Anyone who has had the experience of being talked over by the ‘cool kids’ who think what they have to say is funnier, more profound, more significant than your opinion will feel the same. I felt sympathy with the character Glyph. The characters were all believable, and there was a good mix of action, tension and pathos. The comic first appeared in the ultra materialist Thatcher years, but it feels very relevant still. I enjoyed the social commentary on materialism, media inanity, wars off stage conducted for bad reasons, and the demonisation of the unemployed. I liked being plunged directly into a new world and learning about it as the story unfolded. I’d heard about Halo Jones recently, I can’t remember why, so when it was prominent in a display of comic books at my local library, I brought it home. I’m not just reading things because people say I should. As with novels, there’s too much out there, so I’m being selective in what I read. My husband reads some interesting comic books, some of which I’ve borrowed, and I’ve read a couple of manga that I’ve loved over the last couple of years. Similar to the way I take the script of a novel and cast it with my imagination’s actors and imagine the real life action.Īfter a gap of around 30 years, I’ve been reading more comic books recently. I am learning to read differently so that I can animate the frames in my head. I know, comic books are a completely different format to novels, and the story telling is different, so the reading experience is different. One of the reasons I didn’t wholeheartedly embrace comic book reading in my teenage years is that my reading brain prefers the freedom of text alone on the page that I can then visualise the way I want to.

What an error of judgement, because I missed out on Halo Jones first time around. I was a teenager at the time and more interested in Tolkien, literary fiction and listening to pop music, so I’d given up sneakily reading my older brother’s copies of 2000AD. Tags 6degrees 20 Books of Summer 1001 Books Africa America Art Australia Autobiography Biography Black culture Black history Blogging about blogging Book review Britain Canada Comedy Crime Dystopia Economics England Fantasy Feminism Film France Germany Graphic novel Historical fiction History Horror Humour Independent Publisher India Influx Press Italy Japan Journalism LGBTQ London Mental health Meta Music Mystery New York Paris Philosophy Picture Prompt Book Bingo Poetry Politics Psychology Racism Randomness Religion Russia Science Science Fiction SciFi Scotland Short stories Six Degrees of Separation Sociology Spain Speculative fiction Sweden Thriller Tokyo Translation Travel United Kingdom USA Wales War Women's Prize for Fiction Women in translation Women in translation month Women read womenĪlan Moore and Ian Gibson’s sci-fi comic about a future everywoman trying to find her place in the world first appeared in 2000AD in the mid-80s.

The complete ballad of halo jones