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Rating: 
Summary: Ms. Jones' Comportmant
Review: Dataday, day-today. This is Swifty Frisco giving you welcome.
At this moment in time I am surrounded by screaming children. At this point in time, only the thought of Halo Jones books One, Two and Three are enough to keep me sane. The Ballad of Halo Jones (to give it it's full title) was not the first comic I ever read. It wasn't even the first in 2000AD, where it was first published, as it appeared after Judge Dredd, Slaine and Ace Trucking Company in the magazine that I first saw it in. In this particular episode (of Book Three), following the death of her best friend, Halo quits the army, is unable to get a job, buys a gun to strip and put back together and starts sizing up children through her sights. The episode ends with Halo rejoining the army with the realisation that she has nowhere else to go. This is the first comic that ever really made me think, and this particular episode has stuck with me for almost twenty years. For me, this was the moment when comics grew up. Of course I could wax lyrical about little known writer Alan Moore, co-creator of Halo, about whom very little has been written. However, I think that the real star of the piece is Ian Gibson, who is probably one of the most underrated comic artists of all time. The art continues to improve, finally reaching the wonderful black and white, heavily inked line art of book three. Moore's abilities as a writer also widen and mature through the three books. The three books are filled with wonderful images and ideas (the future-speak and the idea of a matriachal society are just two great ones). The way that Moore's writing and Gibson's art grows over the three books and entwines together results in this book being one of the best writer/artist combinations, I, at least, have ever seen. This is definately the best thing to ever appear in the pages of 2000AD. And thats saying a lot. Now all we need is to try and persuade Moore to write the further six remaining books.
This is Swifty Frisco signing off.
Rating: 
Summary: A Citizen of The Galaxy, Between Planets
Review: Extremely likeable comics novel from the 1980s that could easily pass for one of the Robert Heinlein "young adult" science fiction novels from the 1950s (like the two mentioned above, or TIME FOR THE STARS, or HAVE SPACESUIT - WILL TRAVEL, etc.). In each of the Heinlein stories, an adolescent hero leaves home to struggle through a series of traumatic and otherwise character-building experiences that ultimately transforms him or her into an adult. Such things happen in this story to young Halo, who trades in the futilities and disappointments of her childhood Welfare State environment for adventure in outer space -- which of course proves to have futilities and disappointments of its own. The last third of the novel deals with Halo's experiences in the military --like Heinlein's STARSHIP TROOPERS or SPACE CADET -- although Alan Moore's take on space combat is decidedly less gung-ho than Heinlein's. Closer to Joe Haldeman's THE FOREVER WAR.
Rating:
Summary: Moore at his (near) best!
Review: The "Ballad of Halo Jones" is one of Alan Moore's earliest works, and orignally appeared in serial-form in Britain's 2000AD magazine during the early 1980s. Ballad is set in the far future, and chronicles the eponymous heroine from the age of 18 to 35. The great strength of this series is the strong and diverse characterization of the mostly female cast. Frankly, I think that sympathetic female characterization has been a problem with Moore (look at his masterpiece, Watchmen, where all of the female characters are neurotic at best), but in this early work, Moore does an outstanding job. The storyline is also very strong and poignant with a beautiful ending. Overall, Ballad isn't quite Moore at his best (Watchmen and From Hell), but it's ranks with his "2nd tier" work like Miracleman; and it's head and shoulders over more recent fare like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. One negative: this trade from Titan reprints the full storyline in the original black and white, and format-size, which is much larger than the standard comic book format. During the late 1980s in the US, this series was reprinted in color and in standard size. I wish that this format had been retained...frankly, this is a big book on the bookshelf.
Rating:
Summary: Moore at his (near) best!
Review: The "Ballad of Halo Jones" is one of Alan Moore's earliest works, and orignally appeared in serial-form in Britain's 2000AD magazine during the early 1980s. Ballad is set in the far future, and chronicles the eponymous heroine from the age of 18 to 35. The great strength of this series is the strong and diverse characterization of the mostly female cast. Frankly, I think that sympathetic female characterization has been a problem with Moore (look at his masterpiece, Watchmen, where all of the female characters are neurotic at best), but in this early work, Moore does an outstanding job. The storyline is also very strong and poignant with a beautiful ending. Overall, Ballad isn't quite Moore at his best (Watchmen and From Hell), but it's ranks with his "2nd tier" work like Miracleman; and it's head and shoulders over more recent fare like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. One negative: this trade from Titan reprints the full storyline in the original black and white, and format-size, which is much larger than the standard comic book format. During the late 1980s in the US, this series was reprinted in color and in standard size. I wish that this format had been retained...frankly, this is a big book on the bookshelf.
Rating:
Summary: Not just a great ballad, but a wonderful space opera
Review: THE BALLAD OF HALO JONES is a wonderful story about an ordinary woman who rises from hazardous poverty in a slum on Earth to genuine - but quiet - heroism in and after an interstellar war. Like Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN series, it's a collection of short stories with an overarching plot, where seemingly minor incidents and characters turn out to be incredibly important later. The moral of the ballad seems to be that there *are* no minor or unimportant people (or even unimportant rats). And if you don't like comics, close your eyes and have someone read "I'll Never Forget Whatsisname" to you. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing and important graphic novel
Review: The Ballad of Halo Jones is one of the more extraordinary things ever to have been published by the British comic 2000AD; it exemplifies much of what was good about that publication (subversiveness, risk-taking, an openness to new ideas) whilst at the same time marking a significant break with its usual biases and...um...proclivities. To whit: this is a story about women, told as the epic "ballad" of one emphatically ordinary woman: a story in which women go into space, go to war, fall in love (sometimes with each other, as one superbly subtle and tender scene reveals), get disappointed, get betrayed, get older...if the vividness and depth of Moore's Mina Harker (in _The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen_) impressed you, remember that he's been writing humanly believable, *real* female characters for a long time. Halo Jones is one of his best.
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