2000 AD #376
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeProg 376 holds a singular place in British comics history as the debut of Halo Jones, the first female lead character in 2000 AD's seven-year run and one of the most fully realised female protagonists in the medium up to that point. Alan Moore and Ian Gibson deliberately set out to counter the publication's testosterone-heavy roster with an ordinary 50th-century everywoman whose story was built around character and consequence rather than action-for-its-own-sake — a deliberate artistic statement at a time when such choices were genuinely rare in mainstream genre anthologies. The strip went on to be widely regarded as one of the high points of 2000 AD's entire history, demonstrating that the weekly anthology format could sustain sustained literary ambition alongside its harder-edged fare. That this landmark issue also coincided with a printer's strike that nearly destroyed the title makes its survival — and the strip's debut — all the more fortunate for the medium.
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The strip was conceived and pitched to 2000 AD editor Steve MacManus as a deliberate pushback against the publication's prevailing aesthetic. Moore has recalled that he and Gibson wanted a story with 'a female element in it that wasn't purely for prurient purposes,' noting that 2000 AD was one of the few comics of the era with a meaningful female readership, and they wanted to serve that audience with a story about 'an ordinary girl in an abnormal situation.' Gibson and Moore built the 50th-century world — its slang, social structure, fashions and politics — with unusual thoroughness before writing a single episode. Prog 376 was then the final issue published for roughly a month, because a printer's strike shut down production almost immediately after it went to press; the gap killed several IPC titles outright, including the horror anthology Scream!, while 2000 AD managed to return.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover-dated 7 July 1984, published by IPC Magazines under editor Steve MacManus.
- First appearance of Halo Jones: 'The Ballad of Halo Jones, Book One, Part One,' written by Alan Moore and drawn by Ian Gibson with lettering by Steve Potter.
- Halo Jones was the first female title character in 2000 AD's history, conceived as a deliberate departure from the publication's usual 'guns, guys, and gore' formula.
- The issue also carried ongoing installments of Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog (featuring regular characters Johnny Alpha and Middenface McNulty), and Rogue Trooper, plus a D.R. & Quinch pin-up by Alan Davis.
- A printer's strike immediately after publication caused approximately a one-month hiatus; 2000 AD resumed, but several contemporary IPC titles including Scream! were cancelled without return.
- Book One of The Ballad of Halo Jones ran across progs 376–385 (10 episodes, 51 pages); the full saga was originally planned for nine books but ended after three due to a creator/publisher IP rights dispute between Moore and Fleetway.
- The series was reprinted in colorized form by Quality Comics in the United States in 1987, and collected multiple times in the UK by Titan Books, most recently in a new hardcover edition in 2023.
- A full-cast audio adaptation was released in 2021 by Penguin Audio, with Sheila Atim voicing Halo Jones.
Cast · 5 characters
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Reprints
Reprinted in The Ballad of Halo Jones #1 (1986), D. R. & Quinch's Totally Awesome Guide to Life #[nn] (1986), Halo Jones #1 (1987), Time Twisters #20 (1989), Judge Dredd #44 (1990), 2000+ #1/1991 (1991), The Ballad of Halo Jones #[nn] (2005), Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files #8 (2007), The Complete D.R. & Quinch #[nn] (2010), The Ballad of Halo Jones #1 (2018), Best of 2000AD #1 (2022), The Ballad of Halo Jones #[nn] (2023)
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