The story DC Comics refused to publish

[superboyprime]

Towards the end of the 20th century, Ellis wrote a John Constantine story called "Shoot," which DC canned. As Ellis explains it: "Years ago, I wrote a brief run on the DC Vertigo horror comic JOHN CONSTANTINE: HELLBLAZER. Brief, because I wrote a horror story therein called SHOOT. SHOOT was about schoolyard slayings in the United States. It was completed before Columbine happened, but scheduled to appear not long after. The regime at DC Comics at the time decided that it could not be released in its completed form. I refused to go along with the changes they wanted to make. They decided not to publish the book at all. I quit."



This week, DC finally published the story, as the lead in VERTIGO RESURRECTED, a 100-page anthology of rare Vertigo stories.









So we're clear, it's one of those stories where the title and credits don't appear until the final page. That's the final page, not the beginning of the story.

Comments

[jlroberson]

I've read a bootlegged version of this in b/w. I have to say, it was pretty weak. It really doesn't say much that's very startling, and Ellis comes off as, in a bad way, preachy, to not much effect. Well-meant but not really that powerful, especially for him(and most especially given the rest of his run on the book is great, especially "Setting Sun," though that one is actually the repurposing of a STORMWATCH story). Nice art, though.

Now, does this collection have Veitch & Zulli's "Mourning of the Magician?" I'm betting not.

[blackruzsa]

So that's it?
That's all?
Dammmmmn.

[espanolbot]

I think that it's hilarious that we can use phrases like "towards the end of the twentieth century" and make it seem like some far off time of yore, when, to me at least, it seems to have just been the other day.

[golden_orange]

It's because now we're living in the far-flung twenty-first century WOORRRRLD OF TOMORROWWWWW!! and we need something to make us feel better about the fact that we still have no jetpacks.

[deepspaceartist]

Well, I can certainly see why they chose not to print this soon after Columbine. I mean, really? Saying that kid's lives suck nowadays, and therefore they want to be shot? Or are at best apathetic about it? What the fuck? Do you really want to go up to the family of the victims of a school shooting and say "Sorry, I guess your kids weren't happy enough with their lives to try not to get shot"?

[werehawk.livejournal.com]

Yeah. If your going to make an artistic stand, Ellis, you should pick your battles better.

[stolisomancer]

That isn't the point of the story. It's not one of Ellis's strongest ideas, but it's very much a nineties sort of nihilist theme: the world is so inherently broken that the only sensible reactions are either rejection or total withdrawal. (Morrison's Kill Your Boyfriend came out of the same cultural backdrop, along with films like Trainspotting or The Doom Generation. There's a really strong nihilistic vibe in nineties pop culture, now that I think about it.) It pops up in Transmet as well, although it's not the focus of any issue's plot.

"Shoot" has been floating around the Internet as a black-and-white bootleg since at least 2000. If you read the entire thing, and you should before making up your mind about it, it depends very much on a slow burn that follows the woman as she investigates the shootings, and a deliberate parallel to Jonestown.

What Constantine is saying here is more or less considered common sense right now, after we've spent eleven years discussing it post-Columbine: it's not the games, it's not the movies, it's not the music or TV or clothes, it's the parents not paying any fucking attention. Ellis takes this to its natural horrific conclusion. It's not a great story, and its impact's been vastly changed by elements that were outside Ellis's control, but it's important to consider the background it comes from.

[jarodrussell]

Well, you know, before Farmville, things were bad.

[werehawk.livejournal.com]

I really hope they publish Veitch's Swamp Thing 88 in a future issue.

[shanejayell]

Eh, not bad.

I can see why DC canned it, and I can understand why Ellis left.

[jlroberson]

It's an example of Ellis not thinking out the premise fully. He does that sometimes--the part of the story that might have made a good pitch interests you, and then Ellis realizes, "Oh wait, this also has to have a middle and an end" but then it's too late. When Ellis does an unsatisfying story, that's usually where it went wrong. Either that, or you can tell he did it for the check, and that happens sometimes when he's working on corporate characters you can tell he doesn't care about: the plot is only outline deep. Compare the excellent NEXTWAVE, which you can absolutely tell he's into, to, say, JLA: NEW MAPS OF HELL, more of an illustrated outline with little enthusiasm evident in it.

I and others have already mentioned that the theme in this story is a misfire, excuse the term. But there's also a plot problem. Constantine ends up at each of these killings, with an almost frightening prescience, and not once does he do anything to prevent it happening? Don't tell me he couldn't. This is Constantine.

And I still have no idea what bearing Jonestown has on this. At all. Not at all the same kind of tragedy. Except: Ultimately Ellis makes them both seem like death due to ennui.

[icon_uk]

As I recall, it was around this time that the Titans comic introduced Goth, a nihilisitc demon whose disguise was as a sort of Marilyn Manson style Goth singer, whose concerts were followed by school shootings and general violence..

[thormonger]

Really? *facepalm*

[meatwhichdreams]

Oh fer....

[freezer]

I have a sneaking suspicion that this was quashed because it was subpar at best and Columbine provided a more than adequate excuse.

[jlroberson]

Pretty much. I read this via a torrent a long time ago and thought, "That's it?" It's one of those Ellis stories with excellent buildup to...nothing.

The good thing is that he produces so much, there are enough good works by him it's easy to forget stories like this one. But half his Avatar output could be described as shaggy dog stories.

[seriousfic]

A world where kids actually go to special classes to learn to recognize real emotions and body language because they were raised by the television.

...you get ADD/Aspergers from watching too much TV?

[stolisomancer]

Not from watching too much TV by itself, but from absorbing too much of your upbringing via the TV. A kid who's spent too much time with the television as an improvised babysitter has a reduced attention span and a lowered sense of human empathy. You're supposed to learn social interaction via socially interacting, and there are multiple recorded cases of children who've gotten as far as high school without managing to do that.

[thanekos]

... well, that is an interesting way to lay a title page out, if nothing else.

rest of it's pretty pat, though.

[nezchan]

I've seen a few stories that have done it that way. It's a bit tricky to pull off well, though.

[jarodrussell]

Trenchcoat Brigade vs. Trenchcoat Mafia.

[thehefner]

Shortly after Columbine, my boss at the comic shop got a call from a reporter who heard about the recently-released Trenchcoat Brigade mini-series and wanted to know we could confirm any correlation. My boss suggested the reporter question the actual mafia and see what they know.

[mcity]

Deathless prose form the pen of Warren Ellis, everyone.

Also, this is not what happens. You might get a few seconds of stunned silence before the running and screaming starts.

[btravage]

What's wrong with happy pills? As human beings our very biological niche is toolmaking, and I see happy pills as just another tool.

[meatwhichdreams]

Beautifully put! My only issue with "happy pills" is when they are used by physicians, psychiatrists, and parents as a way to make a child's problems "vanish" instead of actually taking the time and effort to understand what these problems actually are.

[halloweenjack]

Ellis' work on Hellblazer is neither anywhere near his best work, nor is it anywhere near the best work on the character that anyone's done. Submitting work that you know (or could probably guess) that your publisher won't publish is a handy way of establishing yourself as an edgy, transgressive artist (see also: Millar's last arc on the Authority), but I doubt that he had much else to say about (or through) Constantine at this point.

[stolisomancer]

I don't know about that. I would actually rank Ellis's "One Last Love Song" as one of the single best short Hellblazer stories of all time.

[proteus_lives]

Not impressed.

[une_croix]

What's the first panel of page three meant to be?

[superboyprime]

Just shadows on the wall.