We may be doubling-down on Quality/
2000 AD reprints this week, but I remember the cover for this issue from the sell-through house ad on the backs of other Quality books that month. It was pretty unlike the others, but it might not be representative of what actually happens this issue, either! From 1988,
Halo Jones #7, "The Last Dance" Reprinted from 1985's
2000 AD #414 and
#415. Written by Alan Moore, art by Ian Gibson. Cover by Bart Sears!
After her
battle with Toby the robot dog, Halo had been assigned "complete relaxation," and was chilling with the ship's dolphin--years before
Star Trek had them, although I don't know if this dolphin does any proper duties! Her friend Toy wants her to get out of the water, and get kitted up for a party; this one thrown by the ship's owner, Lux Roth Chop. There is a moment in their cabin, that Halo and Toy both feel like something was missing, but eventually decide it wasn't important.
The party was maybe Halo's last chance to bag a guy she'd had her eye on, but he's poached by a glamourous, and entitled-seeming, woman. Halo has to stop her to ask, since she finally places her voice, as that of newscaster "Swifty Frisko." She has a laugh about that, since that was computerized and merely a hologram; perhaps either done for a lark or residuals. Halo is left wondering how she can tell her friend Rodice that Swifty Frisko stole her man, when a young boy approaches and asks her for a dance. Deciding why not, no one else was going to ask her that nicely, Halo dances with him, noticing he was both an excellent dancer, but also the crowd seemed to part for him. And why shouldn't it: he introduces himself afterwards, and Lux Roth Chop. (Lux is much younger in the story, and shorter, than he was on the cover!)
Finally arriving on the frozen planet Charlemagne, Halo makes her way to the Solid Air Bar, to see if she beat Rodice there. The bar was pretty empty, but a call comes in, asking for Halo: it was Rodice, calling from back on the Hoop on earth. She had decided not to leave, feeling more comfortable there. She wants to tell Halo more, but Halo tells her she won't be coming back to the Hoop. "Where will you go?" "Out." Settling in next to alien keyboard player Yortlebluzzgubbly, Halo looks like she's about to have more than a few drinks...This was the end of Book Two, and the next book maybe featured more action in the
2000 AD manner; but again,
due to a rights dispute Alan Moore to date has never returned fo Fleetway.
And again, as was typical for these reprints, Halo only gets 10 pages and a couple pin-ups in her own mag! Judge Anderson gets ten, although a couple are out of order and she's inexplicably colored as a redhead instead of a blonde. This was another chapter of
"Hour of the Wolf" from 1987, as an enemy psychic recovers the body of Russian assassin Orlok, and revives him. Aside from the Dark Judges, there aren't a lot of recurring bad guys in
Judge Dredd stories (at least compared to American comics!) and this might have been a move to keep
Orlok in play while also covering why Anderson couldn't just find him later with her psi-powers. (Story by Alan Grant and John Wagner, art by Barry Kitson.)
The issue wraps with another Alan Moore story,
Abelard Snazz in "The Double Decker-Dome Strikes Back." (Art by Mike White.) Abelard was a super-genius problem-solver, with solutions that inevitably led to more problems, and previously had been abandoned in space to die with his fawning robot toadie Edwin. Frozen, Abelard is recovered by the alien defeatists the Farbians, who think he was their god Toglub of the Two-Fold Gaze. Surely he would be able to solve the three-pronged threat hanging over the planet's head...? (Amusingly, the long-suffering Farbians appear to have had other disasters, as their naysaying priest references some Alan Moore
Future Shock strips! One, the alien cleaner, you might recognize from the cover of Quality's
Time Twisters #1!) Can Abelard come up with the answers? And will he immediately shoot himself in the foot right after? You can probably guess, but it's done well.
I don't think there's a huge demand for Fleetway/Quality reprints in general, maybe slightly more for
Halo Jones, but I am still surprised when I find any. Going to check my overflow box of
2000 AD-type stuff and see if I'm close to the set, here.
5 comments:
Wow, that honestly the earliest work from Barry Kitson I’ve personally ever seen & I’m aware of his late 80’s L.E.G.I.O.N. work. Definitely looks like his style as rough as it is although that could also be partly due to being reproduced on cheap paper.
Catsblood eh? Even for an alternate future that sounds like a weird brand name for alcohol🤔
Yeah, it’s partially the paper and partially the coloring- two reasons why a lot of Fleetway/Quality reprints get looked down on by 2000 AD fans. It looks a lot better in black and white with better paper.
Halo Jones is less in demand than most of these reprints, actually- it’s probably the one I see most in the cheap bins. It’s partially the quality, partially that it’s been reprinted quite a few times, and partially that the back-up features aren’t that rare. There are a few that have series that still have never been reprinted elsewhere. The most in demand issues though are the early Dredds and the ones with D.R. and Quinch (which I don’t think has been on the blog yet- it really depends on the story).
The third book of Halo Jones is war (which I don’t remember if Moore’s used anywhere else) but not especially action-y, as is the way with this series. I know he had things planned out until book nine, when Halo was going to be old, and that she was going to be a space pirate at some point. He told somebody (maybe Neil Gaiman) about it in private and it moved him to tears. Like I believe I’ve said before, doesn’t do much for me so don’t know how engaging that would’ve been.
Also, about Hour of the Wolf (probably best I posted before I was done by the way- it was already a long post)- Orlok didn’t show up much for about 10 years after this one. It was more about setting up a psychic connection between him and Anderson- he showed up in a couple of her stories later and they tried to play the “we’re not so different” card. Didn’t really work as far as I can tell, so he walked away from the whole thing to be a farmer on a far away world. They brought him back to be some sort of worthy foe for Dredd in the late 90’s but that ran its course and they killed him off to be done with it.
I did see some of the later Orlok/Anderson stuff mentioned--I think it was post-Quality, so I haven't got to read it yet! But I saw that Anderson left the Judges for a while after that, which seems like a natural progression for her. Coming back, less so...Every wiki type thing for Anderson always mentions she was aging and couldn't fight it the way other Judges did because of her powers; but I'm not sure I've seen that necessarily reflected in the art. Which could be because I only get to read a bit of modern Dredd, but also because everyone loves Anderson!
Yeah, I think most Quality series are pre-1991 material and Anderson took her leave a couple of years after that. As to why she came back, it was for a Judge Dredd/Batman crossover that was written before she left but Glenn Fabry was exceedingly slow. He was so slow that she came back a year too early and they had to bring in somebody else to finish it!
That’s pretty close as to why most artists never show Anderson at her proper age. It’s actually a controversial topic in the fandom. Usually, the stories where they show her aging don’t go over well (story-wise also) and most artists were introduced to the character when she was younger so they would rather draw her that way. Also, she doesn’t really have a consistent design from artist to artist other than basic traits so it’s a bit less visible that way.
I have a theory about how it works in-universe but it’s never been formally addressed. Basically, I think it’s a psychic ability to project an image of herself into other’s minds so people see her as she wants to be seen at that moment. Again, just a theory but makes sense to me.
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