HOME SICK PILOTS #2
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 ARTIST: Christian Ward
28pp, Colors, 3.99 U.S.(January 2021)
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 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?
Home Sick Pilots #2 opens in Santa Manos, September 1993. It is Ami's first week there, and she meets Buzz and Rip. After some goofy confrontation, a band is born. Moving forward to June 3, 1994: Buzz and Rip are locked out of the old James house. Ami is still inside, as are the remains of the members of a rival band, Nuclear Bastards. The boys look for help, but run into a recent adversary.
Elsewhere (or another time), Ami has new powers and is trying to help the old James house recover its lost ghosts, also known as the horrors that were taken from the old house. She has found one (or been led to it), a lucky horseshoe. And despite appearances, the current owner really wants to get rid of the thing, but...
THE LOWDOWN: After reading the first issue of Home Sick Pilots, I wanted to be careful and not provide spoilers from that debut issue in my review. After reading this second issue, I think I might be getting close to being able to provide you, dear readers, with an overview of an issue without spoiling … too much. But I want you to read this new series, so the ends justify the means...
Home Sick Pilots #1 showed that the series had potential, and Home Sick Pilots #2 starts the delivering on that potential. I found Home Sick Pilots #1 to be 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. The second issue is making me think that Home Sick Pilots is the strongest series debut from Image since Rodney Barnes and Jason Shawn Alexander's Killadelphia debuted in late 2019.
Caspar Wijngaard's art and colors for Home Sick Pilots #2 are both haunting and alluring, as was the case with the first issue. The graphical storytelling is weird and freaky. It has a crazy vibe that mixes Steve Ditko's surreal storytelling in Doctor Strange with the craziness of Stephen R. Bissette and John Totleben's weirdest of weird illustrations of Alan Moore's creepiest Swamp Thing stories.
Dan Watters is putting out some imaginative and inventive stuff with this series. I say stuff because sometimes I wonder if I'm supposed to smoke Home Sick Pilots … for medicinal purposes, of course. Watters presents some strange and troubling scenes; the entire horseshoe sequence feels uncomfortable, but with some truth to it. Home Sick Pilots is so fresh and so different that it might really be a dangerous ghost story.
I READS YOU RECOMMENDS: Fans of offbeat and imaginative supernatural comic books will want to fly with the Home Sick Pilots.
9 out of 10
Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"
https://twitter.com/DanPGWatters
https://twitter.com/Casparnova
https://twitter.com/adityab
https://twitter.com/hellomuller
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