Hellblazer: Say No To Magic, Kids!

[espanolbot]

A bit from the Garth Ennis run, where when John Constantine and his girlfriend Kit are visiting John's sister's family, only for her to angrily accuse John of trying to get her daughter Gemma into magic like him.

Knowing full well that once you start using magic, particularly curses like the one Gemma was caught using, it's very hard to stop, John pleeds innocence and decides to go and talk to her about it.




So Gemma and Kit wander off for her to convince her to drop the whole using magic thing (if you followed Hellblazer up until it's cancellation you'd know why this is hilarious), while John goes to the guy who'd been handing out genuine magical artefacts and Constantines the crap out of him.





On a similar tangent, the trailer for the upcoming Constantine tv show also seems to have a "magic is ultimately bad for you" deal, while also picking up bits from the Keanu Reeves movie and the BBC series the Fades for some bizarre reason.

"Constantine NBC Official Trailer [HD] | CONSTANTINE" (Watch on YouTube)

Comments

[cainofdreaming]

From watching the trailer earlier this week I thought the series seems to owe more to the Dresden Files (the telly series, not the books) than to Hellblazer. I'll probably still watch it, but... is it really that hard to stick with the source material?

[icon_uk]

I think the problem I have with the trailer is that Constantine is coming into the field very very late in the day, after a LOT of "magic is a messy business" series, like Supernatural (with its more... blue collar approach to magic) and The Dresden Files and so on...

There's nothing NEW here visually or conceptually to make me think "Gosh, this is new and exciting", partly because most of the things we saw in Hellblazer have been borrowed by others since then.

[michaelhealy]

Yeah Hellblazer pretty much created every urban fantasy cliche but I'm willing to give it a shot because it has quite a lot of potential.

[halloweenjack]

Hellblazer pretty much created every urban fantasy cliche

Not really. Dracula probably came before just about everybody, and even comics had urban fantasy decades before Hellblazer--in fact, Constantine is the newest member of the Trenchcoat Brigade. What Hellblazer did best was to make the subgenre politically and socially relevant, at least at its best. The thing I like about this story is that it not only shows the dangers of kids farting around with the occult in a world in which it actually works, but also has Constantine dealing with being a sort of counterculture demi-celebrity.

As far as the TV series goes, well, I'm not expecting a lot, but I didn't think that there was much potential in a Hannibal Lecter TV series, either, and it seems to have turned out to be quite a thing (although I haven't actually watched it yet). So, who knows.

[espanolbot]

Hannibal's AMAZING! :D

[cainofdreaming]

Yes, the Danish maneater is really strong in the role.

[zapbiffpow]

Oh, God, it is. All the imagery is awesome.

[blackruzsa]

Hannibal will blow your mind :)

[shadowpsykie]

Constantines the crap out of him.
i love you... you made Constantine into a verb lol


all i am asking for this series is they keep him a bastard (he can have a heart of gold that's fine, but what i loved about him is that he got dirty when others didn't want to.) They keep him Bi, and some how they work Gemma into the series somehow.