A Final Farewell (or Two) in Home Sick Pilots #15

Everything ends. In fire. In truth. In a lot of house-punching, in the final issue of Home Sick Pilots, written by Dan Watters, drawn by Caspar Wijngaard, lettered by Aditya Bidikar and designed by Tom Muller.

Dan Grote: Those motherfuckers got us! They Sixth Sensed us! They last-episode-of-Lost-ed us! They. Are. GhoOoOoOoOosts!

Forrest, let’s just dive right into it. Did this series stick the landing for you?

Forrest Hollingsworth: Mostly? Mostly!

America Gets Ghosted

Dan: Forrest, I’m on record as hating the whole “Ghosts of America” thing, specifically because every time one of the teenage protagonists says it or uses it in a narration box, it sounds pretentious and not at all like a thing one of these characters would say. These kids would not pay attention in history class!

And yet, the Ghosts of America end up being instrumental not just in helping the Pilots defeat Old James, but in the world that comes after, in which “Walker” sightings are common and what was once a pale green swirling mass of rage is finally allowed to vent and find peace. If anything, they are the engine that could stir a sequel series. Forrest, how does that make you feel?

Forrest: This is the part I’m most mixed on, Dan. There’s some ideas floating around there of people being trapped in the machine, in cycles of abuse and neglect, that are quite salient but I also don’t really … understand what happened at the end?

The ghosts of the Nevada site aren’t conscious enough to be used as anything more than a bomb (this is very grim)? The ghosts of the James house are and rebel against him? All the kids are ghosts?! It kind of collapses under its own internal rules or lack thereof. I don’t really understand what tangibly happened. That’s frustrating given how many other threads the narrative could’ve satisfactorily concluded than what’s here.

There’s no resolution for Ami in particular with regard to the specter of what happened with her mother before the events of the series, there’s not a strong enough connection to the James daughter to make that resolution satisfactory, the members of Meg’s band are almost entirely glossed over. I would’ve much rather seen any of those threads given proper time and attention than the ghost … bomb … thing, and I don’t feel that’s particularly nitpicky so much as a recognition that the narrative really went in quite some directions before the end, huh?

Dan: Ghosts: They’re just like us — they only get narrative agency if they’re main characters. Makes you wonder if, at 15 issues, this series was too long or not long enough. Or both? SHOULD we have gotten more time with the GoA, so when they finally explode we can cheer them on? Or would that have further muddied the plot, much like the eleventh hour introduction of Old James’ daughter, the Toilet Ghost? Also, even the ghosts of the Old James House didn’t have that much depth. We know more about Toilet Ghost and maybe even a little more about the kid ghost, Marky, but it’s hard to find satisfaction in the mutiny of the other ghosts because we never really spent any time with them. Ami blew through them all in her mostly off-panel fetch quest in the first arc.

And yes, this book’s greatest sin is that we never found out what the deal was with Ami and her mom. Ami’s mom could’ve been a ghost, they could’ve talked! Plant and payoff, Watters, plant and payoff!

Caspar the Friendly Ghost Artist

Dan: We’ve poked a lot of holes in the story of this series as it’s gone on, but one thing that’s never let us down is Caspar Wijngaard’s art. In the epilogue, he gives us one last gift in a haunted seaside roller coaster crawling up out of the ocean off Santa Manos, a giant clown head giving you a place to rest your eyes like that ice cream truck in Twisted Metal. It’s rad as fuck, and in true punk fashion, one of the kids watching it rise is unimpressed. But we know. WE KNOW it’s an invitation to dream of what could be next in this world. Forrest, what gifts did Caspar give you in this farewell issue?

Forrest: Well, you stole the haunted roller coaster right out from under me, so I’ll go with my backup:

The infinite tunnels of under the James house, hollowed and branching like atriums of a heart, make the perfect setting for Meg to wax poetic about being trapped in Hell but only because it’s particularly well matched with the light in her eyes as she briefly thinks, set against the backdrop of an exploding phantasmal home, that they’re going to be free.

Meg, Dan, I think Caspar did a good job with Meg (and the rest of the characters, truly they all go on a pretty compelling emotional journey here). Justice for Meg!

