James

Where did you get that info, James?

Someone on The V read it in an interview with Martin. That's only his best-case projection. Whether it'll keep being renewed or not, and whether they find another way to do it when they're working on the actual episodes, remains to be seen. The producers have also confirmed the stuff about merging the third and fourth books to give everyone the right amount of screentime.

The best way to look at it is that headchop was the season finale and this was a coda/season two prologue.

Apparently in future seasons they're going to rejig the order of events quite a bit to make sure that everyone gets screentime (apparently books three and four deal with half the cast each) so hopefully future seasons will conclude a little more satisfactorily.

The artwork still has some major blocking problems - I presume we should've seen John closing the door, or nonchalantly entering the Batmobile, but there's something off with his appearance. if it was meant to be shocking, it should've been framed differently.

I think he's supposed to have either been in the Batmobile, unnoticed, when Batman got in, or appeared mysteriously in the style that Bats himself favours. Unfortunately we don't actually see Batman entering the car (the artist is apparently more interested in having Batman squat out a big poo in an alley) so the pacing is completely shot.

Also, the delivery of that line - those two bits ('I required your full attention, I'm afraid, so... well...'/'I'm a nasty piece of work...') don't go together at all. It sounds like John is just pulling out an old, tired catchphrase in lieu of anything wittier. Which might be a meta-comment on Vankin's writing (meow!), but I'd have preferred something original.

Have a lurking suspicion that this will be a mechanical trek through the DCU rather than an actual story, along the lines of 'And then John Constantine met Superman and Superman did not like him and then John Constantine met Batman and Batman did not like him, and then...' Which would be shit, obviously, not just because it'd be boring to read but because it's wasting potentially loads of great introductory sequences. But a lot of the superhero comics I read these days come across like they were written by transcribing a dim nine-year-old banging his toys together, so maybe I've had my expectations lowered too far. Maybe this will be really good. Maybe.

PAGE ONE:

Constantine sneaks his way into the Batmobile: great!

Constantine knocks out Alfred: meh.

Vankin rips off Alan Moore's line but uses it in a much less iconic way: boo.

PAGE TWO:

Constantine gets his arse handed to him by Batman: gave me a good chuckle.

PAGE THREE:

Constantine's banter with Batman: good.

Batman kicks Constantine when he's down: a bit much. If Constantine one-ups him at the end of the scene then it'll even out to a zero-sum game, which is about all you can hope for if you go up against Batman, I suppose.

Overall: evening out to a 'meh', I think, but I'll reserve full judgement till I read the issue. Still not a fan of the art, though I like the rendition of Bats.

It was Camuncoli's addition in 274. I kind of like it, even if it makes no sense.

One other thing: The Demon Constantine was originally created out of all of John's worst aspects, which possibly suggests that his wrong-oh desires for Gemma - or the potential for them - were always bubbling under the surface.

I believe JMac was referring to the fact that James currently lives in China. Where, as any casual student of racial stereotyping would be able to tell you, there's an opium house on every street corner.

Whereas I was definitely taking the piss out of Slinker's OMG U GUYZ I SMOKED A DRUGZ WITH A GIRL!!!! adolescent interweb posturing.

* though when i was 10 or so, my cousin flashed me, which seriously disturbed me at the time, and has stayed with me to this day, apparently. Nearly forgot about it, but Wilko's post made me remember it all over again. :shudder:

Argh, yikes! Sorry.

smoking opium and weed and whatever else looks smokable on her table (I think I smoked a piece of rock salt accidentally-thought it was something else fun).

Cool story bro.

Been incredibly busy with work over the past week (including weekends...) but wanted to thank Rogan for his sterling work on the HB wiki. Thanks, man!

Oh, and if the 'back' thing is a massive problem then you could do what I do and write it out first in notepad, then edit it with Wiki markup/edit buttons on the site. It's up to you though. Thanks for helping out, BTW. The article's great! Didn't know he brought Danjiel Žeželj to the US - I love that guy.

Ah, right, yeah. The New Wikia Look's 'rich text editor mode' (turned on or off in user preferences/editing) transforms templates into little green jigsaw images.

If you don't want to turn rich text mode off, go to the Andy Diggle page and right-click on the template, then select copy. Paste it in as the first thing on the Darko Macan page, then hover your mouse over it - it should bring up a preview. Click the 'edit' button at the bottom of the preview window (this jiggles annoyingly in Firefox, but if you're fast enough you can click on it) and it'll open up an editing thing that allows you to put your own text and images in.

Hope that makes sense. Let me know if you still have any problems.

Cutoff numbers :

 

NORTHLANDERS #39 6,983

 

 

I fear that #300 will be the last Vertigo issue of Hellblazer, if Justice League Dark turns out to be a financial success, that would be the perfect time to spin Constantine off into his own DCU title, let him fiddle around with The Spectre, Phantom Stranger, Mr. E, Azrael and the like.

