Hellblazer and Constantine C/D

I haven't read that much Hellblazer, but to me the Garth Ennis run is the most definitive one, or at least the ones I like the best. JC doesn't veer too far into "dark loner with a heart of gold" territory, he's just a regular asshole who happens to get into scrapes with/run scams on demons and ghosts instead of gangsters and the like. The lung cancer arc is fantastic.

Sometimes great, sometimes a bit rub Constantine: Jamie Delano, Garth Ennis

Good Constantine: Grant Morrison, John Smith

Don't-bother-with Constantine: Eddie Campbell, Darko Macan, Mike Carey, Warren Ellis

Complete dud Constantine: Brian Azzarello, whoever wrote things like The Trenchcoat Brigade: Not Just A Good Joke Anymore and Hellblazer Vs. Books Of Magic FITE and The Sandman Presents: Hippypants

But! Great bunches of shots, the CGI effects were used quite well, stunningly at times, even (though Hell was a smidge underwhelming, and I could've done with more winged-ness, esp. from Tilda KROWR Swinton (GOD, she had some hottt pants!)), all of which built a wonderfully deep atmosphere. I.e., the backstory of the mythology was clever and fleshed out enough to immerse myself in.

Keanu acquitted himself all right, but I actually felt annoyed at Rachel Weisz's blandness. She and the increasingly complex/convoluted plot are my only gripes; Tilda and the imagery were fantastic.

(1) It's the only real mainstream horror comic I know about. When I first read the Delano collection, I remember flipping the pages so no one walking by (or on the bus, etc.) would see the gruesome Mark Buckingham stuff I was looking at. Jamie Delano is clearly a more minor writer than Morrison or Gaiman, but he's much better at this grimy, subtext-rich horror: this isn't silly fairy tale Englishisms (when Sandman tries to be terrifying) or trendy New Age beat poetry (when the Invisibles tries to be terrifying). This is Vietnam vets in anytown USA raping their wives b/c they think they're still in 'Nam. Men made of newspapers and dirty laundry chasing you down the street and junkies covered with flies.

(2) As you'd guess from the above, the Delano Hellblazer is the best DC/Marvel political comic I've ever read. It's not just obviously political (demon yuppies; a soul stock market) or partisan (in one issue, Constantine beats the bad guys but Thatcher wins and he says, there's more than one way to hell). But it's full of subtext: I don't just mean homophobes beating up JC's gay friend, but one scene where (spoiler) JC avoids getting beaten by a monster made out of four skinheads by noting that their football (soccer) tattoos all root for opposing teams. Look at how he wins here: he doesn't fight, he doesn't carry a gun, he's not even (like GM Batman) omniscient. He's just a smart jerk who knows the score. He's not raffish or just an asshole: the best thing about his characterization is that he's not clearly cool or uncool, good or bad. There are small details: like how he barely knows how to drive a car. Also, as you guys probably all know, Alan Moore created JC just to create a working class wizard (cf. Stephen Strange, wealthy surgeon): the best issues are all about turning 40, peeing behind a dumpster, STDs and booze.

(3) Also: the writing and ideas are really beautiful in Original Sins. Delano has JC give a double-amputtee vet the peace sign and then JC says to himself "I feel like an asshole since he can't salute back." Another moment in the same issue, he's walking through a field during a storm and the caption says "Lightning photographs the sky."

(4)Obviously my bias is for the Delano run, but I haven't read that much of it. With Ellis, Constantinue just becomes a standard issue bastard. What Ennis, however, is really good at--and I think he's much better at this than at over-the-top gore--is intimacy. Like in Preacher, the best parts of his run are issues about drunken parties and Constantine's girlfriend Kit. But most of these runs, I think, are very surface (unlike, I'd argue, Paul Jenkin's run). They're very easy to get into and have fun with, but I don't think they reward repeat readings. My favorite Constantine outside of Delano, Ennis, Jenkins and Swamp Thing (or that Alan Moore thing that Kingdom Come ripped off) is his cameo in Neil Gaiman's Books of Magic. He's still kind of a cartoon, but it has a lot of interesting scenes: there's a cocktail party where he appears to make practically every DCU magic supervillain pee in his pants just by making a few unsubstantiated threats and waving around his street cred. As they walk outside, Zatanna says, I don't get it--you don't have any powers, how did you do that?

