From Booklist
In the 1980s, while busy revolutionizing the superhero genre in Watchmen and Swamp Thing, comic-book writer Moore occasionally wrote scripts featuring other DC Comics characters, from its biggest stars to such obscure also-runs as the Vigilante and the Phantom Stranger. Most of the 13 such stories collected here are qualitatively several notches above run-of-the-mill, even if none approaches the lofty heights of Moore's more renowned work. Unable to give these stories' characters the wholesale overhauling for which he is famous, he relies more on imaginative plotting and incisive characterization. Outstanding are a pair of Superman tales, one also featuring Batman and Wonder Woman, and the other portraying an encounter with Moore's breakthrough character, Swamp Thing. It helps that those selections were drawn by the best artists on view here, Dave Gibbons, Moore's Watchmen collaborator, and Rick Veitch, who drew many of Moore's Swamp Thing scripts. If these stories amount to little more than an entertaining footnote to Moore's big hits, it is nice to have them gathered in one convenient volume. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Across the Universe: The DC Universe Stories of Alan Moore FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
In addition to his work on Swamp Thing and Batman: The Killing Joke, during the mid-1980s master comics writer Moore (Watchmen) also wrote other stories set in the familiar DC Comics superhero universe, and 11 of them are collected here. A few amusing trifles, including a pair of humorous "Tales of the Green Lantern Corps," are mixed with more substantial fare, including a Superman/Swamp Thing crossover, an intriguing origin for the Phantom Stranger, and two studies of criminal obsession, one starring Batman and Clayface and the other featuring the more obscure Vigilante. In the lead story, a birthday visit to Superman's Fortress of Solitude by Batman, Robin, and Wonder Woman becomes a knowing exploration of Superman and Batman's deepest wishes. Some Moore fans may not be satisfied by the small-scale work here, but DC fans will recognize the depth of Moore's understanding of the characters, the knowing wink in his humor, and the fresh ideas he brings to the superhero genre. The Vigilante story is bloodier and more adult than the others; recommended for mid-teens and up. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
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