Comicon Advent Calendar Day 13: Alan Moore’s Two-Page Downbeat Christmas Masterpiece
by Richard Bruton
Once more, it’s time to welcome you to the Comicon Advent Calendar, our Christmas gift to you, every single day of the 24 days of Advent bringing you festive fayre…
Today, something very special from 1982, back in time to a world where Alan Moore was still a couple of years away from taking the USA by storm with Swamp Thing, The Killing Joke, and Watchmen, and was spending some of his time creating small yet perfectly formed tales for 2000 AD, whether they were Future Shocks or Time Twisters – they’re still perhaps the finest collection of short sci-fi tales you could ever imagine reading.
Case in point, this seasonal Future Shock from 2000 AD Prog 271, One Christmas During Eternity. It’s a tiny thing, just two-pages, 12 panels long, yet it’s one of those comics that’s just absolute perfection, a lesson in brevity and how to pack something full of ideas and emotion.
It’s 2596 AD and mankind has developed to the point where they’ve now got immortality tablets. But Christmas is still Christmas here, as we join Lars and Amarylis Martin, getting ready to share Christmas with Timmy…
It really is, as Moore’s voiceover tells us, ‘the best of days, the day they’ve looked forward to all year. They watch him as he sits in the expanding nest of wrapping paper, and they smile.’
Oh, it’s an absolutely perfect first page set-up, giving us all that Christmas magic, absolutely nailing the sentiments of the season, all the excitement that it holds for kids, but, more than that, the sheer joy of being a parent at this most magical time of the year.
Of course, you all know there’s something coming on page 2 to ruin it all, don’t you?
And so it is, with a doorbell heralding the end of the day, the end of the magic…
Because, in a heartbreaking twist, Moore reveals the downside to the immortality pill…
All the joy drains out of the moment, the heartbreak is never really expressly referenced, it’s just there in the tonal shift, the looks of disappointment, the resignation, Redondo’s art perfectly capturing the emptiness of the Martin’s lives, their one bit of true happiness shown to be but a fleeting thing.
Every Future Shock needs it’s twist in the tale, and that’s just what we get here, with the final reveal of why this whole glorious day is nothing but a sham – simply a masterclass of how to do comics. Two pages, just those 12 panels, and we get a story that is so much bigger than the tiny page count could ever promise. From absolute joy, the distillation of what Christmas is all about, to complete devastation, heartrending stuff, a future where progress has stripped humanity of their happiness.
And that’s where any ordinary writer would have left it, the reveal of the curse of immortality – that would have made this a great little cautionary tale of the future. But no, that’s not the end, there’s still one panel left, the aftermath, the emotional gut-punch…
That’s what makes this just a perfect thing. It’s Moore giving us that one extra panel, the one after the ending that most writers would have done. In that final panel, you get the full reveal, the moment after the shock, the moment where you’re left to imagine the true emptiness of this world, of these people. Just one panel, but it’s the one that truly gives all that came before a resonance, as you’ll left to ponder the future with the Martins, and your heart is all the heavier for it. You can’t get better than that.
Two pages, but just absolute perfection.
You can find One Christmas During Eternity in 2000 AD Prog 271 from 1982. But probably more easy to find in The Complete Alan Moore Future Shocks, published in 2013 (available in digital from the 2000 AD shop). It will also be part of the forthcoming Complete 2000 AD By Alan Moore: Future Shocks & Other Stories, due to be published in April 2026. Frankly, an essential collection of masterfully constructed tales
THARG’S FUTURE SHOCKS: ONE CHRISTMAS DURING ETERNITY – BY ALAN MOORE AND JESUS REDONDO, LETTERS BY TOM FRAME
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 2000 AD PROG 271 (1982)
