A haunted battle rages across the West Coast, watched by the whole world … including the world’s ghosts. Let’s hope they don’t get any bright ideas. Or really stupid ones. We’re almost at the end in Home Sick Pilots #14, written by Dan Watters, drawn by Caspar Wijngaard, lettered by Aditya Bidikar and designed by Tom Muller for Image.
Dan Grote: Forrest, I did the math. I wanted to come out here and say we’re the longest-running review team on an indie comic at ComicsXF, but it turns out that’s not true. Even if we see this thing all the way through to the end with next month’s issue #15, we’ll be tied with those ne’er-do-wells covering Department of Truth. How’s that make you feel?
Forrest Hollingsworth: Hold on, hold on, let me get my red string so I can connect these dots… Yeah, OK, I feel good about this. No industry plants here, my friend.
Dan: Now, more importantly, how did this comic make you feel?
Forrest: Conflicted! I’m all angst-ridden and confused, Dan. Maybe that’s the point!
You’ve Got No Fear of the Underdog
Dan: For most of this arc, the Old James gang have been the scrappy underdogs in the fight against the Nuclear Bastard. And that’s fine, because we like our heroes — Ami, Rip and Buzz — and want them to overcome insurmountable odds to claim victory in the end. Y’know, because Joseph Campbell said so. But the thing we’re reminded of this issue is that Old James is an asshole and has been exploiting women for decades. His daughter. Ami. MEG. The Pilots enabled a lot of James’s recent behavior, sure, but how much can three stoner teenagers from Santa Manos be held responsible for decades of abuse and supernatural destruction?
I wonder if that’s why we’ve been having problems with this book lately, because it’s hard to know whom to root for. We can’t even root for Meg anymore since she started giving all those Ghosts of America speeches. Forrest, when was the last time we excitedly shouted Meg’s name in unison?
Forrest: We are suffering an acute Meg screaming deficiency, and now it looks like one that will never be sated.
The scope has gotten too big, right? I think Ami’s frankly groan-inducing narration that they’re facing “all the horror of America writ ectoplasm,” really solidified for me that the scale of things has gotten to the point where there’s not a lot of coherent or tangible ideology left. It’s overshadowed by giant house frames and sweeping generalities.
The (demon) core of the conflict — the trickle-down trauma of the nuclear family in the face of an uncaring governmental machine — is interesting, but there’s not much that grounds it at the character level anymore. Or, in a more generous read, it’s not grounded at the level of the characters we entered the story with. It feels like the narrative has lost faith in the reader to pick up on any of the nuance, and of Ami, Rip, Buzz and Meg’s place in that.
Meg and her ghosts are bad, the Old James house is bad. It’s all bad, and that doesn’t feel good. Bad doesn’t feel good, Dan.
Dan: With the Bastard out of the way — and love her or not, Meg took up a lot of real estate in Act 2 — theoretically we can get back to those core three characters. They haven’t really all hung out together since the very first issue, which feeds your point about our protagonists losing their place in the narrative. When we started getting late-game backstory on stuff like the daughter we didn’t know Old James had and General RZOR’s grandpa, the bloat set in.
I wonder if, somewhere in the multiverse, there’s a 12-issue prestige maxiseries version of Home Sick Pilots we like better.
It’s over 9,000!
Dan: With the addition of the Final Ghost, the James House seriously levels up, and in so doing lets Wijngaard go HAM. As if the image of a rickety old wooden house growing arms and legs and fighting a mech wasn’t cool enough, it becomes a lot more — fluid isn’t the right word, but it’s the word I’m using because my brain don’t smart so good sometimes. At first, it takes on a more behemoth-type shape, like an angry, trunkless mastodon. Then, as it pulls in the Toilet Ghost, it warps further, expanding, growing, becoming a nightmarish, sketchy mass until it shows us its Final Form, a synthesis of the James House and the Toilet Ghost, blocking out the sun so Wijngaard can do a cool lens flare bit. Forrest, y’ever seen a house eat a robot?
Forrest: Now I have! You’re right that Wijngaard’s work, as it has been the past few issues, is the main draw here. I’d say that sketchy mass you mentioned is almost Ralph Steadman-esque in approach. It’s loose and organic, but it’s got some momentum to it as well, some kinetic energy. It’s
scary! The likes of which haven’t really been seen since that mass of concertgoers in the second arc.
Wijngaard’s auteur knack for making things visually distinct and striking while also maintaining some level of coherence and relation to each other really can’t be understated.
Dan: I’m gonna dance outside my lane for a second, but let’s talk about pro wrestling. Think about that moment when your favorite face catches a punch or kicks out from a pin after getting their ass beat for a good amount of time. A smile crosses their face, as if to say, “Aw shit, you done fucked up now,” and they turn the tables in a way that makes the audience, and maybe you watching at home, get up and cheer and spill your popcorn all over the place. This is that moment for the James House, except the James House isn’t a face. This is a heel-vs.-heel match, which is probably why I keep envisioning Hulk Hogan.
Either way, Wijngaard imbues it with that energy, and it’s a testament to how much the book rides on his shoulders.
Also: his color game! When we get the reveal that Rip has been injured, a deep Magenta takes over the pages, draining everything else of color so we focus on the only thing that matters: one of our three core characters has been injured, perhaps mortally. The stakes. Have. Never. Been. Higher.
Forrest: Do you think the James House ever had a good grilling setup? Then we could say the steaks have never been higher, too.
Dan: -_-
OK, Now What?
Dan: And so we proceed to the final confrontation. The military is moving in. The world knows ghosts are real, and they’re pissed. Meg may have been eaten by the James House… again. Rip is dying. The Pilots are trapped in the house. Forrest, how are them Duke boys gonna get outta this one? Which is to say, what are your hopes and dreams for the finale?
Forrest: I kind of like that it returned to mundanity for the last bit here. Tanks aimed at an unassuming ramshackle house is both a good image and narratively deserved with the James ghost trying to claw its way back to some normality (as gross as that is in context).
Since you asked, Dan, I’d like the book to return to that character-driven drama for its final moments. Literally dismantle the systems of oppression by having the house fall apart board by board while Ami, Rip, and Buzz talk about their problems in its ghostly interior or something. Punk pathos! We can get there!
Dan: I want one more good punk band discussion. We’ve talked about the Ramones, Strummer vs. Lydon, the underappreciated heroes that are replacement drummers (RIP, Taylor Hawkins). That was always one of my favorite parts of the book, and it’s worth going back to. Keep Rip awake by talking about the merits of Green Day and the modern-for-the-book punk movement. I dunno.
Forrest, maybe if this last issue is completely underwhelming, we’ll just have that conversation ourselves.
Cool Miscellany, Bro
- My house… my rules… my coffee
- OK, but what about “all the horror of America writ Ecto Cooler”?
- Wuddup with that one panel where Meg speaks in scribble?
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.
