There were many strange creatures stalking the pages of 2000AD in the year 1984. October would see Nemesis the Warlock confronting the Victorian-influenced alien oddities of the Gothic Empire, while readers had grown familiar with a whole host of aliens and weirdos while perusing the adventures of
Judge Dredd, Slaine and Rogue Trooper. But in Prog 376 in July 1984, they encountered the strangest creature of all: an actual human woman. She and others like her, appeared in a new story, The Ballad of Halo Jones.

The Galaxy’s Greatest Comic was seven years old by this point and had, of course, featured a number of female characters already, notably Judge Dredd’s sassy, psychic chum, Judge Cassandra Anderson, who was destined to get her own strip the following year. But Halo was undeniably something new: a female-centric strip, dominated by female characters.

We meet Halo as a teenager, one of a…