The lunar colony is slowly winding down, like a small town circumvented by a new super highway. As our hero, the Mooncop, makes his daily rounds, his beat grows ever smaller, the population dwindles. A young girl runs away, a dog breaks off his leash, an automaton wanders off from the Museum of the Moon. Each day that the Mooncop goes to work, life gets a little quieter and a little lonelier.
As in Goliath, Tom Gauldās retelling of the Bible story, the focus in Gauld's science fiction is personalāno big explosions or grand reveals, just the incremental dissolution of an abandoned project and a personās slow awakening to his own uselessness. Depicted in the distinctive, matter-of-fact style of his beloved Guardian strips, Mooncop is equal parts funny and melancholy. Gauld captures essential truths about humanity, making this a story of the past, present, and future, all in one.
"At once hilarious and achingly melancholy, it reads like a requiem for the future we were promised decades ago that never arrived. A quietly essential read for anyone who grew up reading sci-fi". āWired
"Mooncop is touched by nostalgia for the golden age of space exploration and an affection for the routines of small-town life, and Gauld finds humour and hope ā as well as coffee and doughnuts ā in his portrait of a fading utopia". āThe Guardian
"Mooncop is a success by nearly any measure". āThe Comics Journal
96 page 2-color hardcover
Drawn and Quarterly, 2016