To be honest, even I feel like the comic's a bit worn out. The only thing that makes me hope it might continue is the possibility, however slim, of China Mieville coming on for a proper four-year sesh.

Found an article* on Conjob at ComicBookMovie.com, and a bit from it kinda puzzled me :

 

Reading many of his adventures I have detailed a list of these problems which involve him being an incestuous, bi-sexual, voyeuristic, pompously arrogant, selfish, chain-smoking man who is afraid that the whole damn world is after him yet most of the time he plays like he does not care.

 

So I was wondering, not counting Demonstantine's recent encounter with Gemma, am I forgetting some incestuous event from the comics?

 

 

*well, in the loosest possible sense of the word)

There's a bit in one of the 'backmatter' bits from the very early issues - a scrap of Constantine's diary found in Ravenscar if I recall correctly - in which he recalls watching his sister undress when he was still a kid.

Once you're logged in, hover your mouse over your name in the top-right corner, then click preferences (alternatively, click on the separate 'My preferences' link in the top-right; I don't know which of the two styles is showing for you). Click the appearance tab and scroll down to 'Site Layouts' - switch to either New Wikia Look or Monobook (the latter of which makes it look more like Wikipedia), depending on what you prefer. New Wikia Look is the one with the less cluttered interface.

You can usually just rip template formats off a relevant page - steal a character one from the John Constantine page, an object one from the Ace of Winchesters page, etc. If there's a specific template you're looking for I can either dig it up for you or make one.

Thanks for the help, BTW!

Bump!

 

 

This one's one of my fave moments in recent years, this proactive optimistic take really blew me away.

 

A far more fun and interesting take on the character than Milligan's 'Oooh, I'm so burned out and a mystery to myself' whining.

Not a fan of the Books of Magic stuff though. Looks like the schoolwork of a talented 18-year-old.

Surely The Doctor's never had too much of a problem with knocking off the Cybermen, though? They're basically robots with brains. Robots that want to destroy innocent lives. I'd have more of a problem with him and Rory leaving the Cyber-leader's ship alone when they headed off to save Amy (and am therefore going to pretend that Rory left a bomb behind on his way out).

My biggest problem is that they never did anything to convince me that the Church of Soldiers, or whoever they are, were actually worth all that effort. Yeah, they managed to swap Amy with a ganger and link her through time, but whoopee fuck - a bunch of aliens managed to do the whole time travel/fucking up The Doctor thing at the end of last season. It felt like we'd walked into the second part of a three-part story, or otherwise missed a thrilling battle with the Church before. Spending half the episode executing The Doctor's rescue plan felt a bit unearned for that reason.

Still, lots of audacious ideas and some good jokes. And 'The Doctor will be back in 'Let's Kill Hitler' got a good, hearty cackle out of me.

Oh, maybe. It was never explicitly stated as far as I can recall, though.

There was also Les, who appeared in a couple of Azzarello stories, and an unnamed female keyboardist in the Venus of the Hardsell video. For more info, see here.

Nice one, man. Your efforts are appreciated!

Now with 500 pages! Granted, the 500th page is mostly empty, but it's late and I wanted to make sure that Chas Chandler got pride of place...

I can think of a good reason not to bother, which is that it only exists as lyrics, and the lyrics are awful.

What's this about Zatanna being replaced by Hawkman?

I'm with you completely. Still, this establishes at least a chunk of Hellblazer as the "shared backstory" of the DCUnstantine, so I'm wondering where's the cutoff? Somewhere around Ennis, I presume? I reckon they'd probably like to have the Dangerous Habits thing in John's resume. If John turned 35 right around Original Sins and Tefé's conception, this couldn't have happened more than 5 years later, though. So no "Forty", which is a pity, what with Swampy, PS and Zatanna being there.

I imagine that his background is just a massive blank slate at the minute. The DCU's been re-created two or three times since Hellblazer started so they'll probably just make it up as they go along. I'm guessing the only concrete stuff is Moore's Swamp Thing trades and possibly some of the Veitch stuff. Expect ersatz versions of Ravenscar and Nergal, and possibly some sly references to cancer, and probably nothing else.

Ugh. If that's the idea then it's even worse. Not only is this supposed to be a different Constantine, but I don't think the first few pages of his reintroduction is the best place to put an advert for a trade!

Still, I think I've worked out who Beardo is: he's the new superhero, Superfluousman. His power is to spontaneously appear in scenes that don't need him, and say something that adds nothing to the story or narrative whatsoever.

You've still got Beardo appearing from nowhere on the first page, though, which is poor blocking on the artist's part.