'Zoo City' author Lauren Beukes pens new introduction to Halo Jones

I honestly do not think it is possible to exaggerate just how important to the medium the character Halo Jones is. The following is a press release from Rebellion about the forthcoming reissue of the book. You really should buy it, 

The author of the Clarke Award-winning novel Zoo City and the much anticipated The Shining Girls, Lauren Beukes, has written a brand new introduction to a character she says was her “first love”.
The South African novelist and journalist, whose magical hardboiled thriller set in Johannesburg was a break-out hit in 2010, has penned the introduction for the new UK edition of The Ballad of Halo Jones by Alan Moore and Ian Gibson, due for release in May 2013.
Beukes cites the character as a major influence on her childhood: “She’s remarkable for being just a girl caught up in extraordinary circumstances. Halo is working class, she doesn’t have any superpowers, in her own words, she was ‘just there’.”
Dubbed “possibly the first feminist heroine in comics” by The Observer, the ground-breaking character from 2000 AD catapulted writer Moore to popular attention, helped in no small part by Gibson’s stunning SF artwork.

Moore introduced comic book readers familiar with macho ‘guns and gore’ male characters to the poignant, fascinating, and at times heartbreaking story of an ordinary woman who lives an extraordinary life.
Set in a future where the unemployed are herded into the Hoop, a floating ghetto off the coast of Manhattan, Halo is a young woman who dreams of escaping her boring life. When she gets the chance to do so aboard a luxury space cruiser as a hostess, it catapults her into an uncaring galaxy that will take her from the lap of luxury to a time-bending war of atrocity.
“It’s a story about choices and compromises, about defying expectations, about poverty, society, celebrity, identity, the toll of war, and also love, ambition, ambivalence and the places restless curiosity will take you,” says Beukes.
This new edition will be published in the UK and Ireland with the introduction from Lauren Beukes and a  rand new
design-led cover by 2000 AD head designer Simon Parr.