What the Hell? Going to Hell!!! Oh Hell....

[sherkahn]

nu-Image Comics... I mean DC Comics has done away with one of comics true pillars of story writing.

Hellblazer will be no more after issue #299. Newsarama has the industry response about this.





One of the best written and consistently challenging characters will no longer be as we have come to know him. John Constantine is going away, to be replaced by the more PG "Constantine" title.

I'm not happy with this, and neither is most of the talent who wrote or wanted to write for the Laughing Magician.

Comments

[whoha]

Someone's already beat you to the punch, old boy.

[darkknightjrk]

I thought it was going in #300?

Either way...on one hand, I can totally see why people are angry about this. It is a pillar of DC's publishing.

That said, at this point it is kind-of the odd-man-out in terms of what Vertigo does, which is creator-owned series'. Also, while I admit this is a little selfish on my part, when I think about just how bungled, confusing, and expensive it would be to try to get all of the Hellblazer volumes, the idea of a fresh start, a solid ground floor to really get into the character does kind-of appeal to me.

Also, from what I've read of Hellblazer...the DCU take really isn't all that different. He's younger, he seems to be a little better at working with others, but he's still a bastard con man who no one completely trusts.

[rbenchley]

The DCU version of Constantine in Justice League Dark is crap compared to Vertigo. That version will never trick the Devil into curing his lung cancer and then give him the finger oe piss on the remains of the King of Vampires as his body burns in the sunlight. That version will never get every single one of friends killed while trying to save the world or lose his sister's soul in Hell. DC is just the worst.

[darkknightjrk]

He did kind-of inadvertently cause his teacher to go insane and made him think that John just coldly snap a child's neck--does that count as magnificent bastardry worthy of the character?

[jcbaggee]

For the DCnU Constantine, that's a big character moment that will define him for quite some time.

For Vertigo Constantine, that's Tuesday.

[darkknightjrk]

Well, he's only been around for a year or so. Give it time--I'm sure he'll be part of some absolutely wicked things soon enough.

And if not, well--what we got in JLD right now is already a pretty interesting character that I'd probably be down to read about.

[tpsreports]

#299. That makes me feel old. I remember when issue 1 came out.

[roguezombie]

If this gets rid of Epiphany and the marriage that should never have even happened than I am definitely on board.

[darkknightjrk]

What was wrong with those things? I haven't really followed Hellblazer, so I'm kinda curious now.

[roguezombie]

IDK, I know others liked her, but she just never felt like a fully developed character to me And I hate the word Mary-Sue but she would be a good candidate. Especially after that scene with John and Kit where he was just like "I love her more than I did you." And with the marriage I just kept on waiting for something bad to happen. Like the whole thing with Constantine is bad shit happens to him, but then he was just happily married.

[endis_ni]

I felt the same way. One minute he was mourning Phoebe, next minute he was proposing to some kid. And after Kit was (fairly gracefully) booted down to second place in the "I Survived John Constantine's Cock And All I Got Was This Lousy Tee Shirt" league tables, Angi was shown as having eaten herself to obesity out of heartbreak and bitterness.

I get that several writers on Hellblazer had a sort of 'pet' character that they then set Constantine up with until someone else comes on the titles, but that seemed unnecessary and a blatant bit of "Look! See? Epiphany is the BESTEST EVER!".

So...it turns out I may be harbouring emotions on this one.

[blackruzsa]

Epiphany is a Mary Sue in almost every form and for the years of character development and the significance of surviving recurring characters, she popped right out of nowhere.

She'd have been a great character if she had nothing to do with John, or if she was a kid sidekick rather than a love interest--I actually wouldn't have minded if she'd started off as a friend or sidekick, THEN moved on into a relationship, but they got together in a hurry.

I stopped reading Hellblazer because of the storylines evolving into that, as opposed to the way it used to be. I dunno.

[halloweenjack]

I guess that that's her with John in the scan above? Geez. Old dude hooks up with young punk/emo/goth/hipster/alternative woman, that's not a cliche or anything, in one well-known comics writer's work in particular, is it?

[whoha]

I'll probably check out the last issue of Hellblazer and the first issue of Constantine. For Curiosity's sake, at least.

[blackruzsa]

Same.

[mrosa]

Good riddance. This series was pretty awful. Apart from the Delano and Ennis runs, I never could stand the series. I tried to read Carey's and dropped it; I got back with Milligan, thinking we'd finally get a thinking man's Constantine once more, and dropped it again. It's like a series that never found its true potential, it was a cheap monster-of-the-month series, and apart from Constantine's caustic and sarcastic personality, whose wit depended a lot on who was writing him, it had little to offer in terms of good storytelling.

Reading those tweets, I get two things: 1) nostalgia for a character who was past his prime a long, long time ago; 2) sadness because they didn't have the chance to write their Constantine. Ellis' tweet was hilarious. British horror? Really? Did he read the comics in the last decade? There was hardly any intelligent, suspenseful horror in it. Take the veil from over your eyes. Nothing in Hellblazer written in the last 10 years comes close in intelligence, wit, character building and suspense of, say, Locke & Key.

