Home Sick Pilots #6 // Review
The ghosts had moved a massive machine for Meg. They seem to be listening to her. They’re attracted to the blood that doesn’t seem to want to come off of her. She’s going to learn a little bit more about her connection to the spirits in Home Sick Pilots #6. Writer Dan Watters’ 1990s-based supernatural action horror continues with some gorgeous rendering by artist Caspar Wijngaard. There’s a clean, ghostly neon radiance about the art that electrifies Watters’ story in a totally engrossing sixth issue. The idiosyncrasies of Meg and her world fairly dazzle with hip spectral horror in the latest chapter of her life.
Meg had been a conduit for ghosts...a distinction that she seemed to have acquired from a haunted house that she’d come into contact with. Her connection with the ghosts is the subject of some rather intense testing in Nevada. They’ve brought along a friendly face. A guy named Rip is supposed to keep her calm, but he knows that they’re using her...and he knows that there’s nothing that he can do about it because he wants to make sure she’s okay. To calm him down, they let him know who they are: government contractors who have weaponized ghosts. Right now, Rip is beginning to wonder what the hell he’s gotten himself into.
Watters points much of the sixth issue at Rip. Meg is too exhausted from dealing with the testing to really be very good company this chapter, so Watters focuses the story on a guy who really cares about Meg. Watters is cleverly minimalist with the characterization of Rip, who treads lightly into a strange group of people looking to change the world with paranormal research funded by the Pentagon. It’s remarkably sharp stuff that fits oddly well into the world of a struggling west-coast band from the mid-1990s. Once again, Watters’ 1990s slacker/horror/drama action fusion actually works.
Watters’ story fits Wijngaard’s art style almost perfectly in the sixth issue. The clean lines and simple colors brilliantly fit in with the antiseptic atmosphere of a paranormal research facility. The radiant pastel colors give the story a firm sense of the ethereal supernatural. Wijngaard has a gift for the mood and pacing of silent moments with characters and unspoken communication between them. Wijngaard’s low-key rendering of shockingly grizzly supernatural horror allows those elements to make their impact without unnecessary amplification. Watters and Wijngaard have managed a well-nuanced approach.
With just the right mix of interpersonal drama, action, and supernatural horror, Watters’ story is gradually revealing itself to be a truly unique fusion. Wijngaard’s strikingly vivid art brings the story to the page in a way that fuses well with Watters’ scripting. There are countless potential paths that Meg and Rip could stumble through in the coming issues. Thanks to some very sharp characterization, the pair are as deeply engaging on the comics page as they are in their dialogue.
