Halo and Sprocket: Welcome to Humanity

Author: Kerry Callen

A woman has two bizarre roommates: a robot and an angel. Why they are there is not quite clear, but it's not incredibly important to the book. Callen describes the basic set up as pairing two different points of view on the world and letting comedy ensue. While the set up is interesting, the payoff is not entirely satisfactory.

Halo and Sprocket is a gag strip at heart. The book is made up of a series of stories that each revolve around a situation, in most cases meant to highlight peculiarly human experiences and how alien they are to an outside perspective. Halo is meant to represent an otherworldly perspective, while Sprocket is meant to represent a "rational" perspective. Katie, the woman, provides the human perspective. Because Halo and Sprocket is ultimately about the various punchlines and comedic payoffs, it's success depends largely on the success of this clash of perspectives. And it is because this comedy does not succeed as well as it should that Halo and Sprocket falls flat on its face.

The art here is clean and professional and does a good job of conveying what it needs to convey. While overall the art comes across as a little sparse, this is understandable given it's gag strip origin--the back and forth of the characters and their interplay within dialogue is of prime importance--the comedy plays out in mostly in the words. In a way this is a strength because the visual comedy is mostly weak simply because Callen's line is too strong and does not allow much flexibility for character expression. Despite the range of emotion that Katie goes through, her expressions are never quite fluid--always correct and reflective of the situation--yet stiff. At the same time, there are some very nice instances of visual narrative in the construction of the stories like when Katie recalls a story about a boy chasing a dog and the visual of the story is played out in the same panel as the telling. In fact, it is when Callen relies primarily on visual storytelling that he succeeds the most: the the very brief "Aw heck" is pitch perfect mostly because it is such an unexpected outcome for such a straightforward gag. In addition, the short also allows Callen more flexibility in his visuals, which he takes full advantage of. What is most frustrating is that Callen seems best when he is relying on visuals, yet he relies mostly on words.

It is Callen's words that are the biggest problem. Callen's setup has great potential. But it rarely plays out in a satisfactory way. All the strips play out over misunderstandings about some human tradition or superstition (or saying) on the part of either Sprocket or Halo--Sprocket becoming confused because he is too literal and Halo becoming confused because it holds itself above humanity. The end result in both cases is that these human complexities are shown to be specific to human experience and beyond the understanding of those outside humanity. This is fine, the trouble is that too many stories rely simply on this inability to understand. Far too few of the stories rely on Sprocket's or Halo's individual assimilation of human culture. Sure, it is humorous for Halo to point out that we've forgotten the ears on a t-rex or to turn a painting of a mermaid into a fish eating a woman, but these are only passing jokes that don't lead to any larger humor. As a situational comedy, there needs to be more focus on the comedy coming out of the situation, not simply passing jokes. The greatest flaw in this book is that not nearly enough is done with the setup.

A large part of these criticisms are extremely subjective--humor being just as subjective as art. And, appropriately, it is probably very easy to disagree with me my judgment on the art--someone may find the style perfectly appropriate. Overall, however, Halo and Sprocket fails because it does not derive enough humor from the characters and the setup. There is too much incidental humor that, while funny, doesn't hit the mark in the way playing off the characters would. There is potential here, but it is not fulfilled in this book.

Status: Up for sale.