James

he seems to understand how important the character is to the fans. that's way more than anyone else associated with anything beyond the comic has even attempted since pre-pro for that awful film began.

Fair fucks to Frank Cappello, aka TearsInRain, he made an effort to come on here and chat with us, when the actual tangible benefit to his film would've been about $200 in tickets, tops, and showed some knowledge of the comic to boot. The actual film wasn't much cop, and by the sounds of it a lot of the 'Hellblazery' stuff got shaved off in rewrites, but I can't fault him as a person.

I'll give Ryan props. I'm still not sold on the show yet--to me it could be a lot like Denise Mina's run on the book - John's great but what if the situations they put him in are stupid or not interesting? Bless her heart, she really knew her main character but had no clue what to do with him. I have that same fear about the show. Maybe it's unfounded, I just look at the history of what's been done to the character out side the comic, and it's all shit. So the track record is what's fucking me up. But I go back and forth. The international trailer had good and bad things in it the first trailer didn't have, so who knows?

I think Mina's problem was inexperience with the medium and a weak editor, rather than a lack of ideas.

The comic should hopefully provide fertile soil for the new creative team, and there's no reason why any of them couldn't have as many great concepts, characters and stories as any of Hellblazer's best writers.

Actually, let's see who's signed up so far. Disclaimer: for the most part I can't be bothered to see which specific episodes they've written, so this isn't necessarily indicative of their individual strengths. But the shows they've worked on before may indicate their own preferences for tone or style. Also, a few of these guys have producer credits on other shows, but I don't know how that shakes down in relation to the writing dynamic on Constantine.

Carly Wray

Writing credits: Mad Men, nothing else in TV or film, according to IMDB.

I'm not a fan of the show, but it suggests to me that she's probably capable of writing strong, nuanced characters engaging in real, human drama.

Christine Boylan

Writing credits: Leverage, Castle, Once Upon a Time, Off the Map.

Never heard of Off the Map, but Leverage and Castle are both very fun shows with a decent balance of humour and drama (leaning more towards the former, most of the time). Leverage is all about con men, so that's a good pedigree, and Castle gets the 'sexy couple with a fun supporting cast' vibe down. All I can say about Once Upon a Time is that I saw it on TV in a cafe once and the direction and FX were so poor I assumed it was some terrible low-budget 90s genre show.

Mark Verheiden

Writing credits: Timecop (TV show), Smallville, Heroes, Battlestar Galactica, Hemlock Grove

Old hand at comics and TV; apparently did a Phantom run in 1989 that played on social and political issues, so that's promising. Less promising is the Heroes and Smallville connection (he was a producer on the latter). But I'm hoping that the Battlestar Galactica connection (also producer) cancels that out. Never seen Hemlock Grove. High probability that he's familiar with the comics, given that he's been involved in that industry since the 80s, and has done stuff for DC. Has plenty of experience, at the very least.

Davita Scarlett

No writing credits, just a second AD credit on a short film. But what a fantastic name!

Daniel Cerone

Writing credits: Charmed, Dexter, The Mentalist, Motive

One of the two main producers behind the show. Worth pointing out that his Dexter credits are all from the first two seasons, back before it became an embarassing, shambling mess of a show. He also exec-produced the second (excellent) and third (less than excellent) seasons, but that's a vague job description, so who knows how much he influenced them? Charmed was awful, but given the remit of 'like Buffy, but with bigger tits' and all the behind-the-scenes catfighting I'm not sure anyone could have hoped for anything else. The Mentalist, which he also produces, is like merangue - light and enjoyable, but lacking in weight. And Motive (again, producer) seems to be a (slightly) more character-led police procedural.

So he's got episodic action, black humour and (light) fantasy down - I just hope he understands that Constantine doesn't have to be too formulaic, episodic or bound to its status quo, as Charmed, Dexter and The Mentalist all have been, to a greater or - um - even greater extent. Hopefully the rest of the writing team will bring some weight to the story.

I assume he wrote the pilot, but the webrip has no credits. In which case it's about in line with what I'd expect from him - though surprisingly lumpy and lacking in finesse.

