My Weekly Book

More kudos for whoever stocks the graphic novel shelf in my local library - I hereby send you another “ook” of cyber-approval. Knowing about the Alan Moore connection, and having read The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, I just had to give this one a try and ended up thoroughly satisfied that I had.

It’s not for those with weak stomachs, however, this being good old-fashioned supernatural horror of a particularly gory sort perpetrated on the reader by a bloke who (although technically Liverpudlian) immediately looked, sounded and behaved to me exactly like the evil twin of Danny Blue from Hustle. If you want another popular culture reference, Constantine seems to me to share a certain amount with the Tenth Doctor as well - in that he is a profound humanist, however the lives of anyone he comes into close or prolonged contact with seem to end up crumbling to dust. But all these nods from the 2000s are hopelessly inappropriate anyway, since the man himself was created in 1985 and based on Sting in Quadrophenia.

This volume is a trade paperback collecting the first nine episodes of Hellblazer and including an introduction by Delano published in 1992 in which he says: “My personal response to the state of our civilisation has been to acquire a boat to live on. Then, when the oceans rise, I shall be able to sail cheerfully about, sneering at the capitalists marooned on their skyscraper-islands in the flooded financial districts of the northern hemisphere, basking contentedly in the solar radiation pouring, unfiltered, down upon a sterile ocean from a pure blue ozone hole.” Prescient chap. The storylines in this volume include the task of dealing with a hunger spirit set loose by some unwise meddling by an old acquaintance of Constantine’s; a cabal of demons exploiting the greed of yuppies to stage a power grab; the introduction of the sinister Resurrection Crusade and their Pyramid of Prayer selling scheme; Constantine’s missing ten-year-old niece and the introduction and later fate of the enigmatic Zed.

Things get a bit complicated at the end of the book, when Constantine encounters the Swamp Thing and collides with the wider DC universe and is sent off like a pinball on a new story arc. But that doesn’t impair the enjoyment, and although the stories in this volume are a bit variable in quality (Going For It didn’t work so well for me, perhaps it’s just too much of it’s time, although actually I do seem to remember being there at the time) it’s a pretty gripping read overall. The art rises to meet it with a gritty, rough-grained apprearance featuring plenty of hard pencil-marks and visible shading, and a palette that ranges from sepia to downright garish, often indicating the psychic temperature of proceedings. Definitely a worthwhile investment of time for those with a strong stomach and an imagination within the normal range of activity…