Hornsby & Halo #16 // Review
Zack and Rose are looking at notes written by dead people...or maybe people who only seem like they’re dead. The notes are regarding people who are actually dead. It’s a rock band. They call themselves “The Deadtones.” Once of the notes written by one of the ostensibly dead parents of the first sustainable trillionaire mentions that the band only seems like they’re fully alive when they’re playing. Zack and rose are looking to contact the nearly dead in Hornsby & Halo #16. Writer Peter J. Tomasi and artist Peter Snejbjeerg continue to expand The Unbelievables Universe with a fun, new crop of paranormals.
Zack and Rose go to the concert. They're not exactly getting any kind of an evil vibe from the band. And they would know. They're from heaven and hell, respectively. They have a natural, innate sense of this sort of thing. Perhaps the band isn't any kind of a serious issue. Nevertheless, Zack and Rose need to investigate. And as luck would have it, the band is perfectly open to the possibility of talking to them. A 14-year-old angel and a 14-year-old demon just wanna talk to a group of people who may or may not be completely dead. What's the worst that could happen?
Tomasi takes his time in setting up the premise. Typically a story like this would be in some kind of a hurry to establish the conflict so that the action could sue. That's not absolutely necessary if the characters are interesting enough. And certainly they are. A rock band of paranormal people are having a perfectly normal conversation with an angel and a devil. The basic premise is solid enough to be compelling and to draw the reader in. And so much of the issue is perfectly satisfying as a conversation backstage. It's actually kind of a disappointment when the conflict sets in at the end of the issue, though that will likely pass as the story reaches its second part with issue #19.
There's a really wide range of different characters that are meeting that paid for this particular issue. The band itself is made of of a very desperate. As a result, there's a lot of weirdness on the page which could come across as being pretty messy or not foot effect that be or just as a really good job of giving each character his over her own distinct presence. So it's not just a lot of weirdness standing around. It's people actually engaging in their section of panel in a way that gives them their own personality. There's a real appeal in that that helps engage the reader in the drama of what's going on.
It's entirely possible that the conflict that has arrived by the end of the issue is going to be something that's going to be very appealing. However, the dialogue that Tomasi he is working with in just casual conversation seems a lot more interesting than any of the more standard supernatural, comic or conflict that would happen to the page in the course of the rest of the story.
