Review: Halo: An Angel's Story by Christopher Knowles, Martin Schneebalg
by Christopher Knowles and Martin Schneebalg
A graphic novel from the late 1990s, Halo: An Angel’s Story follows the life of a girl named Robin, who has a guardian angel named Thomas watching over her. Unfortunately, watching is all that Thomas can really do; guardian angels are not allowed to intervene in the lives of their charges. But Robin’s life isn’t an easy one. Her parents are wealthy, but selfish and unloving. She spends Christmas opening presents with the family’s maids while her parents party with other adults. When she gets into trouble at school for a very minor offense, Robin is shipped off to a boarding school, but a scandal there gets her kicked out onto the streets, desperately trying to survive on her own, and all Thomas can do is watch…
Actually, Thomas does intervene in Robin’s life several times, albeit in minor ways, which makes me wonder where this rule of non-intervention comes from. The world of the angels isn’t really explored…in fact, for a graphic novel subtitled ‘An Angel’s Story*’ there’s very, very little about Thomas and the other guardian angels that occasionally pop up. In fact, Thomas appears so rarely, and so briefly, that I felt like he never really had a chance to develop as a character. Instead, most of the narrative involves the life and times of Miss Robin, and unfortunately the ‘rich-girl-whose-parents-don’t-love-her’ cliché is a trifle overdone these days. It’s all very predictable.
I really liked the cover when I saw it at the comic book store years ago. The bright colors and stained glass effect just made it pop against the rest of the books on the shelf.
The inside art’s not bad. It’s not particularly memorable, but it did have its strong points. The coloring changed throughout the story but always matched the mood of the characters, and some of the shadowing was very well done.
I wonder if this was originally intended to be the start of a series. The ending comes rather hastily, but it is open enough that this could have continued to multiple volumes if the publisher chose to. (Heck, for all I know this could have been a series, but Amazon didn’t reveal any following volumes.)
So there ya go. An obscure old comic book I happened to dig up at a comic book store many years ago in the bargain bin. I thought I’d talk about it because, well, no one else really has. I couldn’t find much about it elsewhere on the ‘Net. (Also, I’ve been so busy with school that I haven’t had a chance to read much else, and if I want to even pretend to update this blog regularly I needed to review it.) Halo: An Angel’s Story was not a bad comic for a first-time writer and artist, but it wasn’t very good either. It’s utterly forgettable, and now that I’ve reviewed it I doubt it will be long before I’ve forgotten all about it.
*I actually think I understand where the subtitle came from, but I can’t really discuss it without revealing MAJOR PLOT SPOILERS, so I still think it’s a poor choice for a title.
To read more about Halo: An Angel’s Story, buy it or add it to your wishlist click here.
A graphic novel from the late 1990s, Halo: An Angel’s Story follows the life of a girl named Robin, who has a guardian angel named Thomas watching over her. Unfortunately, watching is all that Thomas can really do; guardian angels are not allowed to intervene in the lives of their charges. But Robin’s life isn’t an easy one. Her parents are wealthy, but selfish and unloving. She spends Christmas opening presents with the family’s maids while her parents party with other adults. When she gets into trouble at school for a very minor offense, Robin is shipped off to a boarding school, but a scandal there gets her kicked out onto the streets, desperately trying to survive on her own, and all Thomas can do is watch…
Actually, Thomas does intervene in Robin’s life several times, albeit in minor ways, which makes me wonder where this rule of non-intervention comes from. The world of the angels isn’t really explored…in fact, for a graphic novel subtitled ‘An Angel’s Story*’ there’s very, very little about Thomas and the other guardian angels that occasionally pop up. In fact, Thomas appears so rarely, and so briefly, that I felt like he never really had a chance to develop as a character. Instead, most of the narrative involves the life and times of Miss Robin, and unfortunately the ‘rich-girl-whose-parents-don’t-love-her’ cliché is a trifle overdone these days. It’s all very predictable.
I really liked the cover when I saw it at the comic book store years ago. The bright colors and stained glass effect just made it pop against the rest of the books on the shelf.
The inside art’s not bad. It’s not particularly memorable, but it did have its strong points. The coloring changed throughout the story but always matched the mood of the characters, and some of the shadowing was very well done.
I wonder if this was originally intended to be the start of a series. The ending comes rather hastily, but it is open enough that this could have continued to multiple volumes if the publisher chose to. (Heck, for all I know this could have been a series, but Amazon didn’t reveal any following volumes.)
So there ya go. An obscure old comic book I happened to dig up at a comic book store many years ago in the bargain bin. I thought I’d talk about it because, well, no one else really has. I couldn’t find much about it elsewhere on the ‘Net. (Also, I’ve been so busy with school that I haven’t had a chance to read much else, and if I want to even pretend to update this blog regularly I needed to review it.) Halo: An Angel’s Story was not a bad comic for a first-time writer and artist, but it wasn’t very good either. It’s utterly forgettable, and now that I’ve reviewed it I doubt it will be long before I’ve forgotten all about it.
*I actually think I understand where the subtitle came from, but I can’t really discuss it without revealing MAJOR PLOT SPOILERS, so I still think it’s a poor choice for a title.
To read more about Halo: An Angel’s Story, buy it or add it to your wishlist click here.