The Ballad of Halo Jones: Book One

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 show more 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. show less