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From Hellblazer #43

John: You're okay, Ellie, you know that? I mean, considering what it is you actually are, you're pretty decent.

Ellie: I don't think so, John. I think I'm just polite.

i just read the comic adaptation. what a giant crap. the movie was alright, but it really wasn't the biggest vote of confidence on behalf of hollywood. i'm just glad he's not on convenience store soda cups

john used to have the ghost friends up to visit him... what happened to them?

i'd give john some distant relatives that are also dealing with their constantine curse in their own ways--possibly a nephew who is unaware of his history yet he's compeled to dabble in some low level magic that eventually gets him into some trouble. In the meantime, he becomes acquainted with john through the cultish and highly exaggerated tales of John Constantine thru the filter of legendary rumour. This would be an opportunity to flirt with the nostalgia of "Lapdogs and Englishmen" era Constantine and flesh out the time of JC as a singer in a punk band.

cassidy was a great character by Ennis. I just thought i'd chime in on Garths behalf. i know-- you're saying,"but that isn't a HB character"

okay okay

here are some characters that i think are decent contributions.

The Snob,

Ellie

Matt (possibly a straight lift from Alfie)

Garth's first 18 isues on the Punisher are to OTT even for me!

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yeah-- i quickly lost interest in the punisher

Duncan Fregredo

Geoff Darrow

Bob Fingerman

Philip Bond

Tommy Castillo & Rodney Ramos have been doing well with George Romeros Toe Tags.

Al Columbia would be very radical. i'm not sure he'd even speak the language, but if he did, it would make Hellblazer pretty wild.

Kelley Jones would be good for a spell.

I thought the lesbian bit was an intentional out-of-character comedy moment.  I don't read Ennis' other work aside from what he did on Hellblazer but I did follow all his Kev minis on The Authority, more Ennis/Fabry.  The humor he writes for Kevin Hawkins and Midnighter matches up to that whole play on sexuality in Son of Man.

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bring some Benny Hill into the thing. why not? it's part of the culture, non?

Nergal did assist john in the original sins. dig that paste job with nergal at the foot of the bed and the tongue

Fair enough - but 'Damnation's Flame'? That was the God-awful Ennis arc where John goes to America for no good reason (excepting Ennis' needing an excuse for some heavy-handed satire) and wanders through a crap allegory for 4 issues. Did you mean the 'Damnation Army' stuff?

 

 

*I would edit this, but I'm happy with any chance to get in a quick dig at how fucking rubbish I think 'Damnations Flame' is, so I'm letting it remain*

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yeah... that was pretty crappy.

ADRIAN:

... various writers, doing shorter arcs each, with perhaps one regularly recurring one to keep the strands together.

 

 

I'd go further than that. What about following the Superman line?

 

Capitalising on the growth in readership from the kickass movie, they could easily split the title into 4 monthlies, with staggered pub dates so that there's one out each week. Different writer and artist team for each title, but all overseen by a single executive editor. Jon Vankin gets my vote for his grasp of the title's history. They'd all meet say twice a year - in a pub - to nut out the meta-direction of the title, with each team having a certain amount of autonomy as long as they kept to the metacontinuity. Off the top of my head, we'd have:

 

Hellblazer (the current title, renamed)

John Constantine, Hellblazer (numbered from issue 1)

Adventures of Hellblazer

The Smoketacular Hellblazer

 

Regarding "a certain amount of autonomy", obviously it'd have to be done so tightly that you'd need to buy each of the 4 titles to have a prayer of following it. If we start making comics that are satisfying within a single issue, we'll have bloody kids buying them again.

 

- Jason

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I'll keep you in mind the next time i need someone to run a whorehose, jason.

Quick comments:

Best of Ratboy TPB coming soon!

 

I knew it wasn't Cobain. Just messing around, Tim! :D

 

I will never complain about too many ass-shots in any comic book, and that D.D. cover with Black Widow.....oh god.....

 

I will say that Angie looked such a mess this issue! She looked like one of those stereotypical witches you see in movies, brewing her pot, eh?

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lets see you you'd look in similar circumstances

:glare:

I dig what Manco did. I wish I could get a gratuitous ass shot on a cover. Call me fucking pig, but I consider myself an assman in arms with Leo. Keep 'em coming mate. No need for any lengthy diatribe about how the male hormone is so shallow.

Tim,

Someday the story will lend itself to your indulgences ( I would think Chantinelle's return would work nicely). In the meantime, I thought I'd share this covershot that seems to be in similar spirits. :lol:

In the spirit of 'ol JC himself, Fuck what he would think.

Making these things costs money, then there's the shipping.

Goodness me.

 

And Tom, I got an idea for you. Just cut out the offending words off the shirt, then saftey pin the holes. Then wear it in good health and good conscience ;)

You'll look right dapper at a punk show.

 

- TB

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good ole Tim stepping up to protect his investment...

no harm. just being a bit of a devil. i suppose i understand with shipping and all.

perhaps a design that uses spot color instead of digital process for those of us who would like a shirt s more on the pop art side? Tim, you totally shine , but I can't quite remember any bits you've done of john that can transfer to spot color easily. If you have any, i'd like to see them up for a possible design.

cheers

Bradstreet

 

Manco

 

Fabry

 

Dillon

 

 

I'm surprised Sean Phillips is so far ahead. I really didn't care for his work. It always seemed hurried and sort of sloppy, I don't know. I don't hate his work at all, it's just that I don't put him as high.

