Halo Jones has no superpowers, she's just a girl. Lives in the 50th century, inwhich the rich are getting richer, while the poor are getting poorer (same old), and Halo's mired in the latter category. The centuries have not been kind; Earth is a backwater planet, humankind aren't such superior beings after all, life everywhere is dangerous. For Halo and her friends the last best option may yet come down to joining the mindless glombies (who 'nod, nod, nod, all the time, in unison').

As the story begins Halo's friend Rodice is the take-change character, her friend Ludy has the talent, and her friend Brinna has the brains; Halo's only burning ambition is to be somewhere other than there. Jobs are a thing of the past, especially on the Hoop, but she does speak some Cetacean, so it's Halo who almost accidentally makes good on her own promise. Alan Moore is plainly having some fun here: they go on a really perilous shopping expedition armed with zenades, and vanquish a gang of stylista checkout hags with a Jackson Pollock Spatter-effect. Brinna's tastes lean to 46th century philo-gothic sitdrams (Halo calls them philosophy-nasty) like "John Cage: Atonal Avenger" and "Wittgenstein Has Risen From his Grave". There's a fabulous character called Glyph that nobody notices, and his (very) little life in the book margins is poignant. Halo contemplates death and even religion, drinks Catsblood, accidently starts a ratwar, resolves a doomed love affair, and even gets to dance to her own different drummers... and stays alive, which as we all know tends to be the tough part.

'Where did she go?' says one title page. 'Out. What did she do? Everything.' The story is terribly small, but it's chockful of everything. Which makes the students in 6427A.D. studying Van Eyck's seminal work on the subject, 'The Halo Jones Myth in Modern Concordian Folklore', question the subject matter: After all, 'she wasn't anyone special'. What the story is all about, the lecturer maintains, is what Halo Jones herself is quoted as having said about herself: "Anybody could have done it." So true, but luckily, it's Alan Moore who did. Me, i'm totally looking forward to the publication of Book #2. It's like a mindmeld of Alan Moore and Joss Whedon, and how sweet is that, in the small? So till the day, stay slappy, watch out for Fleurs du Mall, try to dodge those drangsturms - and keep flying. ( )

I have read this numerous times. And it is always good. Especially Book 3 when Halo ends up in the army. A damn good story. ( )

Halo Jones is an ordinary girl living in The Hoop. The Hoop is where the poor are put so that anyone with money doesn't have to look at them. It is no solution to poverty and unemployment, it is just a place to be. Nothing is really known of Halo's parents and it is assumed she was born on The Hoop and that they died when she was very young. She lives in the house of Brinna (considered to be a wealthy woman), Ludy a musician, Rodice another girl similar to her and Toby an animatronic dog who belongs to Brinna. Halo has always dreamt of leaving The Hoop and when Ludy becomes one of the Drummers and Brinna is murdered she siezes her chance to board a space ship as a hostess and travel to other planets.

She has became something of a legend in the future. She was supposed to be a war criminal who aided in the slaughter of millions and that she met many of the famous people of her time. The reality is somewhat different, she was more in the wrong place at the wrong time (or the right place depending on your viewpoint). Her real story sees her losing many of her friends and fighting in a strange war at super slow speed due to a different gravity on the planet Moab.

I really enjoyed this graphic novel. The heroine Halo was most interesting as she was so ordinary. She "could have been anyone" (her most famous quote). It had many elements of more male based comics like spaceships, guns, war etc, but she was strong in her own right and didn't succumb to many of the female stereotypes like taking her clothes off and fainting a lot which was something Moore and Gibson felt important. The ending saw some earlier storylines tied up nicely and there may even someday be a fourth book (this collection is made up of the three books previsuly published) to continue her story which I would definitely read. I also liked that dolphins ended up taking over the earth, being more intelligent and sensitive, very Douglas Adams. ( )

The Ballad of Halo Jones didn't thrill me a lot, maybe I had read too many books that this was reminiscent of that were quite frankly, a lot better.

Halo is a poor girl on a planet that likes to use the American style move the poor somewhere else manoeuvre to claim they have no poverty. That sort of thing. So, a bit of Reagan era commentary.

Anyway, she escapes into space, and has to try and stay alive, especially when ending up in the military.

http://graphicsf.blogspot.com/2007/02... ( )

http://www.2000adreview.co.uk/reviews... ( )