The Ballad of Halo Jones - The US Quality Comics Reprints

The US Quality Comics Reprints

A year after her stories had left the pages of 2000 AD, The Ballad Of Halo Jones was reprinted in the USA by Quality Comics. Publisher's Bob Keenan and Sal Quartuccio had secured the rights to reissue colourized versions of Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper, Strontium Dog, Sam Slade and Halo Jones - the cream of 2000AD's catalogue at that time. New covers were commissioned for these comics by artists such as Bill Mayer, Bart Sears and Jim Fern. Eva Brozowski served as the colourist for the covers (her initials can be seen separately to the artist's). In order to fit the square 2000AD pages to American comic book format, Quality attached a distorting lens to a photocopy machine, elongating and "effectively destroying the art in the process" according to one reviewer. The covers mimic Gibson's original art but arguably never compare favourably, issue #7 shows Lux Roth Chop transformed from a young boy to a sinewy adult, another shows a high-heeled soldier version of Halo Jones. These reprints are now quite sought after and are a fixture on eBay and other auction sites. The telephone booth cover of issue #1 was used at the time on a mail-order $10 T-shirt by Quality Comics with the slogan "Halo Jones - Your Destiny's calling!" The Quality Comics reprints did however do Halo one major injustice: the very last line of Book Three ("Just out") is obscured by a large "The End" title.

As well as the main story these reprints also include some Gibson work from 2000AD's vaults such as 'The Amazing Maze Dumoir', and 'You Win Some You Lose Some' (the latter two both scripted by A Hebden). Also featured during this run were episodes from 'Anderson Psi Division', 'Ro-busters', 'Sooner Or Later', 'Dash Decent' and Alan Moore's 'Abelard Snazz Misadventures' and his Future Shocks story 'Sunburn'.