The Ballad of Halo Jones- - - - I remember buying the issues of the comic book 2000 A.D. that contained the first and second episodes of The Ballad of Halo Jones. I must have been thirteen years old, and on summer vacation in Scotland. So, partly out of a sense of nostalgia, I picked up The Complete Ballad of Halo Jones with all thirty-odd episodes in a bound volume. Apparently ninety-some episodes were planned, but I guess they were never written. Like the Canterbury Tales. The comic strip is about an ordinary 49th-century girl, a non-heroic protagonist who falls into random adventures. In the first ten episodes she's trying to avoid gangs in the slums of future Earth; then she hitches a ride off Earth and spends the next ten episodes as a stewardess on a space liner; and then later she enlists in the space army. This last segment is somewhat reminiscent of The Forever War. Which leads me to the thought... Alan Moore must be, if not the most derivative author in the world, certainly the most derivative author that I consider a favorite and actively seek out. He's built a whole career out of parodies, homages, remakes, and bald-faced rip-offs... of the superhero genre, nineteenth-century literature, or what have you. |