Oh, Bristol Comics Expo, really?

Halo Jones. With her clothes on. As you might expect.

So, Bristol Comics Expo decided it would be a great idea to promote itself with some limited edition prints. Including some by their guest Ian Gibson. And Gibson provided a couple of Halo Jones illustrations. In one of which she’s nicely clothed, and one in which she’s, well, not.

Unsurprisingly, this elicited some criticism. Paul Cornell, currently meant to be a guest, revealed on his Twitter account that he had protested. And that one of the Expo organizers had told him off for being a prude who didn’t like seeing naked women.

Well, no, I suspect that’s not actually the point. One doesn’t have to completely disapprove of nudity, and depictions of same, to feel that there is a time and a place for everything, and that this may not be the time, nor the place, for a topless Halo Jones.

For a start, remember Halo Jones? An interesting female character in 2000 A.D. Maybe not the first feminist character in comics, as sometimes claimed, or even in 2000 A.D., where there’ve been some pretty respectable outings amongst the female Judges, but in a different class to the usual ‘strong woman that lets her cleavage hang out’ that is an all-too-common paradigm (yes, I am talking about Durham Red). To see her reduced to a sleazy pin-up character has, understandably, got some people upset (including an understandably grumpy Alan Moore).

But much more important is the message that this sends out about the sort of convention the Bristol Comics Expo is going to be, and the sort of audience it wants to attract. This (and a similar topless image of John Higgins’ Razorjack) are packaged for ‘the discerning adult’. That sort of phrase always makes me think of some sweaty bloke in his mid-forties whose mind has not progressed much beyond puberty. It does not suggest that Bristol is reaching out to a more diverse audience—instead they seem to be interested only in the sort of male power-fantasy crowd that are perceived as the prime market for comics, largely because few people make much of an effort to produce comics for other people.

The irony is, as Gibson—who does not come out of this well—reveals in in the Guardian piece linked to above, it doesn’t even look like Halo Jones. It’s just a generic stripper image he drew that he slapped that name onto. (And, no, we’re not going to show you the image here.)

Anyway, Rebellion, who own 2000 A.D. and therefore, to Moore’s annoyance, the character, have stepped in and put a stop to this (though not to the other print). But there’s still a nasty taste in the mouth, and a feeling that, just when comics conventions really need to open up to women and other communities to whom they have not traditionally catered, Bristol is galloping back to the 1960s.