idioms and the slow world and character building of the opening chapters, Alan Moore serves up some delicious post-apocalyptic horror with nods to Elvis Presley and the great writers of science fiction and a brilliant conclusion.

The series continues with another writer, but without Moore at the wheel I have no interest in seeking out those books right now. ( )

The adverts say that no prior knowledge of the ‘Crossed’ series by Garth Ennis is needed to enjoy this book which is just as well because I don’t have any. This volume collects the first six issues of the comic book ‘Crossed 100’ which completes the first part of the story arc.

After a six-panel prologue, a great splash page by artist Gabriel Andrade sets the scene nicely. A caption tells us it’s ‘July 12, 2108 AFAWK.’ A steam-powered vehicle with tank treads passes through rough countryside. There are ruins in the background and skeletons strewn across a grassy slope in the foreground. Narration is provided by a young lady sat atop the vehicle and writing in her logbook.

This is set one hundred years after the original outbreak of the plague. Archivist Future Taylor is in a salvage team led by Runboss Greer. They come from a survivor settlement in the former USA and are working to rebuild the historical record of the original Crossed outbreak by recovering maps, non-fiction print, home audio or video and other artefacts. Taylor finds ‘The Encyclopaedia Of Science Fiction’ and, as the story progresses, she reads it, which provides us with chapter headings, the first being ‘124C41 ’ by Hugo Gernsback. The outbreak is known as The Surprise because it was. The victims become psychotic killers interested only in pain and sex. They are assumed to have died out, due to their propensity for rape, murder and eating their own children but suddenly a few appear and the bloodletting begins. Wolves to add to the fun.

As you’d expect with Alan Moore, the language is inventive and takes some getting used to at first. Most of it is self-explanatory: ‘in brown,’ ‘I don’t heart it much,’ ‘skull where we are yet?’ As the story progresses, you get more of it and some word balloons have to be read twice to get the meaning, simply because the vocabulary is combined in unusual ways. I didn’t work out ‘til near the end that AFAWK means ‘as far as we know’. One thing about Alan Moore, he doesn’t insult your intelligence. He makes you work. As with ‘A Clockwork Orange’ by Anthony Burgess, this is a realistic presentation of the future – language does change – but might annoy some readers.

The idea of using Science Fiction titles, rationalised by Taylor finding ‘The Encyclopaedia Of Science Fiction’ is also inventive. The six chapters are named as follows: ‘124C41 ’; ‘The Return Of The King’; ‘Glory Road’; ‘A Canticle For Leibowitz’; ‘Tyger, Tyger’ and ‘Foundation And Empire’. Most SF fans will have heard of all of these and read at least some of them. The names are not just frosting on the cake as the events in each chapter fit nicely to the titles. Damned clever, that Alan Moore. He’s not just a hairy face, you know. Archivist Future Taylor likes reading about ‘wishful fiction’ as she calls it but is dismissive about its application to reality.

I was pleased to see a civilised Muslim settlement featured as I’m tired of them being villains all the time. The characters are realistic, the plot is crafty and complex, the writing is literate and effective as you would expect from this author. As you might also expect it’s full of sex and violence, graphically displayed. That brings me to the art, which is beautiful. Gabriel Andrade draws everything with panache and the colouring by Digikore Studios is spectacular and lush. What’s depicted might make you feel ill if you are of a sensitive nature but the depictions themselves are faultless artistically. Gabriel Andrade is to be commended, especially as working from Moore’s fanatically detailed scripts is apparently a bit of a job.

This is a fantastic piece of comic book art. As a big fan of some of Moore’s works, I appreciated it mightily. Only one problem. Older now, though seven years younger than the author, I lack the moral certainty that the graphic violence on our screens (‘Game Of Thrones’, ‘Gotham’, etc) and comic books doesn’t do any harm to young minds. I’m not sure it does neither and I watch both the shows mentioned as the stories are great. Same goes for ‘Crossed 100’, so it’s recommended, with caution.

Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/ ( )

here Alan takes Garth Ennis' infected zombie apocalypse, moves the timer forward another hundred years, and spins it off in another direction just at the point where hope re-enters the equation. by 2108 language has changed, the world has changed, and it seems time to reclaim the past and even invest in plans for the future beyond mere survival. so our archivist hero (and how cool is that!?), armed with her knowledge of the past and blessed with the prophetic name of Future, takes a younger girl named Cautious Optimist under her wing and they sail out into the Real to search systematically among the ruins for history, artifacts, and ideas they can use. and but they learn quite a lot about the present along the way, radically changing their whole As Far As We Know. Future is a fan of 20thC sf novels, though she lives in a world with neither science nor stars: it's a lost genre she calls "wishful futures", but belief structures of any kind (including the rational) are the first casualties of the world she lives in now. but then she starts finding shrines. seems like someone out there has a dream of their own, and it's doing better than just surviving. perhaps the most powerful Alan Moore story of recent years, you don't have to have read any of the Garth Ennis original series to get your bearings. the artwork by Gabriel Andrade, in both scope and detail, is very strong. and this is all Alan wrote into this world, though the series does continue past this point. ( )