Ballad of Halo Jones: Full Colour Omnibus Edition (The Ballad of Halo Jones)

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The further in to this volume I got, and the more I fell in love with the whole thing, the sadder it all seemed. The Ballad of Halo Jones doesn't get talked about that much when it comes to the pantheon of classic comics. I am 100% certain it's name would be bandied about with reverence and adulation if it had been even half finished. Orphaned Series: Book three delivers a fairly satisfying conclusion, but it's only a third of the way through Moore and Gibson's original arc. The Ballad of Halo Jones was work for hire, and is owned by 2000 AD's current owners, who could theoretically continue it with a different creative team - but, as of 2023, they have chosen not to. Lobis Loyo (planet): Beta Platoon (Mona Jukes, Bekti Vassar, Shahi Manish, Lyncie Welch, Ditto Wheeler, Sergeant Verna Krause, Sergeant Juno Myrmidon, Life Sentence), General Luiz Cannibal One of the first great Comics…up there with “Watchmen”, “V for Vendetta”, “Dark Knight”…The things we talk about when we talk about Comics, “The Ballad of Halo Jones” should have been one of them.” Rebellion is proud to announce that Alan Moore and Ian Gibson’s ground-breaking feminist space opera and science fiction classic, The Ballad of Halo Jones, is to be published in a full colour hardcover omnibus for the first time.

Planned to run nine volumes, with each volume skipping ten years in her life to show Halo at different points in her existence, only the first three volumes were completed and published in 2000 AD. The serial was abandoned due to disputes between Moore and the publisher over ownership rights to the characters. Possibly the first feminist heroine in comics", wrote The Observer of Alan Moore's epic tale of one woman's search for her place in a galaxy out of control. "Originally published in 2000AD and then collected by Titan Books, this classic tale of future alienation and an individual's struggle remains a timeless testament to the genius of Moore. Beautifully illustrated by artist Ian Gibson, this is the ultimate sci-fi opus. Don't dare miss it!" Love Makes You Evil: Toby the robot guard dog murders his owner Brinna, staging the scene to look like a break-in gone wrong. When Halo listens to audio from his old memory tapes and hears Brinna dying, she asks herself why he did it. Toby promptly appears in the room and says it's because he loves Halo, and because Brinna left him to Halo in her will.

The Book: Halo Jones is bored. Trapped in The Hoop, a futuristic world where jobs are scarce and excitement non-existent, Halo sets out to see the galaxy any way she can and to rewrite her destiny. From drudge work on a glamorous cruise liner, to serving in a brutal war zone, Halo experiences love and loss and she grows up into the woman who will change the course of the galaxy’s history.

Love-Interest Traitor: Near the end of book three, Halo starts a relationship with General Luiz Cannibal. After Earth's government falls, he's accused of war crimes by the new regime and denies the charges, saying that a Kangaroo Court is making him The Scapegoat. Halo realises that the allegations are true, and that (long before they met) she was unknowingly complicit in his plan to use 'ratwar' - rat-controlled plagues - to kill an entire world's population. She secretly sabotages his gravity suit so that he'll be crushed to death on the surface of Moab.Invisible to Normals: Glyph, who has so many gender switches that he/she had their personality erased and nobody can even remember them. Moore and Gibson's collaboration paid off when the go-ahead for a second series was given. Both men were excited about where the story was heading and Book Two expanded upon what they had created before. They upped the action quotient and also created some shattering emotional scenes. Moore has said that the character of "the Glyph", introduced in Book Two, clinched the book's success (according to his comments in the introduction to the Titan Books collected edition in 1986). Pwuc (planet): Halo ends up on Pwuc in the year 4960 having wandered the inner systems for almost a decade. Mason, Graeme (19 November 2017). "A brief history of 2000AD's 8-bit games". Eurogamer . Retrieved 18 July 2022.

Helter Skelter", a Judge Dredd story written by Garth Ennis (12 episodes Progs 1250–1261) features cameos from a myriad of previous 2000AD characters including Halo Jones in episodes 6 & 7. Artwork by Carlos Ezquerra and Henry Flint. Book Two depicts Halo's life as a stewardess on a year-long space voyage. Halo discovers that it was her loyal robot dog Toby, harbouring a perverse crush on Halo, who was responsible for her flatmate's death and is forced to destroy him. It is also revealed, in a framing sequence, that Halo becomes a legendary historical figure in centuries to come. Fantastic Ghetto: New York has designated areas for the the Proximan alien refugees where humans aren't allowed. The title comes from The Hoop, a floating, hoop-shaped conurbation full of unemployed humans and Proximans that's tethered to Manhattan. Funetik Aksent: The man Halo approaches about a potential job aboard the Clara Pandy has an extremely strong accent, which is rendered via phonetic spellings in Speech Bubbles. Rodice can't understand a word of it.In Book One, 18-year-old Halo Jones lives in a floating ring-shaped conurbation or housing estate called "The Hoop" that is moored in the Atlantic Ocean off the East coast of America. The story takes place over one day, and follows Halo's violent though also partly comical misadventures on a shopping trip. Finally returning to her apartment, Halo finds her flatmate and best friend Brinna murdered, then discovers another good friend has become a "Different Drummer" (a youth cult perpetually numbed by the implant-generated beat of a drum in their ears). She decides to leave Earth, never to return. Action Girl: Halo is a subversion. Even when she becomes a soldier, she doesn't fight much—most of it is running around, trying not to get shot. Moore said that he wanted her to be normal and had "no inclination to unleash yet another Tough Bitch With A Disintegrator And An Extra 'Y' Chromosome upon the world." It’s a shame that there was never a fourth book or beyond for Halo Jones, because it feels like stories with her could have been endless. She’s also very unique in both 2000AD‘s canon and Moore’s catalogue. The Ballad of Halo Jones by Moore, Gibson, Potter, and Starkings is an enthralling adventure of a woman who just wanted out to go everywhere. Classic Comic Compendium: The Ballad of Halo Jones

Since then I decided just to get the few comics I'd been wanting to read for the best part of ten years or more, and which I haven't seen as films. (I've heard about way too many since joining Goodreads.) Turns out they're nearly all Gaiman or Moore. Dystopia: The Hoop, but then again the whole galaxy is swarming with terrorists, cyberpunk gangs and warfare. It must be because I first heard of Halo Jones in the 90s – can't for the life of me remember where (I also didn't connect the name with Alan Moore until recently) – so I assumed she was from the 90s too. But no, she was written in the mid-80s. Her character and look reminded me of my theory that Britain in the 80s was a great time as a kid to see fewer traditional stereotypes of girls and women than before or since (I once wrote, but never finished, a long blog post about this which included examples like Bananarama videos and Supergran).In a 2011 interview for 3:AM magazine Alan Moore stated "the next adventure would have probably been when she was a female space pirate with Sally Quasa", "I would have been basically going through all the decades of her life, with her getting older in each one, because I liked the idea, at the time, of having a strip in 2000AD with a seventy or eighty year old woman as the title character ... it would have ended up with Halo Jones upon some planet that is right at the absolute edge of the universe where, beyond that, beyond some sort of spectacular lightshow, there is no space, no time, and it would have ended up with Halo Jones – all the rest of the people on this planetoid because, actually, time is not passing; you could stay there forever, potentially – and what would have happened is that Halo Jones, after spending some time with the rest of the immortals, would have tottered across the landing field, got into her spacecraft, and flown into the psychedelic lightshow, to finally get out." [3]