I am now reading volume 3 of
The Ballad of Halo Jones, script by Alan Moore and art by Ian Gibson. Halo is now 29 years-old and destitute on a dustbowl world called PWUC. With nothing better to do, she enlists in the Armed Forces, and is engaged in a long-running battle on a series of worlds called Tarantula.
BeardofPants said:
Ooh, that sounds like it would be something I'd like to read... I love Alan Moore's stuff. How are you finding it so far?
I also love Alan Moore, particularly
The Watchmen, but I have also read
V For Vendetta,
From Hell and
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
The Ballad of Halo Jones is an early work of his, originally published in
2000AD in serial fashion from 1984-1986 in three main volumes with distinct story arcs. The fact that the story was told in episodic fashion is obvious, but on the whole it avoids being too fragmented. Halo is basically an everywoman thrust into extraordinary circumstances. The opening few episodes are littered with future slang and alien names, which make the future science fiction setting hard to grasp. But now I have found my ground in the story, I am enjoying this just as much, if not more, than some of Moore’s later work, finding it a comic and poignant treatise on identity, poverty, war, love, morality and mortality. Ian Gibson's highly stylised black and white artwork is excellent, ranging from anarchic to lush, with “curvy-sharp” characters, spaceships, costumes and creatures that have a lovely sci-fi 80s charm.