David S Goyer

Writing credits: Scripting and co-scripting (and often production) duties on Dark City, Blade, The Dark Knight, FlashForward, Ghost Rider 2, Da Vinci's Demons, The Man of Steel

I don't know whether he's doing much writing, or even much hands-on production work - according to IMDB he has 10 projects in pre-production and another three in active production so I assume he's busy, busy, busy - but he's one of the big two producers alongside Cerone, so we'll see. I see him as basically a journeyman writer who's had the benefit of being paired up with superior co-writers and directors, though I've heard largely good things about Da Vinci's Demons.

On the plus side, if he does have one outstanding trait, it's the ability to successfully place the outlandish and supernatural in a plausible, down-to-earth context, which is a trait found in a good many of my favourite Hellblazer stories (though it's not really evident in the Constantine pilot, which goes heavy on the comic book spookiness from the get-go). He's also generally pretty adept at cannibalising other people's ideas for adaptation, which is a useful skill to have with so much source material. I do wonder a bit whether he's responsible for the spot-on Constantine seen in the pilot.

Hmm. Dark City was amazing. What's Alex Proyas doing these days? Piss-awful B-movies, it looks like. Get him on board for a bit, too.

In conclusion

Fucking hell, are you still reading? Basically it's hard to call. I wouldn't say that anyone here - based on my obviously limited knowledge - looks like a perfect, all-round fit for a Hellblazer adaptation. Cerone's done some good work on some good shows, but I worry that he trends too much towards episodic series and formulaic procedurals. The latter's perhaps less serious a problem, since the pilot sets up a number of possible ongoing threads, but I do hope there's a desire to see through longer emotional arcs and actually allow for some character progression - something that's always been limited in his previous shows but has no reason to be here.

Granted, Hellblazer always pushed the reset button itself, but usually only when a head writer left after three or four years, and in any case TV viewers these days - particularly, I think, ones watching genre drama shows - expect more forward progression from their characters. Even Parks & Rec has masses of character and interpersonal development, and that's a mainstream sitcom!

The reliance on procedure and formula is a bit more of a concern, especially as the pilot sets up a very formula-friendly demon-huntin' concept. They're getting rid of Liv, so perhaps that'll give them the opportunity to change up how the series progresses, but I do hope they take some time out to do plenty of stories about - I dunno, a haunted photograph or a man possessed by a conjoined twin or anything other than 'Hey, this is a fire/water/air/electricity/dream/fear pokemon demon! We need a special amulet!' every week.

Mark Verheiden and Carly Wray have both worked on shows with strong ongoing story arcs, so that's promising, but it remains to be seen what Cerone wants the show to be.

And, like the rest of the writers, Cerone, Wray and Verheiden's past history doesn't scream 'Hellblazer' at me. There're a lot of very light, goofy shows there, and not a great deal of horror. The first couple of seasons of Dexter struck a very nice balance between black humour and queasy wrongness, and it would be nice to see that side of Cerone come out, rather than the bright, colourful and charming Mentalist side (and in terms of visuals and tone, the pilot was more along the latter - very comic-booky). I do hope there's room here to do both big-budget, less threatening 'horror' as seen in the pilot (think Insidious-style spectacle and jump-scares) and more creepy, memorable horror too.

In its prime, Supernatural managed to do ridiculously goofy comedy, visceral gore and genuinely eerie horror back-to-back. But that show's base line was angst, doom and a muted colour palette, and I think it's probably easier to start there and go light than to start at goofy and colourful and then swing into darkness.

But at this point there's everything to play for, and the pilot gets so much about the comic right that I really hope it's a case of fine-tuning the show towards the comic and away from the more conventional, shiny US pilot-isms. It depends a lot on how capable the writers are, what Cerone's vision of the show is, and how open the writers' room is to collaboration and mutual development.

Uh. So. In conclusion: I don't know. Fuck. That was a waste of time.

Aw, shucks. Thanks, SeventhCircle.

here's somebody saying they should boycott it.

 

http://aiulbones.tum...ing-constantine

 

it's the post above being reblogged over and over. but i know i saw another one or two.

If it makes you any happier, what percentage of those people would have even heard of/wanted to watch the show in the first place?

And even then they're just a drop in the ocean to the kind of audience you need on a channel like NBC, especially with that budget. Every little helps, but I wouldn't lose sleep over it.

Oooooh, okay, I'm feeling a bit old-skool nerdy at the minute. Let's give this a go...

