Tailgunner Jo

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 05:22:37 GMT

I came across a post on Reddit the other day mentioning a six-issue mini from DC comics, published in 1988 called Tailgunner Jo by Peter Gillis.

It's a near-future scifi piece about a man Lars who has been turned into a cybernetically-enhanced living weapon, for... essentially, advertising purposes. His 10-year-old daughter's brain is encased in a dome on his back, and she can process data, control the cybernetics, and under certain circumstances take control of the body they share. Jo splits her time between acting as his tailgunner (hence the title) and living in a virtual fantasy world her father created for her. Oh, and they didn't consent to this procedure by the way -- and Lars' wife/Jo's mom was manipulated into unknowingly performing the surgery!

Of course, I had to go look it up and read it immediately. That's a lot of juicy, fucked up bullshit to chew on. As far as I understand it's never been collected into a trade volume, but I was able to snag a full run off Ebay for a low price. This is dollar bin fodder, but I do have a fondness for that ;)

There's a lot of worldbuilding crammed into six issues, and I found it somewhat hard to track what exactly was going on -- especially when Jo's fantasy world starts to fall apart and bleed over onto her perception of reality around her.

The premise is compelling. The art strikes a great balance between the cyberpunk elements and the childish fantasy world that Jo inhabits. The implications are horrifying. But I think it would have been a far, far stronger work if it had been given twelve issues instead of six. There were a lot of plot points and worldbuilding details conveyed through fictional letters to the editor in the back of the book that I didn't really grasp the relevance of, and some details swept past in the comic itself that I would have liked to see explored in more detail.

There's barely anything about it online, and it doesn't really seem to have made waves at the time. I can't even call it particularly good. But I think it's going to linger with me for a while.

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returning after a soujourn elsewhere

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 04:26:35 GMT

Discord is going down in flames, Tumblr has once again shot itself in the foot, and... the other social media options out there right now really don't enthrall me. I'm sick of algorithms deciding what I see, and AI slop peddled for cheap engagement, and of sitewide changes made for the satisfaction of shareholders and advertisers.

I miss an era of the internet that I'm just not going to find on a mainstream site. Will this place work out for me? I don't know. I don't remember why I left, exactly? I came here after the great LJ migration, and then Tumblr became my primary social media for over a decade. But if they don't walk this change back soon then it's a trust thermocline situation.

It's been a long time since I've had a real blog. Yapping about my life and interests at length seems a little like shouting into the void in a way I shouldn't be allowed to do. It feels weird! Maybe no one's going to read this.

But I guess I'll start off with talking about things I've read recently -- mostly comics and graphic novels.

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xnor_starship

Tailgunner Jo

returning after a soujourn elsewhere