Random Happenstance

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.