Home Sick Pilots #10: Itching for a Fight

Writing

Home Sick Pilots #10 had a little bit of what I wanted in the story and a lot of what I did not want. If you think the big battle between Ami and Meg is in these pages. Sorry for the spoiler but it gets held off for another issue. If you wanted to read another long diatribe’s about America’ wrongs, punk bands and selling out then you get more of that.

Look, I know Dan Watters is trying to make a thematic point here with these atrocities in America , ghosts and what not. He has done it a lot throughout these last few issues. It has not not worked, but also for a book about a giant haunted house that is powered by ghosts grows arms and legs and fights other ghosts and is about to fight a giant government built robot that is also powered by ghosts, I would like it to be a little more tongue in cheek. It is hard to take all these diatribes seriously or not to be a little eye rolling. Now I am not standing up and saying “keep politics out of my comics!” or any crap like that, certainly put them in there but, make it not feel so awkward.

Home Sick Pilots #10 does have some fantastic countdown pages to the big fight. Let me tell ya on the first one I was hyped, but by the second one I realized “oh there are not enough pages for this fight to happen in this comic.” Then “crap they are going to stretch this out for another issue.” That was first initial thought process while reading the issue, which is not a good thing. The pacing of this series as a whole has had issues and this whole arc in general has felt like it has gone on way to long and really not given us good story information.

Look, I know there are a ton of complaints there, Home Sick Pilots #10 did have some high points. The connection between Ami and Buzz is fantastic , Watters has some wonderful dialogue between the two toward the end of the issue. Rip also finally comes back to his senses and we finally get some resolution with him which I hope carries over to issue #11.

Art

Caspar Wijngaard’s art and colors continues to be the high point of the series as a whole. I wish he got to play around with more mech and ghosts designs. When he gets to do them they are fantastic and  think there is a wasted opportunity to let his imagination go wild in this series. When Ami transforms into her “ghost” form or whatever you want to call it or Meg’s ghost/mech suit design are truly stunning.

I continue to absolutely adore the coloring in this series. The way Winjgaard plays with the pinks, whites and blues throughout this issue and the series as a whole has been magical. The colors truly capture your eyes and brings weird joyful yet eerie tone to the series. He throws some magnetic green into this issue as well to delightful effect.

Aditya Bidikar lettering is a subtle effect that brings a nice sense of urgency to what is happening, while Tom Muller overall design work is the icing on the cake for the visual aspects of Home Sick Pilots #10.