All that pretentious stuff being said, I don't have the entire run. I keep meaning to buy the other Delano issues off ebay, but I probably have half his run and everything from Ennis to Jenkins. I quit at Azarello. (The Jenkins run, btw, is really underrated: one issue is done in first person point of view, i.e. you the reader are walking down the street with JC; another one has JC's dad in hell.) So a few questions:

(1) What was Eddie Campbells run? Is he any good in the non-Alan Moore Swamp Things?

(2) Should I run out and buy the issues I don't have?

(3) so given the stuff I said above, do you think I'd like the movie?

Suprisingly, it's quite faithful to the spirit -- if not the geography -- of the comic, although Keanu is bit of a bore, and the script makes JC far less funny than he should be. (I guess "wit" and "complete bastard-ness" are John Constantine's superpowers, and Keanu has neither.)

Anyway, it's late and I'll write more tommorow, on the off chance anyone's interested.

(BTW Ken Chen, that makes me really intersted to pick up Delano's run.)

I think the politics is what I find the weakest about the Delano run, and definitely what dates it - though there are great things in it (the Vietnam issue being a particular standout).

Frances pointed out to me in the car this morning (I've been trying to persuade her to come on) that I really quite liked the Azarello Iceman arc. She's right, I'd forgotten that. Actually, thinking about it the pr0n arc he did was quite entertaining as well. Maybe I should revisit his stuff...

Actually I think I did read the Jenkins run, then. What did you find weak about the politics? What political comics do you like?

thanx
ken

It's like listening to a Ben Elton routine from the same time - there are some really choice moments in there, but they're spoiled by the pseudo-left rhetoric which, to someone who was about at the time, seems really dated. Plus football hooligans were a very soft target at the time, and the JC gay friend comes off as tokenistic (particularly with the reveal that he has AIDS).

There are some brilliant things about the Delano run, such as the Gemma issue and the full Newcastle story, but it reads in places as very 1980s.

I've never actually thought about political comics, and I'm not sure I read any.

(just kidding, I love the British!)

I hope this is reminiscent of his infamous "room service" monologue in Johnny Mnemonic.

No, "Constantine" is not part of a trilogy including "Troy" and "Alexander." It's not about the emperor at all, but about a man who can see the world behind the world, and is waging war against the scavengers of the damned. There was a nice documentary about emperor penguins, however, at Sundance this year. The males sit on the eggs all winter long in like 60 degrees below zero.

...

Oh, and the plot also involves the Spear of Destiny, which is the spear that killed Christ, and which has been missing since World War II, which seems to open a window to the possibility of Nazi villains, but no.

The movie's boffo. If you can make consessions re: the whole "HE'S NOT BRITISH" thing and the "IT'S AN ACTION FLICK" thing, it's all good. And Gavin Rossdale!

Are cars capable of sin, or do some sinners get to take their wheels with them to hell? This is one of many intriguing doctrinal questions never answered by "Constantine."

Yeah, I'm missing this one.

http://www.geocities.com/redhalcyon/ebay/gabriel1.txt

http://www.geocities.com/redhalcyon/ebay/gabriel2.txt

What I think is the pull of "Hellblazer" is the character of Constantine himself: he's a bastard when he has to, but usually he's just a smartass who gets sucked into all these paranormal stuff and generally survives because he's smarter, craftier and more of a bastard than everyone around him. But beneath that there's a poor bloke who has to watch his friends killed time and time again and who would like to stay out of all that, but can't because he went looking for all that crap in the first place and it's the only thing that gives him kicks. I love Constantine deeply, probably my favourite character of all time.

That said, the quality of the title has varied greatly in time. Delano's okay, but nothing out of the ordinary (althought he has some great issues, like the Newcastle one or the one where John's father has to hang around because his soul is linked to a dead cat thanks to John), Ennis is probably the best, at least the one that has more great moments (and Kit, the ultimate Constantine love). Jenkins has a different take on the character: John as the middle age magician who just wants to leave everything behind and take care of his friends. He has some great character moments, even though his entire run is based mostly in what Ennis did. Ellis is not so bad, too short, never got off the ground but you could say he emphasizes the "bastard" aspect of John too much. The supporting cast showed promise, too. Azzarello is one of the most controversials, I am probably one of the few who liked it (probably because I like Frusin's art a lot and that helped), it's a valid take on Constantine, with the problem that by taking John out of England and not making great contributions to his history or "lore" it's a run that could easily be forgotten and "jumped" without paying attention to it. Mike Carey's run I haven't read, just the first arc, but he seemed okay, like a return to the roots of the character of a continuation of Ellis' run.

And "Twilight Of The Superheroes" could have been not only the greatest crossover ever but the shining moment of Constantine, have it ever been published.