Delano era

African hunger 'demon' and voodoo (HB 1); Swamp Thing and all that non-Christian mythology (HB 9-10); ley lines (HB 14-22); pagan gods (HB annual 1); Babylonian god-turned-Hell demon (anything with Nergal); African horror spirit (The Horrorist 1-2); body-swapping magic (HB 32); fuck knows - some kind of crazy psychotic episode/parallel universe ('Sundays are Different', HB 33); weird shit in the human subconscious (HB 25-26); parallel universes (HB 39-40).

Ennis era

Pagan god (The Lord of the Dance, HB 49); vampires (HB 62-63); voodoo (HB 72-75)

Jenkins era

A ghost causing reality to come unstuck (HB 85-88); the Aboriginal Dreamtime and snake god (HB 89-90); a tear in time (HB 91); fairies and British/Arthurian mythology (HB 92-95); ghost dog (literal, not samurai; HB 98); fairies again (HB 99 and loads more); the anthropomorphic personification of football violence (HB 101); the i-ching (HB 102); werewolves (HB 109); more Arthurian stuff, with pseduo ley-lines (HB 110-114); voodoo again (HB 115); British superstition (HB 116-117); reincarnation (HB 118); a psychic episode aboard a doomed plane (HB 199).

Ellis era

A room tainted by the evil deeds committed there (HB 140); an aborted anti-Christ that pisses evil into people's veins (HB 141); all kinds of goofy shit that's just been made up anyway, but I'd love the TV show to have a giant, baby-eating reptilian queen mother (HB 142).

Azzarello era

A vengeful zombie (HB 157); a book that tells the future (HB 163); a human golem (HB 167); fuck knows - giant killer bats or something (HB 170-174).

Carey era

People's souls being used as drugs (HB 175-176); Hindu goddess Kali (HB 177-180); creepy spirits sent by an old English god (HB 182-183); body-swapping magic again (HB 184); Aboriginal ghosts (HB 186); vampire-demon hybrids and de-aging bone magic (HB 187-188); scary dog thing from the garden of Eden (Judeo-Christian-ish, but not really part of an existing mythology; HB 189-193); a man whose body is infested with souls 197-199; fake memories from parallel lives (HB 200).

Diggle era

Humans being possessed for entertainment (HB 234-237); African cannibal magic (HB 238-242).

Issue 250

A suicide spell hidden in the Queen's speech; a factory burning up human human sin creates unexpected fallout; a crazed Egyptologist who wants to commit human sacrifice; a baseball team cursed by a goat.

Milligan era

Living embodiment of human guilt (HB 251-251); Babylonian gods (HB 256-258 and onwards); alchemy (whenever Epiphany's involved)... ugh, bit depressing going through this again so I'll stop here.

There are loads more scenes of general magic use and generic ghost tales, which both exist outside of the Judeo-Christian mythological sphere, but that's still a pretty wide range of stories, and gives some indication of how broad the series can be in its worldbuilding. I'd especially like to see something along the lines of the Sandman/Hellblazer mythos that says belief shapes reality, and that all gods and creation myths are equally valid - even if some are more powerful than others.

Incidentally, if anyone from the production crew wants me to consult, my rates are reasonable negligible.

Got links?

I'm not sure that this boycott would have a big enough impact to actually affect the show's success.

Very good. I laughed.

In the age of the internet someone's sensibility is ALWAYS being tested.

Depends who 'they' are. I think Warners and DC don't give a flying fuck about the Constantine movie's success with fans, and only wish it had made more money. On the other hand, I get the impression that the people running this show are genuinely fans of the comic and are taking care to adapt the comic and character in the most accurate and appropriate way possible, given the restrictions inherent in making a US network show.

I never thought I'd write that.

what about the cigs, ashtray and lighter in trailer #2?

There's just a little glimpse of him stubbing out a cig at the start of a scene.

Though this thought just skittered across my brain: isn't that actually worse than making him an on-screen chain smoker? Makes smoking look like something that's easy to just pick up and put back down, and is largely consequence free. The comics made it look like a crippling addiction that was actively dangerous. Well... okay, for a while they did. Then it went back to looking kind of cool.

The chances of Marvel allowing the character to retain that name are -200%.

Pic isn't working for me, but I took a peek at his IMDB page and though his filmic career is quite short, it's dominated by horror. Solace is about a psychic FBI agent hunting a serial killer; I Remember Dying on Halloween and Satanic Panic 2: Battle of the Bands are both pretty self-explanatory; and while Summers* Over isn't a horror film, the name of his character - Jason V - sounds like it ought to be.

