‘Tharg’s Future Shocks’ are one of 2000 AD’s longest running series, having appeared in the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic on a regular basis since Prog 25, way back in August 1977, and still featuring in large numbers over 26 years later.

A Future Shock is a single-episode comic strip of around five pages, with a broadly science-fiction theme and a twist ending (or even multiple twists!). The style of the Future Shock is hugely flexible, and has been used for satire, horror, tragedy, social comment, comedy, action and a many other types of story, on a variety of scales, from claustrophobic tales featuring one man in a room to all-out intergalactic warfare and Armageddon. The one underlying feature about all Future Shocks, though, is the twist – the reader should be surprised and wrong-footed by a ‘shock’ ending that often completely reverses their perspective and assumptions about what is going on.

Future Shocks have been written and drawn for 2000 AD by some of the world’s biggest comics creators - indeed many of them started their careers writing them. Legendary comics writer Alan Moore (Watchmen, League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen) was responsible for a huge amount of the early Future Shocks, and other now big name writers who followed him include Neil Gaiman (Sandman, 1602), Grant Morrison (New X-Men, The Invisibles) and Mark Millar (The Ultimates, The Authority).

There is no shortage of well-known artists who have drawn Future Shocks either, with pen having been put to paper by big names such as Brian Bolland (Batman, The Invisibles), Steve Dillon (Preacher, The Punisher, Hellblazer), Dave Gibbons (Watchmen) and Kevin O’Neill (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen).

Future Shocks were in 1977, and still remain now, the best way for budding writers and artists to get into the hallowed pages of 2000 AD (and the comics industry in general).

New writers will be asked to send Future Shock submissions in as a way for the editors to judge their writing skill, and these will often be given to new artists to draw for similar reasons. The five-page twist format is known among professional writers as one of the most difficult to get right, so those that can produce good Future Shocks should be able to go on to write almost anything.