Hellblazer Cancelled, Gets PG-rated DCU Relaunch

[espanolbot]

Well... that's kind of sad. :(



http://www.newsarama.com/comics/constantine-relaunch-dc-comics.html

Comments

[filthysize]

FUCKING BOLLOCKS.

[rainspirit]

It'sa right bloody travesty, is what it is! Those tossers.

[mrstatham]

We all saw this coming, really. I'd expected it sooner, frankly, since Vertigo has long since stopped being that place with a loose continuity of it's own, and more of a creator-owned/indie arena that only kinda-sorta prestigious writers can play in - and it doesn't even do THAT very well anymore, based on Image's current roster of creators.

[blueprintstyles]

Just because he's in the new 52 doesn't mean it's PG, look at Animal Man and Swamp Thing.

[his_spiffynesss]

I kind of like this return to this kind of pre-Vertigo situation where all of the characters are in continuity, but are still free to go off on these bizzare tangents (like Dial H and it's hored off oddball heroes)

[mrstatham]

I agree, to a degree. I think it's just a bit of a slap in the face because Hellblazer was the last of the old guard, so to speak. There's nothing to say that the New 52 series couldn't be better, but.. Well, DC's record speaks for itself.

[q99]

The main thing their recent record tells me is they don't really believe in long continuing stories.

[jlroberson]

You're joking? ANIMAL MAN is pretty OK--well, was till ROTWORLD came along(Steve Pugh is definitely awesome but always is, and I do like that the story basically proceeds from his & Jamie Delano's criminally underseen take on Buddy)--but Swamp Thing has become really awful. They made him a superhero and the Swamp Thing body a kind of costume. And I wouldn't call those books anything more than PG-13 at best.

[lissa_quon]

What...but..it's Hellblazer....
It's been around since...I mean...WHAT.

I cut my nerd teeth on Hellblazer.

[jlroberson]

1987, the year I graduated from high school. Apart from a stretch away during Carey & Azzarello's runs(which I've since read and like too now) I've followed that book 25 years of my life and the character 5 more. This is something that has been with me my entire adult life. It had an influence on the way I write, and the Jamie Delano run at the least even influence how I think a tiny bit.

So it's sad to say goodbye. The DCU take, if JLD is any indication, is...tepid. JC has grown far beyond that at this point, regardless of how he started. He took on far more interest the minute Jamie got ahold of him, focused on London, and gave him his own world. It is a rich story with many gloriously good sections. (and now as long as CEREBUS.)

But DC simply can no longer allow a space in which there are no superheroes. I would imagine this portends that Vertigo will cease. I no longer really have any reason to buy DC comics. They already turned Swamp Thing, something that's been with me in one way or another since those Wrightson reprints in the late 70s, I guess I was 9, into something i really haven't any interest in reading.

I know the feels

[lissa_quon]

Enh I was a bored ten year old and read whatever my much older sister was silly enough to leave laying around. She eventually found out what I was doing and started giving me the issues in order.

So I got introduced to the Alan Moore Swamp Thing and Books of Magic early on, behind my mom's back. I was introduced to Constantine through those. Though I think I also probably read some Hellblazer - but I remember all the comics I read that summer in a big blur.

But yea - sad to see it end and see DC suck it back into the cape books. I actually never developed a love for the hero books like I did for the Vertigo stuff.

Re: I know the feels

[jlroberson]

When people speak disdainfully of 90s comics, I have to remind myself that what they mean when they say this is not what I was reading then, because the comics I was reading were not the shit they describe. They mean Image as it was then, or superhero Marvel/DC. I was reading Vertigo, Tundra(while it existed), Fantagraphics, and like that. And in THAT realm, 90s comics were great.

Comics underwent a major evolutionary leap in the 80s and 90s when mature content was at last viable in the market and the majors allowed it in. That is no longer the case. It's very depressing and worse, in the indies (I mean outside of Avatar and Image) there aren't even (nearly) any regular comics anymore, but rather simply books. Which is good in a way, but I miss being able to habitually read the stuff, and having to resort to Marvel or DC for my fix, which now inevitably means reading superheroes.

I stayed away from superheroes for a long time; the 00s brought me back to them. I wish that I'd kept that door shut forever and feel I will be shutting it now. I'm sick of fucking superheroes. I really am. And I'm sick of them spreading like cockroaches into everything I like.

Re: I know the feels

[lissa_quon]

You could do what I do, watch everything on the side lines and just spend your money on Atomic Robo comics. Not much of a fix but Atomic Robo tends to be the one comic book that hasn't found some way to let me down.

Re: I know the feels

[jlroberson]

The ones I'm buying right now are BLACK KISS 2 and HAPPY(my only Big Company books really seem to be Image, with also FASHION BEAST by Moore/ MacLaren at Avatar) bth of which I really like but sadly, both of those are limited runs. Also Brendan McCarthy's ZAUCER OF ZILK, which is gleefully silly insanity I enjoy that DC never ever would--nowadays--have published.

BLACK KISS 2 though in particular: I usually can't stand prequels, but in this case, this is a prequel that makes its predecessor seem like the last chapter. MUCH more ambitious and insane than BK1.

[shadowpsykie]

I asked Robert if John would still be bisexual and he said that they are keeping a lot underwraps but that "what's not broke won't be needing fix'in"

[endis_ni]

Well, bugger. Hellblazer has always been my cheese-on-toast of comics. It's not the title I love best, but every so often I'll fancy a slice, and it'll be there, familiar and agreeable and always welcome around the house.