Dan: Meg did some horrific shit in this series, but the reason it had such weight, the reason we felt sorry for her in the end, all naked and covered in the silent blood of her fallen bandmates, deep in the neverending tunnels below a house that occasionally rises up on its house haunches and fights mechs and giant videocassettes, is because right from jump, she was the best of us. And so she enters the afterlife the best of us.

Our little Megaton.

Honorable art mention goes to Old James, who as time has passed apparently has morphed himself some nice old-timey clothes and a skullet that wraps around his horseshoe head to indicate contentment. Awful, creepy, abusive contentment. Right before getting exploded in a ghost mutiny.

Sit Around and Watch the Tube

Dan: So last time around, we promised readers a Green Day digression. This comic gave us some thoughtful discussions about the Ramones, Joe Strummer, etc., but we never got into the 1990s punk scene, which was really the last time the genre had a major impact on the zeitgeist (You can get into a whole thing about the diffusion of the genre into subgenres like pop-punk, emo, third-wave ska, etc., well into the 2000s, but that sounds like a great way to lose focus). It feels like a missed opportunity, but, again, Dan Watters was 3 in 1994. But I wasn’t! So Forrest, Green Day thoughts. Favorite album? Ever seen ’em live? Got a pic of you as a kid in a Green Day shirt?

Forrest: I was obsessed, Dan, obsessed with Green Day as a kid, buuuuuuuut I never got to see them live because I was into them right around the same time that my family was making a much stricter move into modern Lutheranism. Thus, listening to Green Day became at some point banned in my house, despite the fact that my myriad Green Day T-shirts (from Hot Topic in the mall, of course) were not.

This created a let’s say “interesting” dichotomy that eventually came to a head when, on a family vacation to a remote mountain resort, the musician on site clocked my Green Day T-shirt and began playing a series of acoustic covers directed at me while I refused to make eye contact because I thought I was going to get into trouble.

Flustered and frustrated, I went home and found a way to get Green Day (Warning is my favorite, probably) onto my iPod Shuffle, which thankfully didn’t show the names of artists or songs I was listening to directly on the device. My first real flirtation with rebellion, and one that cemented Green Day in particular as kind of deeply important and nostalgic to me. Enough so that I still feel a bit sympathetic toward their attempts at reinvention as they now blunder through old age, mainstream recognition (sellout!), and becoming dad rock.

I think, ultimately, that’s kind of the message of this issue, too. You’ve always got to have energy for reinvention, even if the new thing is in part made of the old thing (The kids are still trapped in the “machine,” after all). You’ve always got to try to “Rise Above” as Meg says, all credit due to Black Flag … though we’re right on the cusp of needing a digression into Limp Bizkit territory, too.

Speaking of reinvention — and I don’t want to spend too much time on myself — but this is my last comics review for the indefinite future, Dan, and boy has it been a lot of fun covering the highs and lows of this series with you. Thank you.

Dan: FORREST, MY FACE IS WET NOW. I thank you for sticking around long enough to wrap this series with me. It was a pleasure and an honor.

(Forrest walks off into the distance. The sounds of “F.O.D.” fade into a silence that lasts several minutes. Dan looks around, picks up an acoustic guitar and begins playing a simple melody somewhat out of tune.)

“I was alone … I was all by myself … No one was LOOKIIIIIIING …”

Cool Miscellany, Bro

I see you, Buzz’s Limbo T-shirt.
Was glad to see TFT get one last nod.
I googled “1998 punk” and it gave me Smash Mouth’s “Can’t Get Enough of You Baby” from the “Can’t Hardly Wait” soundtrack.
If Ami was dead, why did she need to do stretches?
Alright, where do I get HSP merch?

Dan Grote

Dan Grote is the editor-in-chief of ComicsXF, having won the site by ritual combat. By day, he’s a newspaper editor, and by night, he’s … also an editor. He co-hosts WMQ&A: The ComicsXF Interview Podcast with Matt Lazorwitz. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, two kids and two miniature dachshunds, and his third, fictional son, Peter Winston Wisdom.