I'd desperately love to draw this character.

Constantine is one of my favorite comic characters, mostly based on what Delano did w/him. The series has, overall, been pretty solid, but I'm always a little disappointed that Constantine seems to be such a slippery character to get a firm grasp on. Even Delano's subsequent attempts have fallen short.

Bah! The Horrorist was pretty terrible, but his single-issue return about the monkey is one of the greatest Constantine one-shots evar (behind the Gaiman/McKean issue), and Bad Blood was great, a Constantine who's old and tired but can't quite bring himself to give up.

now steve dillon's on the art it's not so bad. the irishisms are grating tho.

Yeah, but he had Sean Phillips drawing it, so I'd have put up with just about anything.

Delano kind of became a shittier less compelling writer in general as time went on, though, didn't he?

there's some recentish delano product i saw in forbidden planet today - 2020 visions? any good?

i read the twelve-issue nergal storyline mike carey did. things i think are really freaking boring in this comic number one would be demons, though. although vampires (just read issue #50) would be a close one, there. there's more of them later in ennis's run, whee.

carey used to teach at my high school, apparently.

Don't get your hopes up - Campbell's first issue is promising, but they go downhill so fast that he actually quit after four issues, refusing to put his name to any more editorial plot dictats.

ennis has another run, though? oh. oh dear.

Only six issues. (No idea whether it's any good, I couldn't handle his first run, especially after Dangerous Habits, but I think it was "denots yllaer m'I" that stopped me even looking in now and again.)

there's some recentish delano product i saw in forbidden planet today - 2020 visions? any good?

That's actually 7 or 8 years old (Quitely's first US work after Flex Mentallo?), now reprinted without colour, bleah.

If I get sick, don't send me there plzkthxbye.

Zip code, 78666!!!!!!!!!!!!one

Has anyone been reading Milligan's run on Hellblazer? I've just read the first trade and it ain't bad. Milligan basically writes JC as a total, utter asshole with no redeeming features whatsoever.

Also, looking forward to July's issue - the return of Shade!

Indian story was very good, punk one not so much.

Is JC still aging in real time? Must be pushing 60 now if so.

....yeah, his 40th birthday party, where they got Swamp Thing to grow them some joints and Zatanna said "denots yllaer m'i," was around 1992, yeah? Just before th switch to Vertigo. I think they're playing him more like 50, with his punk phase being a late teenage thing, rather than being Strangler-aged.

I read Hellblazer from, um, mid-late20s (G. Morrison/D. Lloyd nuke story???) through early50s (dropped out at the beginning of a story about Royal Ritual Sex Killings, I think) and I gotta ask, what has kept this series going? I mean, I get the pre-Columbine trenchcoat cool (esp. at age 14!) but shit. It's been a long ass time.

I dropped it hard at the Royals killing peasants story too, that was awful*. But I often dip in and try a new writer for an issue or ten. What's kept Batman going?! What's kept The Hulk going?! What's kept Jughead's Pals 'n' Gals going?! It's been a long ass time.

*at that point it just involved stopping reading a friend's copies at school

I think Zatana said ".ecaf ym ffo m'I".

hahaha, did she really?

The original Delano run is great. The Jenkins and Carey runs are decent. Almost everything else has been forgettable and/or has unfotunately latched onto the unfortunate and uncharacteristic badassery that Ennis predictably forced onto the character. Even Milligan's current run has been pretty blah (although I'm still potentially interested in his promise of a Shade guest spot). I'm a huge fan of the character, based almost entirely upon those first forty issues, but I'd be hard-pressed to think of another classic comics character that's been sucked dry of more promise.

Jenkins suuuuucked, I bought a bunch of his after the fact for a buck each because a friend repped for them, and I overpaid by at least two thirds.

much prefer the ennis run - esp the stories drawn by steve dillon - to the overwritten delano issues

have never read anything gd by jenkins (tho i haven't read his HELLBLAZERS)

Finally cancelled with #300. Can't say it possibly isn't probably time enough - it's been plodding away in its own furrow for some time now, and given Constantine's place in the Johnsiverse and his integration back in the idea of him being a 60 year old drunk with a teenage wife probably isn't that palatable in Geoff & Dan's paradigm. And certainly not while you're trying to make him the sex symbol of the nascent supernatural line.

I might think about a S/D for the line.

