Home Sick Pilots
Writer: Dan Watters
Artist: Caspar Wijngaard
Publisher: Image Comics
Home Sick Pilots offers readers so much.
Caspar Wijngaard’s art is something to behold. It’s wholly original, sharp, focused, loud, and energetic. Most notably, the colour palette used throughout ‘Pilots’ is superb, and does so much to define the comic. It champions a swathe of strong pinks and purples, supported ably by a range of blues. Darker shades are used for linework, lighter shades for shadows, and blinding white to cut through and accentuate the reader's focal choice.
The overall visual design of the comic is also something to behold, and Wingaard’s art is fantastically enhanced thanks to Aditya Bidikar’s lettering, Tom Muller’s design work, and Erika Schnatz as production artist. Each aesthetic panel contains so much for readers to settle on and get lost in, while the repeated use of defined rectangular panels allows for a clear focus that drives the action forward. It’s very easy to imagine the panels being adapted directly onto a movie storyboard, particularly given how well they would already translate as framed camera shots.
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All of this wouldn’t mean much without Dan Watters hugely enjoyable ghost-punk tale, which satisfies immensely whether reading individual issues month-to-month or smashing through a ‘Pilots’ trade paperback in one sitting.
In the summer of 1994, a sentient haunted house walks across California. Stuck inside is Ami, lead singer of a high school punk band. She’s been missing, with the worst presumed. Flashback a few weeks ago, and Ami has just announced to her band her brilliant idea: “We should throw a gig in the house that kills people.” The house takes an immediate liking to her, giving Ami supernatural powers, and tasking her with gathering missing household items that contain the essence of different spirits. Others aren’t so lucky, and deaths pile up as the house unleashes its murderous fury.
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Like a bad punk show, things get worse, and fast. Confrontations loom, stakes are raised, trust is broken, and destruction is imminent. That all this terror stems from an incomprehensible paranormal entity is scary enough. That the pain of the entity is insatiable is petrifying, most of all to Ami, whose own personal traumas have created a kinship with the house – they’re literal kindred spirits. Regarding his exploration of the connection between trauma and the supernatural, Dan Watters described to The Comic Crush:
“I think that's entirely what ghosts are [a representation of trauma]. I get labelled as a horror writer – which is fair - but I consider myself a ghost-story writer first and foremost. I think ghosts are entirely symbolic of our inner-turmoil in a Jungian kind of way. I think it's our brain trying to tell us things. Also, I don't think all ghost stories have to be horror stories. The idea I'm trying to explore is that the haunted house is a metaphor for the human head… Haunted houses are containers full of ghosts and I think that people are containers full of ghosts. We're all haunted – even by things that aren't necessarily traumas.”
Horror and Punk Rock are both genres that revel in exploring new creative horizons, while being endlessly scrutinised and criticised by supposed die-hard fans for attempting to stray from what they believe to be their genre’s core characteristics. Possibly helped by nostalgia for ‘Home Sick Pilots’ early nineties setting, it’s highly unlikely to be chastised by the punk police or horror family, and instead could be regarded by hardcore purists as the one new title that ‘gets it’.
Want more of 2021’s greatest comics? Visit Amazon to purchase the full length ‘Best Comic Books of 2021’ book or eBook. It contains 45 detailed essays reviewing the year's best comic book titles.
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