As its horrors emanate across America, the Home Sick Pilots must return to the Old James House. Which could be difficult, as they did leave it at the bottom of the ocean. Let’s plug into issue #8, written by Dan Watters, drawn by Caspar Wijngaard, lettered by Aditya Bidikar and designed by Tom Muller for Image.
Dan Grote: Forrest, my friend, I’m upset.
Forrest Hollingsworth: You can’t hold onto those feelings, Dan. As we’re learning, that’s what leads to attachment issues in the afterlife!
But … I’m curious, so I’ll indulge you. What’s up?
Dan: We went from the Nuclear Bastard taking its first step without exploding last issue to Objectively Best Character Meg declaring this issue that she can make her ghost-powered mech walk, jump and do cartwheels. That is ONLY supposed to happen in a radass montage set to some kind of upbeat synth-and-guitars melody, and that definitely did not happen. We’ve been denied a Meg montage, Forrest. A Meg-tage.
Forrest: Oh shit. Dan, my friend, I’m upset too now.
For the Wijngaard
Dan: So in this issue, Ami and Buzz go to their first punk show since seeing the Nuclear Bastards in issue #1, and it’s another opportunity for Caspar Wijngaard to enter god mode. His style takes on this scratchier, colored-outside-the-lines quality to match the chaos of the loud music and moshing punks swirling around Ami. His palette is at once duller and more varied, and sometimes he just leaves faces white. It’s looser, yet more controlled, in so much as he’s making conscious choices to evoke the mood of the club and Ami’s increasingly drunken state.
It’s easy to keep saying “Caspar is so goddamn good” over and over again, but when he subverts expectations like this, it’s worth repeating.
Forrest: I agree he has a uniquely impacting way of embodying the non-physical across the book. The ghosts, the music, they have a presence, a weight, and they’re used well to set the tone.
When Ami is telling the story of the clock ghost earlier in the issue, everything is stoic, muted colors and rigid, practical geometry — even his (upsetting) puking, a supernatural eruption that would normally defy the boundaries of normalcy, is all kept within the panel. The same is mostly true for the wardrobe. They’re stepping into their rigid, formal roles. Becoming the very practical weights that are holding Ami down despite their impractical source. They symbolize a kind of responsibility.
But the music that Ami and Buzz find solace in is treated entirely differently. It’s bright and vibrant, it’s as you said, scratchy. The panels blend together, the geometry and the colors are more lively, it’s an intentionally deployed escapism. The inherent visual and narrative tension being the presence of that ghostly little boy, both out of place visually — colorblocked as he is, and narratively in a scene where Ami has to ask Buzz if they checked his ID. The weight between freedom and responsibility (Not that it’s one Ami chose, of course) and the way it shifts balance throughout the issue is really masterful.
Nazi Punks Fuck Off
Dan: The big fight piece this go-round involves a Wreck-It Ralph Breaks the Internet-style monster made of dead Nazi punks.
Now, as we established last issue, Nazi Punks Fuck Off. Watters has certainly underscored in several places throughout the book this exact point, so a part of me worried this scene might be overkill, but there are a few points that work in its favor.
- Nazis are a great villain because anybody worth their oxygen recognizes they suck and therefore messing up some Nazis is an easy way to get the reader on the protagonist’s side.
- The 1990s were the decade of American History X, and so while not World War II and not the past five years, Nazis were still at least somewhat of a going concern.
- The creative team makes the creative choice to cover the Nazi monster’s word balloons with Ami’s narration, so you can’t actually read any of the garbage drivel it’s shouting. It’s tired. It’s regressive. It’s actively harmful. You’ve heard it before. Why rehash it? “My narration. My rules.” Love that for you, Ami.
What do you think, Forrest, did this scene drive the point home enough?
Forrest: First off, my favorite two corpse monsters are undoubtedly the titular creature from Neill Blomkamp’s Zygote and the optional boss Legion from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. This is a normal thing to have opinions about, I assure you.
Dan: No judgment here.
Forrest: Regardless, I think you’re especially right with your third point. Nazis were, and let’s be honest, are problems in the punk and metal scenes even today, so they make natural villains in Home Sick, but we already know what their talking points are, and even better we know NOT to platform them.
The narrative trick here is enough to introduce a level of tension but to avoid callous harm. If the point is meant to be that the ghosts will do anything, use anything, no matter how despicable to get back at Ami, I think it makes that point well and quickly without overstaying its welcome. There will come a time when the Nazi Punks have, rightfully, fucked off, but I do still think it serves a worthwhile purpose here.
There’s Gonna Be Carnage
Dan: So I know we checked in on our girl already, but I have one more Meg-related thought, if you’ll indulge me.
Forrest: MEG! MEG! MEG!
Dan: Forrest, you’re a proud member of the Goop Troupe here at ComicsXF, correct?
Forrest: If by proud you mean that I have the brain disease that means I’m able to list every named Symbiote without assistance, then yeah, sure.
Dan: Is it just me, or is Meg’s blood suit-and-helmet combo starting to make her look like a Carnage-adjacent Marvel symbiote?
Forrest: It’s a little more chitinous than most of the symbiotes, but I don’t think you’re wrong. As worried as I am for Meg, the cracking bits of her hastily made physical and emotional armor, the red shroud descending her face, the way the helmet morphs from its skullish features to something more akin to a motorcycle helmet when Meg isn’t wearing it? That’s that good shit. I still like this comic, Dan!
Dan: It’s that metronome good-good, Forrest.
Cool Miscellany, Bro
- Ami’s got some serious Teenage Punk Girl Ghost House Biceps (Someone put that in the TMNT logo meme generator). OH, WAIT.
- Li’l Marky’s BMX pajamas and his knockoff-Optimus Prime mask mean he should be about my age if he hadn’t died and used his ghost powers to make a Nazi monster.
- “Oogles” are another word for gutter punk posers. Thanks, Wikipedia!
Dan Grote is the editor-in-chief of ComicsXF, having won the site by ritual combat. By day, he’s a newspaper editor, and by night, he’s … also an editor. He co-hosts The ComicsXF Interview Podcast with Matt Lazorwitz. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, two kids and two miniature dachshunds, and his third, fictional son, Peter Winston Wisdom.
Forrest is an experimental AI that writes and podcasts about comic books and wrestling coming to your area soon.
