Tharg's Future Shocks

Tharg's Future Shocks is a long-running series of short strips in the British weekly comic 2000 AD in 1977. The name originates from the fictional editor of 2000 AD and the book titled Future Shock, written by Alvin Toffler, published in 1970.

Publishing history

The series began in issue 25 of 2000 AD titled "Tharg's Future Shocks" in a single short story written by Steve 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.^[1] Some successful authors such as Peter Milligan, Alan Davis, Alan Moore, and Grant Morrison found some of their earliest work published as Future Shocks.

Spin-offs

Some characters proved popular enough to either appear in their own stories, or have multiple appearances in Future Shocks, such as Alec Trench, Bradley,

2000 AD also begat several other science fiction and horror short stories under several different titles, including Time Twisters. Examples of the others include:

• Bob Byrne's Twisted Tales
• Future Shorts, single page Future Shocks^[2]
• Past Imperfect ^[3]
• Pulp Sci-Fi ^[4]
• Ro-Jaws^[5]
• Tales from Beyond Science, a short run series all drawn by Rian Hughes^[6]
• Tales from the Black Museum, an equivalent set in Mega-City One^[7]
• Tales of Telguuth, a series of fantasy tales set on a distant planet, written by Steve Moore^[8]
• Tharg's Terror Tales, covering horror, that still occasionally appears^[9]
• Time Twisters, single episode stories, with a focus on time travel and subsequent paradoxes^[10]
• Vector 13 although wrapped in its own story stretching beyond the series, it still featured one off stories largely focused on anomalous or paranormal phenomena^[11]