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For anyone that wants to see exactly what makes Alan Moore such a special writer, this collection is the perfect starting point. While Moore's longer works usually require a fair bit of contextual knowledge to fully appreciate, the stories here show off his ability to instantly get to the heart of what makes comic book characters tick. It is a rare thing to be at once game-changing and true to a character. Average stories usually manage one or the other but great stories do both. Moore manages this with Batman and the Joker in Batman: The Killing Joke, twice with Superman in For the Man Who Has Everything and Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? and with the Green Lantern Corps with the creation of Mogo and the tale of a Green Lantern from a world with no understanding of light or colour. Moore takes liberties with characters in all of these stories, but they never feel like liberties. Not every story in this collection is as great as those above. The Vigilante story feels pulpy and exploitative and probably simply hasn't aged as well as the others. That's a tiny gripe though. Considering that you also get some great art from the likes of Curt Swan and Dave Gibbons, you can't really go wrong.