I really wasn't a fan of this book at all but I kind of love Constantine in JLD

S: Veitch & Gaiman's various bits of him, the Bad Blood miniseries
D: a huge majority of the titular series, tbrr

I'm of two minds on this. It probably is long past time for it to end, but this is just one more step towards the homogenization of the broader DCU towards an end that I think we all know is gonna be tragic. Plus, Delano's run was among the first Adult comics I discovered so it's kinda sad to see it go for nostalgic reasons. Even though I kinda controversially think it never got any better than those first 40 issues.

Delano's one-off around #85ish was good

The one where a chimp fingered Chas

(spoiler alert)

I have a lot of time for the Mike "Lucifer" Carey issues, it's generally been an okay read for the rest of it - I like that a good writer could carry around a "Oh I have a really good Hellblazer story to tell" and slot it in at nearly any point in the 300 issues, and simultaneously that there's been an ongoing story being told, that he's getting visibly older. A lot like Judge Dredd, now that I think of it.

Yeah, the Carey and Jenkins runs are probably the next best (or at least most true to the character's original direction). Far too many Constantine writers have rather stupidly treated the character as an empty vessel of mystical cooooool who brashly states the author's opinions regardless of whether said utterances are at all in character. Unfortunately, this has more or less become the character's default setting over time (or, one might argue, the moment Ennis's much more popular run eclipsed Delano's much more solid run).

rather stupidly treated the character as an empty vessel of mystical cooooool who brashly states the author's opinions

hey now, Warren Ellis didn't write THAT many issues

Stop with the first fifty or so (wasn't there a 4-issue run by Eddie Campbell and Sean Philips at the end of that?) Purple by today's standards, well, by anyone's, but so what. It in habits a particular place in nostalgia for me, so I suppose you should take my recommendation with a grain of salt.

Carey's stories were often too clever by half, making me think that the only way the plots could have come off is if the characters knew about them ahead of the fact. I never took to Garth Ennis' run. Yadda yadda yadda.

The Ennis run isn't actively bad but I can't hang with it because it bears so little resemblance to what came before (and adversely affected most of what came after). It's just a prototypical Ennis Book (read: not my cup of tea).

The Eddie Campbell four parter and the Delano one-off monkey issue were sandwiched between the Ennis and Jenkins runs.

The four-parter was meant to be an ongoing but Campbell bailed instead of doing the editor's plots

Classic from #1 to the end of the Ennis run. There was one where some guy's diary was possessed by Satan or something, and it was revealing all his private thoughts to the world. I don't remember which number, but that was a great issue.

The last 200 or so issues (at least the few I've picked up) have been absolute shit. The fact that he's being mainstreamed into the DC Universe is kind of the final nail in the coffin.

I miss Vertigo circa '94 or '95. There were some great comics released back then, certainly better than 99% of the dreck that Marvel & DC were pumping out. That being said, it's still pulp material.

I'm still reading it through cbr and enjoying it for the most part I think.

The only run that might have actively sucked was Azzarello's, and even he did some decent stuff.

Like getting Constantine sucked off by a dog.

just heard about the cancellation... i'm actually enjoying JLD and can see the Constantine title working out well in the DCU but this is still pretty sad for me. started reading with the books of magic tpb in '93+'94 which got me into casually following hellblazer over the years... a few back actually i caught up and read everything i hadn't. real sad to see it go.

Yo, I've got an essay on the front page of The New Inquiry today about the Delano era of Hellblazer: http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/the-devil-you-know/

"The first issue of noir horror comic John Constantine, Hellblazer — which Detective Comics announced it would cancel and reboot starting February — is arguably the most socially situated issue that the company ever published. Over forty subtext-soaked pages, occult detective John Constantine travels from London to New York via southern Sudan, rehabilitates and hypnotizes a druggie friend, and trades jokes with a Haitian witch doctor in a midtown high-rise — all while tracking a demon that’s landed in New York from Tangiers. Behind such post-colonial fantasia, John also finds time to clean his apartment, get yelled at by his landlord, kill time on public transportation, buy insecticide from a South Asian bodega, and sexually proposition his ex-girlfriend, who happens to be dead... This essay serves as a eulogy for what will be lost through the comic's cancellation— specifically how uncool the book was, how virtuously unpleasant, how vitriolic, melancholic and spiteful, how negatively charismatic, how difficult to read. The biggest loss will actually be something that really only survived the first twenty or so of the comic’s 300+ issues: its leftist politics and countercultural ethos."

good piece! albeit about a comic I never read more than a few issues of

silk cut were the first cigarettes i bought because john constantine smoked them.

lol a friend of mine did that

I did that for Kents because Tom Waits mentions them once in a song. Bleccch.