Bigger Than Capes

Writer: Dan Watters
Artist: Caspar Wijngaard
Lettered: Aditya Bidikar
Designer: Tom Muller
Production Artist: Erika Schnatz

Home Sick Pilots #9 returns its focus to Meg, Rip and System Disrupt. After Ami fought off the attacking nightmare creature at the end of last month’s issue their location (and the fact that they’re even alive) is now known to their military funded counterparts.

The story within this issue is really all about Meg and her desire to track down and destroy The Old James House, even if that means destroying Ami and Buzz along with it. Lucky for Ami and Buzz, Rip and System Disrupt are trying to slow Meg down before she exposes the existence of ghosts to the general public, and possibly risks making the rest of the world’s spirits release just how powerful they could be.

Throughout this issue Meg explains to Rip the nature of ghosts within the world of Home Sick Pilots, or at least her understanding of what they are. We also see the full extent of how the ghosts of the Nuclear Bastards are affecting Meg.

For me this was a really solid issue of Home Sick Pilots, though admittedly I don’t think there’s been a bad issue so far. I feel like the character work here is really well done, expanding on Meg’s situation and the nature of System Disrupt before giving way to some major revelations about where Meg is at mentally and just how powerful she really is after her near death experience earlier on the series.

It’s almost boring for me to say it at this point, but Caspar Wijngaard’s artwork is excellent in this issue. From start to finish he presents a great amount of emotion within the characters depicted, while never failing to deliver on the more gruesome stuff when the narrative goes in that direction.

If I had one complaint to make, it would be that we don’t spend enough time with the members of System Disrupt. While we see quite a few different members in their appearances, we don’t really learn a lot about them as individuals.