So yeah, not the most illustrious-looking filmography so far, but James Cameron started out on Piranha 2...

And it looks like before acting he was involved in forensics, because he has five 'forensic technical consultant' credits, which is cool.

* Sic.

Ha! I'd love to go some year, but this won't be it, alas...

In summary they should make Zed a bisexual in the teleovision series.

 

That would propably be not the dumbest move.

Nooooo, it would be a terrible move. The reason why John being bisexual is interesting and exciting is that he's the protagonist, he's male and he's a non-traditional queer figure in the media (being masculine and rough-around-the-edges).

If they make the totally hot female sidekick bisexual (which, to be fair, she was in the comics) then it comes across as a nasty combination of tokenism and pandering to a (perceived) horny male audience, and fits a well-worn character trope.

Better to make Chas bi or gay. A big, monster-fighting bear.

It's in Crossing Midnight (which is excellent, by the way). I forget her name, but one of the Ueno Park guards. She's a huge butch lesbian; not a caricature; very well-written. But you find out she'd been repeatedly gang-raped in her home town. It's intended more as the reason she's such a hard-ass (which is problematic in its own way) rather than the reason she's gay, but it still dovetailed uncomfortably close to the idea that women who like women only like women because they don't like men and they only don't like men because they've been abused. He didn't state it outright, and he may not have even meant it. But ideas like that are so totally inculcated that without a statement to the contrary, it's the message that comes across.

I don't think I read past the second trade (I left the UK and found it near impossible to find trades in the place I moved to), so I can't really comment. I think he's one of the good guys, though.

Delano's character was pretty much the same story, just with one rapist instead of many.

Which story was that? Just out of interest. Delano usually comes across as pretty right-on, but he's done some odd things in his comics before. Outlaw Nation had a bisexual character who casually went around raping people, and whose sexuality was played out as a symptom (or aspect) of his dissolute, hedonistic nature.

I'll have to read Kev. That sounds quite interesting. Parts of The Boys address laddish homophobia head-on too, and while at first it comes across as Ennis being defensive, he gets better. Maybe I should piece together an Ennis And The Gays timeline.

I don't think it's homophobia specifically, but an ingrained discomfort about anybody who diverges from sexual and gender norms, or even from the laddish standards of working-class Northern Irish life. It's all throughout his earlier works. Look at Hellblazer - the vampires are bisexual psychopaths, Nigel's a skinny geek who writes girly poetry... it's sad, really.

Wouldn't it have been great if, say, seven episodes in John just happened to make an off-the-cuff comment about an old boyfriend - very much in the way that it was handled in the comics oh so long ago ?

Probably would only add fuel to the flames. 'Oh, so they'll pay lip service but fob us off with real relationships? THIS IS WORSE THAN DRESDEN!' It's hard not to read a lot of this fury as deeply disingenuous, and you should never underestimate the power of the rabble-rouser to find fault in anything.

Does Abhi still come here? He could write volumes about this.

*he does this a lot. Remember Preacher's I WANT COCK!!! bit? (which I'm sure he cringes at now)

If you read Ennis's Kev miniseries, it becomes apparent that Ennis had something of an epiphany regarding gay men and women and is now embarassed to hell by all that business. Doesn't change what he's already written, though, of course.

I think there was a lesbian couple in Jenkins's run that were just ordinary people, but he also wrote a story that had a lesbian ordering child porn from Amsterdam, so that probably cancels it out. Gaiman's one-shot had a lesbian couple who were presented as ordinary folks, too, and I think that ish also has John telling off a London cabbie for spouting homophobic bullshit.

But I am aware I'm preaching to the choir here. I'm wondering if maybe I should take advantage of my smooth baritone and do a video about this; my angle would definitely be that non-heterosexuality treated as it is in the books would be a massive step back for media portrayals, not forward. I might not have the click-baiting rhetorical power of the loudest complainers, but I do have the advantage of actually having read some of the damn things. My decent-ish knowledge of Azzarello and Ennis would help too, because of how many of their own distinct foibles they brought to the series.

Were there any non-hetero characters in Carey's run?

Not any prominent ones that I can recall. There was a gay couple in Red Sepulchre, but they were murdered before the story began.

