The Ballad Of Halo Jones - Alan Moore & Ian Gibson

I haven’t read Halo Jones since it first appeared in the comic 2000AD and this is the first time I’ve read it in its entirety. It takes it to a whole new level. I always remembered it as powerful, it was clear I never appreciated the subtlety (although that may be as much to do with the print medium – the comic wasn’t exactly on high quality paper). Whatever the case, it was perfect material for 1984 and it just got better as it progressed.

Halo Jones is a young woman living in the 50th century. An ordinary young woman in a dead end existence, desperate to get out of the sink estate to which she had been confined. She was not particularly clever (although street-wise), she was not possessed of super powers or criminal tendencies, she was just ordinary. And therein is the power of the story, because she reflected the everyday experience of a lot of people.

In her determination to get out, she takes lowly jobs where she can find them, finds her old friendships and certainties breaking up or being destroyed, and ends up serving in the military as the only way of getting a roof over her head and food in her belly. And when she tries to walk away from that she realises there is nothing else left but the hell of combat.

Cheery stuff for a comic. Yet the story is leavened with wit and sympathy. And Halo is nothing if not resourceful. Although further stories were planned, they never got produced and it is in some ways fitting that she fades out of history.

The storyline is strong and subtle. Much of the back story (and there is a lot of it) is introduced without pages of exposition. The characters are beautifully rounded. And Moore is not afraid to kill people off in ways consistent with the world in which they live. He is not afraid to explore the experience of readers as well. The Glyph is, ironically, a memorable character.

Gibson’s drawing is excellent throughout. His use of light is extremely skilled, a new angle seems to be found at every turn, and his ability to conjure complex scenes in black and white without ever losing the important stuff in a fussy background fills me with awe. As for the colour cover of this edition – love at first sight.

The Ballad Of Halo Jones - Alan Moore & Ian Gibson

I haven’t read Halo Jones since it first appeared in the comic 2000AD and this is the first time I’ve read it in its entirety. It takes it to a whole new level. I always remembered it as powerful, it was clear I never appreciated the subtlety (although that may be as much to do with the print medium – the comic wasn’t exactly on high quality paper). Whatever the case, it was perfect material for 1984 and it just got better as it progressed.

Halo Jones is a young woman living in the 50th century. An ordinary young woman in a dead end existence, desperate to get out of the sink estate to which she had been confined. She was not particularly clever (although street-wise), she was not possessed of super powers or criminal tendencies, she was just ordinary. And therein is the power of the story, because she reflected the everyday experience of a lot of people.

In her determination to get out, she takes lowly jobs where she can find them, finds her old friendships and certainties breaking up or being destroyed, and ends up serving in the military as the only way of getting a roof over her head and food in her belly. And when she tries to walk away from that she realises there is nothing else left but the hell of combat.

Cheery stuff for a comic. Yet the story is leavened with wit and sympathy. And Halo is nothing if not resourceful. Although further stories were planned, they never got produced and it is in some ways fitting that she fades out of history.

The storyline is strong and subtle. Much of the back story (and there is a lot of it) is introduced without pages of exposition. The characters are beautifully rounded. And Moore is not afraid to kill people off in ways consistent with the world in which they live. He is not afraid to explore the experience of readers as well. The Glyph is, ironically, a memorable character.

Gibson’s drawing is excellent throughout. His use of light is extremely skilled, a new angle seems to be found at every turn, and his ability to conjure complex scenes in black and white without ever losing the important stuff in a fussy background fills me with awe. As for the colour cover of this edition – love at first sight.

Lint - Steve Aylett

This book is a joke. OK, it’s a bit of an in joke, but you only need to have a passing interest in pulp sci fi to get it. And even if you don’t it is surreal enough and daft enough to raise a smile or three.

In essence, this is the life story of Jeff Lint. It is also part of the life story of SF, and of the strange people attracted to it (usually the ones who are not interested in SF, but there for the money). It charts the ups, downs, sideways steps, and downright inside-out turnings of trying to make a living from writing and all the other bizarre things that writers have to do and put up with. That Jeff Lint is mad as a box of hammers (think Philip K Dick played by John Belushi) adds to the... dare I say... colour.

There is also a nod (and a wink) to the overlapping field of conspiracy theory – those promulgated by Lint and those that circulated about him. Most notably, the ‘Jeff Lint is dead’ industry, and its counter theorists who don’t believe he is dead. Even though he is. Possibly.

In all the fun, there is also a satirical edge, one that is not above poking fun (and sharp sticks) at itself, the sci fi world, and the complete lack of comprehension (and outright hostility) of outsiders. Also on display here is good writing. Not just technically, but in the ability to spin a joke into a book without it ever flagging. True, there is plenty of material to work with, but Aylett has the trick of writing dead pan. And the result is a biography that will now seep into the subconscious and squat there making me keep half an eye open for The Caterer comics whenever I pass a second-hand bookshop.

