The Ballad of Halo Jones

About four years ago I bought the Complete Ballad of Halo Jones. Back then I was starving for some trippy, sci-fi action with a leading lady, and this book totally fit the bill. I started reading it, and I really liked it so much that I didn't want it to end; I didn't want to finish it because then it would be over, and I would have nothing left to satiate my desire for sexy-sci-fi. So, halfway through, I put the book on the shelf and intended to read it slowly and enjoy. Well, I never touched it since, until last week, I decided to give it a retry. Starting from the beginning I soon realized that the curious and compelling fascination with the genre had sort of been dispelled over the past four years, and I was no longer attracted to the book for that reason. Lesson learned.

Fortunately The Ballad of Halo Jones, has redeeming qualities far beyond my expectations from those years past, and after I reached the point where my previous bookmark lay, I was found myself enjoying it in a different way.

Halo is written by Alan Moore, who would go on to write V for Vendetta, and of course The Watchmen, a series that is widely regarded as one of the best works ever created in the sequential art medium. HAHA! I use that term in jest, what's wrong with just Comics? I guess maybe they're not all comical... Anyway, in the introduction to this comprehensive edition Moore states, "I didn't want to turn Halo into an action character and thereby deprive the strip of what I thought was its best feature... namely, the sheer ordinariness of its main character." It may seem like a genre convention now: 'ordinary person thrust under extraordinary circumstances' but I've never seen it work better than it does here (in 1984)

The series is connected via three 'books,' each serves to advance the character emotionally in a different way. Book one starts out with Halo leading a mundane life in 'the hoop' which is a floating city off the shores of North America where the lower classes are confined. Halo wishes for something more, but is never quite sure what she wants or how to achieve it. Salvation comes, eventually, in the form of the Clara Pandy, an enormous spaceship/cruise liner. Halo is employed as a hostess, and manages to leave her volatile home behind.

Book two shows Halo's life on the ship, and how she comes to terms with the reality of life as she envisioned it, and the reality of how it actually pans out. A series of traumatic events happen to Halo, and she becomes completely disillusioned with the possibility of hope and happiness.

In Book three, Halo has abandoned the Hostess job, and becomes a drifter of sorts, from planet to planet. We find her in a bar on planet Pwuc. "Under gunmetal skies the planet waited morosely for death. It was not a world that people went to. It was a world where people ended up. In 4960, Halo Jones ended up in Pwuc." Debunked, Halo seems to have fallen into a worse routine than when she lived in the Hoop, only now she has even less aspiration and naivety. She joins the galactic Women's Army, and fights for Earth in the far reaches of space. Book three becomes a war story, and Halo is promoted to a higher rank after a short period of time.

The Ballad of Halo Jones does not have a happy ending. The reader is left unsure how Halo will choose to approach the next stage in her life, and exactly what she has learned from the experience. We are convinced though, that she is capable and independent. I suppose that's the, sort-of, moral to the story; to show how a person can and will undergo many extreme changes in their life, and surely the strong can adapt.

Y The Last Man: Kimono Dragons

Y is one of those comics that I have to read in bulk, or else I get confused and lose interest.  I read the first 5 tpbs in one sitting about a year ago, and started subscribing to the monthly.  After which, one serving per month was not satisfying my Y urge, so I just quit reading them and let the issues pile up in my box..... until today!  I started with the begginning of the Komono Dragons storyline, which was issue 42... 44 something like that.  Yorick and company, which now includes Agent 355, Dr. Alison Mann, and Rose.  Yorick's monkey, Ampersand has been monkeynapped by the ninja, Toyota, and Yorick is on his trail (along with 355) thanks to the tracking device they have.  Ampersand has been brought to Japan by Toyota, but he escapes and jumps out a window. He ends up in the possession of a Canadian pop-star who had somehow been appointed as the head of the Yakuza, due to the fact that she was touring in Japan at the time, and happens to be extremely rich.  Anyway, Yorick and 355 figure this out, and head up to the top floor of some building to rescue Amp, which they do. And the pop star dies. Maybe she doesn't, I don't remember.  Meanwhile Alison and Rose head to Alison's mother's house/lab to find it has been burned to the ground.  Fast forward a couple of plot moving events that I don't feel like relaying, and we learn that Dr. Mann's father is alive, and is in fact the cause of the plague.  We learn that he was competing with his daughter to bring the first cloned human baby to term, and he sabatoged the efforts of his daughter to do the same thing.  Oh by the way, the entire Mann family are brilliant bio-geneticist-sergeons.  So: these events are shocking for 3 reasons, number one, Yorick was supposedly the only male who survived the plague, besides Ampersand.  Number two, Alison's father admits he is the cause of the plague which killed every male creature on earth.  Number three, it is revealed that males, and the Y chromosome in general, had only one evolutionary purpose, which is to perpetuate the species.  And the sex is, in his words, a necessary evil.  Actually, WAS, because now, since the first human was cloned, humans have gained the power of asexual reproduction. Ergo, the males of the species are no longer relevant to human survival, and mother nature has wiped them clean from the face of the earth.  Althought this raises the question, why did ALL the males have to die, and not just Human males?  But I'm not thinking very hard and I'm sure Brian K. Vaughn will have the answer, he is a dgenius after all.

Oh also, Mann's father has captured everyone and plans to kill Yorick and himself, because he truly believes males are obsolete.

More Dragon Lance: The Second Generation

Yes, I finished Test of the Twins; very quickly in fact. But not quick enough that I don't have a few more yet to read. I am now working on The Second Generation. At first I was skeptical, I couldn't get into the characters, especially after the traumatizing events of Test. I have to keep in mind that this was written barely less than 10 years later. The writing style is rather different. The Second Generation is 5 short stories. The first one I read, The Legacy, is about Caramon's son, Palin, and his Test at the Tower of High Sorcery. The mages in Wayreth basically tricked Caramon into letting his son take the test, because everyone knew he would never let him. So Palin's test consisted of meeting with his Uncle, Raistlin the Archmage, and considering whether or not to free him from the Abyss, where he is tortured and eaten every day for eternity by the Dark Queen. Palin thought about it, almost did, but realized it was a bad idea because he could end up letting the Dark Queen into the real world by accident, and then he would be the cause of the end of the world. So Palin sent his uncle packing back to the Abyss realm where he would continue to live out his tasty fate. Palin also gets his uncle's staff. The staff of Magius. SHIRAK!