Also, I think it's remarkable that for a series set in England, and London mostly, I barely ever learned anything about either in many years of reading it. Just compare From Hell to it, pathetic really. It's pretty obvious this was never a series the creators ever put a lot of effort or thought or research into, they just went through the motions, had Constantine saying bastard and shit and bloody a lot, cracking a few silly jokes, acting like a bastard, meeting a clichéd demon here and a silly magician there, and that was it. And don't even get me started on Milliogan's atrocious run - the embarrassing issues about Sid Vicious and the conservative party, the Bollywood arc, the out-of-character blue collar Constantine putting a stop to a worker's strike and casting a spell on a union leader, WTF?

The last years have been total rubbish, let it die.

[leoboiko]

Hellblazer was great in its time, but like most DC comics, it suffered horribly from not being allowed to end.

[q99]

While I've never read Hellblazer, I do love long-running comics on principle, so I am saddened.

[leoboiko]

And in the new Constantine comic, he'll be black-haired, American, always have the same expression, and kill demons with holy shotguns?

[blackruzsa]

With the way the stories have been going, I think it'd be best if they went in this direction--although it wouldn't be terribly unique.

[leoboiko]

I think it would be best if they just let him AGE and END it after a glorious final gambit, like Spider Jerusalem.

[blackruzsa]

I wish he could go back to being the John we know, even with the old age, egad.

[mrstatham]

Please don't compare the modern DC Comics to Image; DC Comics will never have a chance of growing into the creator friendly company Image has been since it shed the sheer 90's nature of it's superhero titles. DC has some good points, sure, but they're sure as hell never going to produce Morning Glories or Saga or an Invincible or anything along those lines. Image is kicking DC in the teeth when it comes to quality, right now.

[sherkahn]

I'm referring to 90's Image comics, as it looks like the current leadership at DC is trying to recapture that glory gone by, instead of passing the torch and working with the rich history that they have inherited.

The current Saga, Invincible, Prophet... just really knocking it out of the park... giving me hope that comics can still reach a level of transcendency in the art.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

#299... ugh, would it kill anyone to go out on a round number?

[leikomgwtfbbq]

In the most dweeby way, I'm actually quite heartbroken about this. Hellblazer is my favorite ongoing series, the only one I keep up with since all my other favorites have been canceled or ended or reworked into a thing I don't like very much.

So that's kind of it for me, I guess.

Makes me sad.

What I wanted from an "end of Hellblazer" story is a fantastic, in-character extravaganza. A heroic death, a final "thanks for sticking with me, dear reader" from John, something like that. Not just "HEY PRESTO CANCELLATION."

...and just as much, I wanted that stupid, stupid Epiphany storyline to get the ax and be buried over with John and Angie's Glorious Reunion As They Go Off To Fight Bigfoot or Whatever.

[mrosa]

Nostalgia aside, how many people were actually enjoying this series? I only ask because I still haven't read a comment here praising Milligan's run - it's Mary Sue this, Epiphany sucks that, time-travelling boo, marriage hiss... so what's your problem, people? Sad to see rubbish go away?

Was John Constantine a great character? Yes, when he was written by Alan Moore, Jamie Delano, Garth Ennis (sometimes) and Neil Gaiman (rarely). Was Hellblazer a great series? I have my doubts, Delano's run aside, and one or two arcs by Ennis, it was something that oscillated a lot between good, mediocre and downright awful. Excellence of storytelling is something I seldom, if ever, saw in the series, perhaps The Family Run storyline.

This series had some of the allegedly best writers in the business - Carey, Diggle, Azzarello, Milligan - and they weren't capable of rescuing the title, turning it into something interesting, attracting new writers; more importantly neither ever gave me the impression he was writing anything but fan-fiction. I firmly believe Delano was the only one who took this job seriously and put everything he had in the series.

I ask you this, what are the storylines from, say, the last 10 years that you'd rank alongside The Family Man, 'Hold Me' or Dangerous Habits? Carey's Staring at the Wall? Denise Mina's The Red Right Hand? The idiotic return of Shade? So much glory to choose from...

Well, we'll always have Ambrose Bierce.

[superboyprime]

Well, at least one know-nothing critic had a pretty high opinion of the Azzarello run:

"Judged by the stark, sure-footed portrait in Hard Time, Brian Azzarello and Richard Corben clearly have John Constantine down, cold and to the life. Azzarello's grasp of pacing, character and situation resonates through every scene with a black crystal clarity that's short of masterful, while Corben contributes what is, perhaps, one of the most darkly expressive pieces in a long, already-legendary career." -Alan Moore

[mrosa]

Alan Moore thinks tijuana bibles are great works of art, never forget that in these situations.