He's usually decent enough with writing them, but he has hinted at gayness being a reaction to sexual abuse a handful of times.

Whuh....?

I think it takes quite a commitment for one man to have sex with another man.

Has nobody taken this cheap shot yet? Really?

Not arsed, but it'd be a nice surprise if the TV version gayed it up a bit.

Oh, sorry! I don't know how I didn't see that.

That's not what was said though.

Firstly, it's episode 5.

 

It's suggested a policeman called Jim Corrigan would appear, and he'd have some sort of sense of the supernatural world.

And his character would develop slowly over the series.

???

I'm just joking about the quality of Agents of SHIELD.

As I mentioned earlier, it's a potential Agents of SHIELD for the Dark end of the DCU.

Aye, except hopefully not shite.

*tumblr EXPLODES*

Also, it's surely only a good thing if the producer is so confident about the show that he's not only laying the seeds for long-term stories, but also viewing it as a solid base from which to launch other franchises. You don't want this thing to be run by someone who's not confident about its future.

The only downside I can see is that it might encourage a more conservative streak in the writers and producers, if so many potential properties are tied to the success of this one. But that's pure speculation.

Not sure what the problem is here? The talk of spin-offs? He's only discussing a general attitude and possible developments that might spring from it, not setting down a five-year plan. And provided there aren't loads of really shitty backdoor pilots where Constantine disappears so we can follow Boston Brand or whoever around, I don't have a problem with it.

Apropos of very little, I actually really dislike The Spectre - the traditional 'Ooh, you murdered a bear with a pickaxe so now I'm going to turn you into a pickaxe made of bears and set you on fire, or something' one; maybe the variations are okay - as I find him dramatically inert both as a protagonist and an antagonist. But hopefully they'll take the opportunity to rework these characters to make them more suitable for Constantine's world and show.

The Chas superpower business was one of the things I liked least, but I can see why the Chas of the comics - a married man tied to one city with no interest in, and little ability to deal with, the supernatural - wouldn't work in a show based around travelling the US and fighting monsters. Since the character as seen in the comics would never work in the show (without a major retooling), it's not as severe a problem to change him - especially compared with Chaz LeBeef from the movie.

Er, anyway...

I have watched the trailer and pilot.

• I like that they got the characterisation, background and most of the motivations for John spot-on.
  
• I like the general tone of the thing - it's a bit campy, but so was the comic, much of the time, stretching right back to John vs demonic yuppies in issue three.
  
• I like seeing all the little bits of Hellblazer poking through - mostly from the most obvious issues (Dangerous Habits and Original Sins), but the production crew have a poster of Paul Jenkins' Difficult Beginnings mounted on their writing-room wall, so I'm hopeful that there's some wider reading going on.
  

• I don't like the predominantly Judeo-Christian angle of the pilot, or John's description of himself as an exorcist (not least because 'occultist' sounds way cooler), but I have hope that this is just to make it an easier sell to a US audience and that the universe will broaden out in future episodes. A remark by one of the producers that Constantine's abilities are based on knowledge of spells and magic is promising.
  
• I don't like the clumsy dialogue or plotting - everything that wasn't taken from the comics seriously needed polishing up, and giving away everything that happened in Newcastle over three (or more, I forget) separate scenes of dialogue was astonishingly amateurish. Viewers CAN deal with having background revealed in drips, writers! Supernatural took that route and it's currently on season seventeen billion.
  
• I didn't like Liv - or, rather, I was given no reason to like her, since she lacked any notable characteristics, interests or desires. But it looks like they'll be fixing this in future episodes, so that's good.
  

The one thing that could be added to make it more 'Hellblazerish' would be a bigger universe - don't just give me angels and demons! Give me vampires, pagan gods, Hindu deities, fairies, the Aboriginal Dreamtime, governments dabbling in occultism, urban legends come alive, anything, everything, more, more, more!

Oh, and bring in Charles Dance as Ghant.

As for a story to be adapted... Well, if it's one episode, as you imply, Ade, then Gaiman's Hold Me might make for a nice change from all the explosions and that, though realistically it'd probably be a B-plot to something a bit more whizzy. Or High on Life, if that's not too dark. If we're allowed to have a two-parter then I'd love to see a big, widescreen version of Red Sepulchre, complete with gangsters, Map, Kali and Gemma.