Sixpack and Dogwelder: Hard-Travelin' Heroz #2

[history79]

Comments

[tigerkaya]

Not sure I understand Tennis gripes. John is still doing the usual supernatural detective conman, unless I missed something.
Otherwise stop wasting our time Garth go back to writing war stories.

[caivu]

He's not being gritty or swear-y enough for Ennis's juvenile sensibilities. Or so I gather.

[tigerkaya]

Poor Garth still stuck in his perpetual 13 year old mindset. Never capable of growing up. How sad.

[mrstatham]

WAA, WAA, they put a character back into a universe he had previously belonged too! WAA, WAA, I don't want that fucking baby superhero shit all over my tough edgy English smoking magician man, even though my attitude's just as childish.

We get it, Garth. Your big strong war heroes are real men. You hate superheroes in the capacity everyone thinks Warren Ellis does, when he clearly doesn't. Have a cookie, enjoy your crybaby wash, rinse, repeating of this tired moan next year.

[dcbanacek]

I agree with your points.

I wonder if calling Ennis a hypocrite is the correct word, he obviously L O A T H E S comic superheroes (except for Superman) with the passion of billion burning suns yet continues to use the medium to earn a paycheck.

Agatha Christie at a certain point HATED writing anything with Hercule Poirot, yet she continued on writing the character (and with probably a lot less whining than Ennis) and earning a living.

"We get it, Garth. Your big strong war heroes are real men."
Which is kind of ironic from an American point of view when the most highly decorated American soldier was Audie Murphy, who at that time, looked like the "before" picture of Steve Rogers and did the majority of his heroics while suffering from malaria.

[mrstatham]

I will say that I'm being hyperbolic when it comes to 'big strong war heroes being real men', because they're not typically drawn as such, but.. Really, after a point, his stories basically become just as much narmy 'real man' wish fulfilment as the average superhero book. If not worse.

[caivu]

Has he ever gone into detail about exactly why he hates them so much?

[sagrada]

If I may, the answer is pretty simple. Mr. Ennis hates that superhero comics are such a massive part of the industry. Thanks to certain beings who shall remain nameless, the genre escaped the massive censorship campaign of the Comics Code thanks to being fluffy morality-play tripe, and the death and disappearance of so many other genres from the stands meant that it was pretty much superheroes and romance. By adopting the tropes of the romance comics(among whose major contributors was Jacob Kurtzberg) superhero comics have created what is almost a narrative perpetual-motion machine where actual innovation is stifled by the need to maintain and curate a brand.

Even with the indie boom and the explosion of creativity from the likes of Saga or the Wicked and the Divine, superheroes are still a dominant force because they're like more violent Archie for the most part. That need to fill a vacuum led to superhero comics becoming so catch-all that actual science-fiction or fantasy or historical fiction or crime of horror comics are practically niche. Even now they're mostly the province of individuals with a vested interest in the subject, like Kirkman's Walking Dead: The Reagan Years or Mr. Ennis' various war comics.

That and the shocking ways superhero comic talent is and has been treated is, for Mr. Ennis, reason enough to despise the whole apparatus. He doesn't hate Daredevil, he wants Daredevil and the rest of the mask and tights set to not overshadow literally everything else comics can be about.

I dunno if that's a very accurate view, but that's his thinking from what I've gleaned.

[caivu]

So if I understand correctly, he's taking out his frustrations with the industry on a certain subtype of characters? That doesn't sound petty at all.

[reveen]

Don't they have mainstream DC Constantine running concurrently with edgy R-rated Constantine? What the hell is he complaining about?

[mrstatham]

Not any more - John was fully absorbed back into the DCU along with Swamp Thing and the like. They are however continuously reprinting the old Constantine stuff, and really, Ennis doesn't have a point at all. The character started out in the DCU; it's like whining about Marvel still using the Punisher in mainstream books despite his 'MAX' work.

[reveen]

I mean, I clearly remember seeing recent comics with him doing nasty things, being a jerk, smoking, and having sex with people, right?

The only thing to complain about is the lack of explicit swearing a graphic violence. But I click the character tag and see a rebirth issue where he's drinking Jack Daniels right out of the bottle while scamming a demon so he's not being declawed that much. What more does Ennis need than that?

Oh of course, no explicit violence, sex or swearing. Because Ennis can only do edginess with a sledgehammer.

[janegray]

Even the "no sex" thing is overrated. Wasn't there an issue where Batman and Catwoman have sex on panel for two pages straight? You can't see the goods but you can definitely see they are fucking.

[mrstatham]

That would have been the opening issue of Selina's New52 series, yeah. So.. Absolutely. This is entirely just Garth whining about nothing.

[beyondthefringe]

Warren Ellis did it much better in Planetary. :)

[leoboiko]

Agreed.

And I agree with him that Constantine is a through-and-through product of the 80s, and that the character has lost significantly by being frozen outside of time. I've argued here several times that I wish superheroes aged and died (for real) and passed on the mantle—but for no character I've wished this harder than Constantine. I would be all over the mystical adventures of a cynical-but-wizened, still treacherous but somewhat more soft-hearted aging ex-punk John.

[beyondthefringe]

One of the best things I ever saw in the original run was him celebrating his 40th birthday... here was a guy who really -was- aging and changing with his experiences... usually for the worse.

[commodus]

I see no problem with John being in the wider DC Universe - the only problem is him being a hero, hanging out with Justice League Dark, having cute banter with Batman.

See, Constantine's not a hero, he's not even an anti-hero. I think he's a villain, a bad guy. He cruelly uses everyone around him, destroys their lives and wanders off, free from all consequences. Kind of like Reed Richards with worse PR.

Like, does anyone remember that comic where he spiked a guy with LSD and locked him in a morgue overnight? That's not some gruff, stubbly antihero "playing by his own rules", that's a deeply evil thing to do to another human being.

Surely it's interesting to have such a loathsome, rather pitiable, character on the fringes of this fantastic world of Gods and heroes? There's simply so much potential, especially with characters like Darkseid.

[korvar]

But that's the very definition of "anti-hero". He's not doing these vile things for his own benefit (usually). He's doing them because Something Utterly Horrible will happen otherwise.

If he was a villain he'd be running the supernatural underworld in DC. He's certainly capable.

[leoboiko]

Eh, still better than the movies.

[halloweenjack]

tl;dr--Ennis literally can't find an anvil big enough.