A Princess Of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs

I first read this during a long summer in which I devoured books at a furious rate. Perhaps as a relief from A Level literature, I stuck to pulp and lightweight sci fi. Most notably, I waltzed through E E Doc Smith’s books and then happily lost myself in ERBdom. Tarzan. Pelucidar. And Barsoom. There were probably others, but I didn’t keep any of them so I can’t really remember.

What I do remember is that I enjoyed them Barsoom books without ever getting over excited about them. This probably had a great deal to do with the style in which they were written. At the time I was revelling in contemporary literature that was often ‘exploratory’ (an altogether more satisfying adjective than ‘experimental’, I feel). ERB seemed a little old-fashioned. Manly heroes, beautiful princesses, weird creatures. Yet even then I appreciated he had, in his way, produced exploratory work. And now...

I treated myself to the Barnes & Noble edition containing the first three Barsoom books. Beautifully presented (although shockingly copy edited), I have been able to wallow. Not just in a direct link to that summer, but in books that were much better than I remembered. Yes, there are manly heroes, beautiful princesses, weird creatures, and those gorgeous dying landscapes of Mars, but ERB knew how to put a story together and keep it moving with enough pace to satisfy those who wanted adventure and enough detail and craft to satisfy those who like a bit of depth to their entertainment.

And entertainment is what these books are. There isn’t much beyond that in the pages, but what there is sufficiently stimulating to lift these works out of the ordinary. ERB’s writing is workmanlike, clear, and only now and then prone to rambling attempts to give scientific explanations that inevitably sound flat these days. But he avoids the breathlessness that is a common fault of lesser writers in this area. And there were hundreds of them. Sensationalists rushing to get to the next cliff-hanger and leaving all semblance of story and character behind.

Great fun. And if the next generation of Martian explorers don’t find those long deserted cities, it’ll only be because they are looking in the wrong place.

Under A Canvas Sky - Clare Peake

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I hold Mervyn Peake to have been a genius. As a painter, illustrator, poet and novelist he excelled. But there is one aspect of his genius that is rarely listed, but which should not be overlooked. In collaboration with his wife Maeve Gilmore (a superb artist in her own right), he was a genius parent.

If you want proof, read this book. It is there in several ways. To begin with, the story it tells. Clare was the youngest child of the Peakes and her father’s illness began when she was seven. The harrowing tale of this wonderful artist’s descent into a living hell has been documented more fully elsewhere. It still makes me cry. The perspective here is of a child. Clare Peake does not attempt an adult’s retrospective other than to explain this was her life and, as a child, hard as it was (and the pain emerges later), that is how it was.

To write so confidently and simply about this, as Clare Peake does, is a great gift. She tells her story. And it becomes clear just what wonderful parents she had, that their talents as artists spilled over into their care for their children. It was not conventional. On the other hand it was not outrageously bohemian. It was a childhood of love. Because the artistic genius of the parents did not make them precious, did not make them feel superior to lesser mortals (unlike some of the unprintable people they met along the way, especially when Mervyn Peake became ill).

As a combination of biography and memoir it does not gloss over the bad times, but neither does it dwell on them. This is no rosy-visioned romp in a perfect childhood; but neither is it a misery fest. The straightness, openness, and honesty of the work is also a testament to the genius of the parents who laid the groundwork for someone who has had to grow up and make a life of their own knowing they had famous parents. And it is clear from this work, those foundations were strong.

Having read widely about the Peakes, this is a fresh perspective. It tells a familiar story without once making you think you’ve been there before. No mean feat. The writing is beautiful in its simplicity, the story is told with equal clarity (and having grown up through the same period, I have to confess there was a great deal of nostalgia on my part and a nodding of the head in agreement with sentiments expressed), and I feel privileged to have been allowed another glimpse into the life of this family.

A Web Of Air - Philip Reeve

There must come a point in a sequence of books when the author hits the wall. When you add to that the problems caused by writing prequels (in which the outcome is known if you have already read the original books), a degree of sagginess is bound to set in. That is the case with this, Reeve’s second prequel to his Mortal Engines books.

Having said that, it is still an inventive book. The ideas are there. The setting, the working out of the ideas… but the characters feel flat and the developing relationship between Fever Crumb and Arlo feels contrived. We are given no motivation for what happens between them (or perhaps I just missed it). And the same is true for the ending of the book, which felt like being served a slice of yesterday’s stale cheesecake after having eaten a slice of cold pizza.

Reeve starts from a high level, so this is not a disaster of a book. Mayda is certainly an intriguing, if wasted, setting; and we can but hope we return and explore the city in greater depth. Let’s just hope, if he does, the cardboard cut-out stand-ins are replaced with real characters.

Read it. Enjoy it (once it gets going). But don’t expect too much of it.