In the 50th century, the adventures of Halo Jones begin after an unfortunate shopping trip, when she returns to her apartment to find one of her roommates has joined a cult, and the other has been murdered. She leaves earth, taking a job as a stewardess on a year-long trip, but this issue she finds her roommate's murderer: Halo's own robot dog, Toby! Toby may have been her roommate's before, but wants Halo for himself, to get a human body and be "just like a regular boyfriend." Halo tries to stall, but Toby can see she's lying, and sadly knows he'll have to kill her...! (Toby is largely a cutesy design, gone bad; the effect is like if G'nort was trying to kill you!)
Unfortunately, by the time this issue was published, the third and to-date final Halo Jones book had already been published; as Moore had fought with Fleetway over the property rights. Is it weird that kind of like Watchmen, Moore would never come back to work for them, but the artist would? Gibson's done a British tonne of 2000 AD since. Much as I'd have loved to see it continue, I imagine Fleetway or IPC or whoever owns it now are afraid if they give Moore any slack, it would open the door for other creators to get rights, and we can't have that...
I know I've read all of the Ballad of Halo Jones from one of the 2000 AD Humble Bundles; but as was pretty typical for the Quality reprints, she only gets 10 pages in her own book! Psi-Judge Anderson gets 10 pages, surprisingly tense even though she spends the bulk of it in a coma! The East-Meg's deadliest agent, Orlok, plots his escape, which feels like an inevitability. (Written by Alan Grant and John Wagner, pencils by Barry Kitson, inks by Jeff Anderson.) The rest is the Dave Angus/Kevin O'Neill Flash Gordon spoof Dash Decent. I'm trying to remember if any of the comedy 2000 AD strips have ever worked for me, and most of them were short runs that still outlasted any jokes.
Unfortunately that does seem to be as much as his legacy as his work doesn't it? To almost always being legal disputes concerning the rights to his creations and/or stories. Poor bastard.
ReplyDeleteBTW an evil G'nort would about be funny as hell to see play out.
Hoo boy, this is a complicated one. Let's start here- I never really got the appeal of Halo Jones. It's just boring to me, no matter what she's doing. That may be the joke, for all I know- average people aren't really that exciting compared to the types you usually see in comics.
ReplyDeleteThere's clearly not so much concern about creators' rights here as the fans not accepting new stories without Alan onboard. They've done continuations of his other series before, and it always seems to get a lukewarm response. They've even used the original artists in most cases.
Partly because of how British comics work and partly because of how Alan's scripts work, he's never really engendered 'loyalty' as we'd think of it with artists. Ian Gibson, for example, had worked for 2000 AD well before Alan started and left long after he left (the details of Ian's departure are a whole other story, by the way). He's even done (unofficial, of course) topless drawings of Halo as fan-commissioned artwork, though that's more due to the sort of stuff he's been drawing in recent years than as a sign of disrespect or rebellion.
There have been some good 2000 AD comedy strips, as far as I'm concerned. Robo-Hunter and Ace Trucking are definitely good, and even some of the single page gag strips are good. Strangely enough, 2000 AD is bringing back one of the more obscure ones (Bonjo From Beyond The Stars) for a one-shot in this year's Christmas special. Even more oddly, they've got Garth Ennis and Kevin O'Neill doing it (they're both 2000 AD alums so it's not that unbelievable but, still).
@H: Garth Ennis AND Kevin O'Neill working together? And on a obscure 2000AD character? I'd be prepared for a harsh, satirical take on said character then knowing both of them, although more so on Ennis' part, since that seems to be his main goal these days when it comes to writing. Of course I could be completely wrong & they play it respectfully.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely a solid point about Moore's fans though. Again though, to be fair, taking Swamp Thing for example, not a lot of interest remained once Moore left, and the book kind of floated & danced around in obscurity despite the efforts of every writer that followed him, Veitch aside. While he didn't create Swampy, he sure as shit redefined him so well during his run, that everything that came after that felt flat without him.
Didn't know that about Gibson, but now I have to see if I can google any of those fan sketches.
It'll probably be half and half- Ennis has an immense amount of respect for anything from 2000 AD's first ten years (almost as much as he has for war stories) and O'Neill was there from the beginning and has given 110% every time he comes back for special guest art. On the other hand, the original Bonjo was filled with casual racism and gross-out gags (as was the style in British humor at the time) so there's a lot to work with there.
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