Sideshow Vote: Halo Jones vs The Out

[broodblik]

Again thanks for Colin for the wonderful tourney he is running but I am quite intrigued whom people would go for.

Halo Jones vs The Out

So please cast your vote your opinion and whatever you think of these two wonderful strips.

My vote goes to The Out

[IndigoPrime]

The Out

[Colin YNWA]

Ohhh that's an interesting question - and one I'd always kinda hoped would come up - there's a few like that - so these little side shows could be immense fun...

... having said that I'm going to have to think about this...

[JayzusB.Christ]

 Halo for me.   It's a very special strip and was way ahead of its time.  The Out is great of course but isn't quite as original, inventive and moving as Big Al's epic sci fi tragedy.

[Trooper McFad]

At this moment in time I'd still have to plump for Halo however if the Out saga continues with a couple more books of high consistency if not better then Halo will take a back seat.

[Funt Solo]

I really am enjoying The Out, but just taking the first book, it's The Ballad of Halo Jones. Cyd might be realistic, but she's not sympathetic. The two-hander of forgetting where Earth is and why she left beggars belief in a way that a Zenade or a Different Drummer doesn't. Halo just feels more real.

They're both incredibly good. Being forced to choose is odd. But Halo.

[BPP]

The Out is fucking brilliant.

But it's Halo Jones, not just for Moore's script in books 2 & 3 but because it's Ian Gibson at his very very best. Even it's ending and legacy of longing are brilliant constructs... the greatest what if... in 2000ad history.

[broodblik]

My first encounter with Halo Jones was the second prog I read. My younger self hated the story, no action and it felt a lot like why I would care for people going to a shopping mall. By book 3 I was hooked maybe of the outlandish war-theme or starting to understand the treats from book 1 and 2 being expose in book 3. I still see Halo Jones as a more sex symbol where Cyd is a deeper character hiding behind her trauma with a face of almost no care in the world. I was hooked with the Out since book 1 episode 1. So yes, for that early hook I have to say The Out.

[SmallBlueThing(Reborn)]

If Halo Jones had been finished, snd finished to the same standard as the three books we have, it would likely be difficult to refer to it as anything else but British comics' most shining achievement.

However, it wasn't finished and we have to judge it as either a thing of itself, or as the first act in a story missing two-thirds.

The Out has only just begun, and at any moment we might find that what we assume is its trajectory is not at all what Abnett and Harrison have in store. The potential is limitless, and Abnett has, to my mind, already proven himself to be a far better comics storyteller than even Moore was in his prime.

Because of this, I vote The Out. Because however good it is at the moment, after two books, it's likely going to get even better over the coming years.

SBT

[Colin YNWA]

Yeah I think at the end of the day The Out gets this for its potential. Halo Jones is wonderful no doubt, but then so is The Out. Halo Jones is done and as complete as we'll ever know. For all of Neil Gaiman's tears to the rest of us its beautifully drawn frustration of what might have been. Its potential snuffed out.

The Out has so many places left to go. Has already been so many places. Its also bolder in its story structure and I delight in the way it distracts us from its deeply painful driving force for Cyd, just as she does to herself. Its just brilliant and its potential still knows no bounds.

[The Mind of Wolfie Smith]

i'm glad that halo jones ended so perfectly where it did.
(just like, in my universe, swamp thing finished forever with issue 64, return of the good gumbo, in 1987).

i love the out. but many of us wouldn't even be reading it and thinking about it in the ways we do if there hadn't been a halo jones.

[Richard]

I don't think it's right to vote on the basis of "potential." I'm basing my vote on the work actually published to date. I can always change my mind if there's more of The Out in future.

The Out is very good, and maybe it will get even better. It's my favourite new strip to arrive in the last few years. But I still think that Halo Jones is, for now, better. I can't tell how much of my opinion is objective assessment and how much is emotional; I first read Halo at a young age when probably everything I read had more impact, and Halo Jones was undoubtedly the first time I encountered tragedy in a comic. So it would take a lot to induce me to vote it into second place out of two candidates.

I don't agree with the notion that Halo Jones is incomplete just because Alan Moore had planned to write nine books and only wrote three of them; the ending of the third book feels like a proper ending to me, and the three books feel like a complete trilogy, not just the first third of something bigger and unfinished.

So for me it's Halo Jones.

[abelardsnazz]

This is a really difficult one to call as The Out has places to go but Halo reached a premature end. As I've asked elsewhere, will we ever see a planned outline of the rest of Halo's story?

Because Book 3 is among my favourite Ian Gibson work ever, Halo Jones.

[Rogue Judge]

Halo Jones. I have to say, although there is a lot of hype surrounding Halo Jones, it still exceeded my expectations when reading it for the first time a few years ago. A perfect match of art and script.

I look forward to reading The Out in a TPB all together at once at some point in the future...then voting again!

[Magnetica]

I agree with what Richard says.

I'm going Halo on the same basis.

But it's a testimony to The Out that we are even having this conversation. But for me it's not even Dan Abnett's best strip. I prefer Brink and Feral & Foe.