Review
JOHN CONSTANTINE: HELLBLAZER: ORIGINAL SINS
by Jamie Delano
Vertigo/DC Comics, 256 pp.
Review
JOHN CONSTANTINE: HELLBLAZER: SETTING SUN
by Warren Ellis
Vetrigo/DC Comics, 96 pp.
"Oh God, please NOOOOOO! Not Keanu!!" That’s the subject line of a rather impassioned posting on an Internet Movie Database message board. The outraged sender of the message is reacting to news that the No. 1 mumbling shlub of American cinema has the title role in Constantine, a coming-in-February movie based on the long-running cult favourite John Constantine: Hellblazer graphic novels.
For the film, the chain-smoking supernatural detective is being transformed from a scruffy, five o’clock shadow-sporting blond guy from Liverpool to a clean-shaven dark-haired dude from California. Cue the shrieking on the message boards.
While the outrage among Hellblazer readers is not surprising, it’s also not unexpected for an American film studio to buy a hot comic-book property and trample on it. They do it all the time. Check out the disappointing Hulk (2003), Daredevil (2003) and The Punisher (2004) films for proof.
So, while the clock is ticking, the uninitiated still have time to check out the real John Constantine before the much-compromised Keanu Reeves version and its accompanying video game are unleashed next month.
If you want to go back to the beginning, you can pick up the Original Sins trade paperback. It contains reprints of the first nine issues of Hellblazer written by Jamie Delano and originally released back in 1987 and 1988.
Here you’ll get to know Constantine as a much-flawed human being who is able to get his shit together just long enough to send demons and other supernatural baddies packing. You’ll also be exposed to a recurring theme in Constantine stories: when the Hellblazer goes to war with pointy-tailed bad guys, it’s usually his pals and loved ones who pay the price.
As grim as these initial stories are, there’s also some wit to be had, primarily in a tale called "Going For It," which features yuppie demons out to fix a national British election. Summing up his distaste for this particular pack of devils, Constantine says, "When it comes to arrogant parasites I’ve got a short fuse."
While the tales in Original Sins are generally strong, the art is hit and miss, and there’s an overabundance of expositional writing, which was a common failing of comics published in the ’80s.
Conversely a less-is-more approach is wildly successful in the Setting Sun trade paperback, which collects five Hellblazer issues written by Warren Ellis and initially released in 1999. Ellis is an iconic figure in the realm of comics and his work collected in Setting Sun, featuring five different illustrators, is superb. The only drawback to this collection is that the best two stories, "Locked" and "The Crib," hit you right off the top, causing the three other tales to suffer slightly in comparison.
"Locked" is a true masterpiece that tells the gripping tale of a room cursed by the sadistic presence of its serial-killing resident. Constantine’s faceoff with this rather sick pup bristles with intensity and the brooding look of the story, supplied by illustrator Frank Teran, reminded me much of the delicious 1995 David Fincher-directed film Seven.
New Constantine tales are continually hitting your favourite comic shop, giving you even more opportunity to gorge yourself on the mystical detective’s shadowy realm before Hollywood’s take on it hits theatres.
Perhaps I am not being fair here. The film could actually turn out to be great. I mean the movie does have… ah, hell no, not Keanu! NOOOOOO!
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