#IReadsYou review: HOME SICK PILOTS #1

HOME SICK PILOTS #1
IMAGE COMICS – @ImageComics

[This review was originally posted on Patreon.]

STORY: Dan Watters
ART: Caspar Wijngaard
COLORS: Caspar Wijngaard
LETTERS: Aditya Bidikar
DESIGN: Tom Muller
COVER: Caspar Wijngaard
VARIANT COVER ARTISTS: Caspar Wijngaard; Dani
28pp, Colors, 3.99 U.S.(December 2020)

Rated “M/Mature”

Home Sick Pilots created by Dan Watters and Caspar Wijngaard

Home Sick Pilots is a new comic book series created by writer Dan Watters and artist Caspar Wijngaard, the creative team of the comic book, Limbo.  Home Sick Pilots apparently focuses on a group of teens and a haunted house with an evil mind of its own.  Letterer Aditya Bidikar and designer Tom Muller complete the series' creative team.

Home Sick Pilots #1 opens in Santa Manos, California, July 18, 1994.  A haunted house known as “the old James house” walks across California, and inside is Ami, the lead singer of the high school punk band, “Home Sick Pilots.”  Ami has been missing for weeks, so how did she get in the old James house.  It has ghosts, so what do those ghosts want?  And can Ami's band mates, Buzz and Rip, find her?

THE LOWDOWN:  I want to be careful and not provide spoilers for the first issue of Home Sick Pilots.  I can say that I find that this first issue suggests Home Sick Pilots has potential.  I will also go on record as saying that Home Sick Pilots #1 is a tad bit stronger than other recent debut series from Image Comics, including Rick Remender's The Scumbag and Donny Cates and Geoff Shaw's Crossover.

Caspar Wijngaard's art and colors for Home Sick Pilots #1 is both haunting and alluring, and his graphical storytelling grabs at me.  I don't think that I have ever read anything written by Dan Watters, but this first issue, which gives out information as much as it teases, makes me want to search out more of his work.  So many first issues now tease and hint, whereas Watters seems to be giving out much, if not most, of the premise in this first issue.

Aditya Bidikar's lettering is solid and hard-hitting, which gives the story power from the first page.  Tom Muller's design splashes cool rather than faux-punk aesthetics, so this book looks good, but has substance.   I certainly want to read the second issue, and I highly recommend you give this first issue a try, dear readers.  It is a new kind of haunted house story at a time when comic books need new kinds of hauntings.

I READS YOU RECOMMENDS:  Fans of offbeat and imaginative supernatural comic books will want to fly with the Home Sick Pilots.

8 out of 10

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"


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