John Constantine: Hellblazer vol. 1 — Marks of Woe
“Hellblazer” may not have been the best or buzziest title to have served under the Vertigo banner, but it was consistently good for a lot longer than you’d expect from a Mature Readers title that started in the late 80’s and ran for 300 issues. That’s just one reason I liked it. There were plenty of others too: It was the rare corporate-owned title that was driven by its writers for the majority of its run. It always had good-to-great art from the likes of John Ridgeway, Will Simpson, Marcelo Frusin, Leonardo Manco, Giuseppe Camuncoli & Stefano Landini, and (best of all) Sean Phillips. It also produced a lot of great stories, including one of my all-time favorites in “Dangerous Habits” from Garth Ennis and Will Simpson.
In its way, “Hellblazer” was a good example of Mature Readers storytelling done right in comics. Even if it did trade in plenty of profanity and gore, there was usually at least a decent storytelling reason for those things in each story. So when DC decided to chuck all that and scrub up Constantine for the masses by putting him in the DCU, I didn’t bother following. Better to let the John Constantine I know reside in the mediocrity of old age that had been left to him at the end of his original series. Ennis agrees with me, though he went about illustrating it in the most backhanded way possible.
Yet as everything old is new again, and “The Sandman Universe” promised a new lease on life to old Vertigo favorites, it was only a matter of time before John’s number came up again. So here we are with a new Mature Readers version of “Hellblazer.” Better still is that it’s being written by Simon Spurrier, a writer for whom writing the “Business as Usual” version of a character is anathema. If there was anyone who was going to find a fresh take on the character in this latest relaunch, it was going to be him.
Which he succeeds at, after you get past the continuity gymnastics in this volume’s first two chapters. You see, while “The Sandman Universe” picks up from Vertigo’s previously established continuity, John really wasn’t a part of that after the events of “Hellblazer’s” finale. Which leaves Spurrier the problem of finding a proper John Constantine to build this series around.
The writer deals with this problem by going way back to the original “Books of Magic” miniseries and shows us the Constantine who was on the losing side of the magical war against a power-mad Tim Hunter. He’s just sent one more friend off to die in order to have a hope at saving the world, and all he just wants to do is crawl into a pub and die. After we get to see the “Books of Magic” scene from his perspective, it looks like that’s what he’s going to get.
Until a visitor shows up. He’s an older John, a little more scarred, a little pudgier, surprisingly guilt-free, and most shocking of all, happy. This John has a deal to offer his dying friend: One more shot at life in exchange for his soul when he finally dies for real. Not wanting to face what’s waiting for him in the great hereafter, the dying John agrees. That’s how he winds up in The Year of Our Lord 2019 and in a much cleaner, yet much scarier London.
This new London that Constantine has found himself in is key to Spurrier’s take on this title. You see, where he used the first volume of “The Dreaming” to point out some uncomfortable truths about America, he’s looking to do the same thing with his (now just thirteen-issues-and-change) run on “Hellblazer.” Only his focus is now on his homeland, and it probably won’t surprise you to learn that he has some more pointedly critical things to say about it.
From health care, to gentrification, to homelessness, to gangs, and in particular the deep-seated racism that lurks just beneath the surface of the country’s well-mannered exterior, Spurrier is clearly coming at this series with an agenda. That’s not really a problem for a seasoned “Hellblazer” reader such as myself. The series regularly addressed British social issues over the course of its run and the stories that did this rarely felt like medicine. That’s because the writers were usually quite good about mixing in some solid supernatural storytelling to go along with these tales.
That remains true here as we’ve got stories that involve angels murdering undesireables in a park, John matching wits with a sex trafficker he cursed a while back, John coming face-to-face with the hipster arch-magus, and a story about the hate that resides in a lonely hospital ward. All of these stories touch on the issues I mentioned above, and the results never feel like I’m being fed medicine by the writer. That’s mainly down to the fact that they’re all as solidly crafted as you’d expect from the writer. Along with the fact that he manages to be just clever enough in detailing their resolutions, without ever forgetting to have fun along the way. This is why that continuity pretzel of an opening story also winds up being pretty tasty by its end.
Another reason for that is because as much as Spurrier has Britain in his sights during these issues, he’s got a pretty keen understanding of what makes the title character tick as well. Constantine has come a long way from his original concept of “Streetwise Magician who Looks Like Sting” into being a right proper bastard on his own terms. This is something the writer makes abundantly clear as he spells out his take on the character, entertainment and fascination wrapped over a core so hungry that it can’t help but annihilate anyone it comes into contact with, at one point.
Yet that wrapping of entertainment and fascination is still an enticing thing to behold as Constantine tosses off dirty jokes, makes fools out of racists, and perpetrates some exquisite trolling on some very worthy targets. This is as much a part of the character as is the resentment which motivates his pursuit of the bouncer who won’t sleep with him, and his tolerance of the annoying hipster magus. Spurrier even has Constantine repeat one of his signature lines, “I’m a nasty piece of work, chief. Ask anybody,” and does it only a couple of pages after he’s had a very final conversation with one of his oldest friends. This is a take on the character that gets his appeal and his contradictions, and how the former informs the latter.
It’s also another volume of “Hellblazer” with pretty good art all around. Marcio Takara does a good job of swinging from over-the-top supernatural warfare to the haunted streets of London in the opening issue. Tom Fowler gives us some expressive work, and clever splitscreen action in the “Books of Magic” issue which follows it. Then comes regular artist Aaron Campbell whose dark and gritty work recalls the glory days of the series. The underside of London looks enticingly sinister as he draws it, while his supernatural visions are fittingly monstrous — if a bit muddy at times. Spurrier’s “Coda” collaborator Matias Bergara also drops in for a two-issue stint that’s not on the same level as his work on that series, or the issue of “The Dreaming” he also did, but still displays a good deal of the whimsy and eccentricity that makes his work so appealing.
I’ve probably made it clear by now that this first volume of “John Constantine: Hellblazer” was pretty much everything I wanted from a Mature Readers reboot of the series. Even as it traffics in a lot of the same sights and style of the original Vertigo run, Spurrier, Campbell, and company still offer plenty of new ideas to keep this from feeling like a rehash. As for whether or not other people will like it, that’s a bit harder to say. Even with the cleverness of the stories being told here, is there an audience for the level of self-centered bastardry that Constantine displays here? The fact that this series is ending with its next volume would suggest not. That said, I’m very glad we got to see this version of the character on the page again.