Full page insight: the apocalyptic moment in comics written by Alan Moore

Alan Moore and his collaborating artists often manipulate time and space by drawing upon the formal elements of comics and making alternative constellations. This article looks at an element that is used frequently in comics of all kinds - the full page - and discusses how it helps shape spatio-temporal relations within the stories told, specifically in terms of full pages in connection with apocalypses. The spatio-temporal quality of the apocalypse is complex in that it concerns an event that is an ending and at the same time a continuation of time; and this double temporal quality is, it is argued here, something that it shares with the full page in comics. Through an analysis of several full pages from Moore titles like Swamp Thing, From Hell, Watchmen and Promethea, it is made clear why the full page provides an apt vehicle for an apocalypse in comics.