 

I associate Tim's Constantine as the actual JC--what he really looks like. Manco has come from guest artist to being one of my all-time faves on the title. May both of these premiere VERTIGO artists be fruitful and free of film tie-ins in a long and memorable career!

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I voted for Phillips because the question was "who drew the best john". > I agree that some of his stuff looks rushed, but when he took his time, i can see that i just like the features of his john better than the others. Sean Phillips shows his love on the covers and sporadically in the pages.

of course, Bradstreet is brilliant and I love him, but that would be a no brainer. the early Azzarello/Frusin stuff matched the wickedness of Azzarellos writing

I can see silimarities between his work and Eduardo Risso, which I suppose is one rteason he was chosen to work with Azz

John Higgins tended to make everyone especially ugly.

WWJCD?

maybe i'm from the old school , but the idea of shelling out $20-25 for a T- shirt? It seems that Old Johnny himself would scoff at that. not to spoil the party, but in the spirit of Up The Down Staircase (issues #121-124), "What is a quiz?"

.

The pacing of Carey's run has been non-stop for so long now (barring #201, which, even though I wasn't wild about it as a story in and of itself, was a good example of the kind of thing I'd like to see Mike occasionally leaving room for between major arcs) that it's in serious danger of stepping over that fine line between 'tense and gripping' and 'hysterical'. The 'false peak before revealing the actual summit up ahead' approach to shocking revelations only really works in narrative story-telling if there's at least a little break between peaks, and there haven't been enough of those over the last few months - or even years, really. I really am, on the whole, loving what Mike's doing with the title, but I suspect I'd be enjoying it even more if the pacing was, on occasion, a little less frenetic. More haste, less speed, and all that.

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i tend to enjoy it better when theres a normal world happening around john and the trip ups of demons in the mundane world, rather than these cataclysmal episodes where the world is going to hell like in the "Staring At The Wall" run (issues #189-193)

i just reread   HB #162-#163. There is the book/ who is the guy who kills Angie White and takes that book?

 

This is far and away the most asked question in the history of the site - the answer, as Christian says, is no-one knows.

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It was Mike Carey.

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THAT would explain a lot! :lol: :lol: :lol:

that totally made my day. thanks

http://www.insanerantings.com/hell/comics/related/synbb.html

this is the Straight To Hell Index that should at least give you the breakdown of that story issue by issue.

I also think that without Kit, we wouldn’t have had charachters like Jenkins’ Dani or Carey’s Angie. I’m not saying they’re ripoffs at all, but they definetly come from similar molds.

 

Nah. Whilst I agree with a lot of what you say, Delano's Zed was an equally strong female character.

 

He did a fairly good job of tying up all of his loose ends, rather than sticking another author with them.

 

And again, I hate to be pedantic, but Ennis probably left more loose ends than any other author except Azzarello-- there's the question of what he recieved when he sold his soul to the Second and Third of the Fallen, the mystery of what happened to Ellie's child, the way he got out of Hell in "And the Crowd Goes Wild" and the eventual fate of both the London vampires and the Ace of Winchesters (both of which he wrapped up years later in Hitman).

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I've always considered PREACHER to be more or less an account of what happened to Chantinelles child. The question of what JC received from the 2nd and 3rd doesn't really matter...

Posted by TheKeet over in the movie section -

 

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I love the caption on the poster. "OMG Hell wants his ass"

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would john ever put his fag down?

And once again Tony Masters has really let himself go.  When was the last time we saw him..sometime in the Ennis era?

 

'High on Life', back at the start of Carey's run.

 

I liked the presentation of Gemma here a lot. A nice, if far-from-unexpected subversion of the exploitative "beautiful ladies in danger" story which had been set up in the earlier issue (which is, of course, precisely why it wasn't quite such a surprise, for me at least - to have actually gone down that route, after signalling it so heavily, would have been deeply anticlimactic). The whole story played out largely as I'd expected, once I'd gotten over the Demonstine assumption - and the casualty was one I've been expecting for a good few months, which was gratifying.

 

I definitely have issues with the pacing of the arc as a whole, and, again, Mike's made it very difficult to comment on the completed story without reading the next arc. Damn his eyes. Still, this one actually has me anticipating the next few issues with genuine relish, rather than the slightly-suspicious concern of the last 2 months. Which is nice.

 

As for the identity of dear Ratboy - well, as one could have predicted, it raises a lot more questions than it answers. What does he want from John? What's he been up to since last we saw him? What are his plans for the Constanteenies? When are we going to see Rosacarnis again? How's Gemma going to react to the events of the last couple of pages? When is Angie actually going to be given something to do?

 

And so on. See you all in 30, true believers...'Nuff said.

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that sounds about right, JP...

i guess that explains why i 'm not as fond of azz and careys work as i am of ennis ,delano (with the exeption of what I've seen in the issues after 35.

8!

 

I really liked this issue. If only the rest of the run was like this! Gemma was great, really on the spot, but came through in Constantine style. My perception of her has definitely gotten better since Red Sepulchre. I could see Gemma taking over this book (and then, John, then it could be called Constantine) someday, in the far, far future. :)

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I'm way more conservative when it comes to this... Talking about Gemma taking over makes me a bit uneasy. however, it would be a great opportunity to let Gemma star shine while john is discombobulated as he is.. I guess we aren't supposed to say who the demon is yet... I will say that If this be the case, then this gives opportunity for Chantinelle to make the scene again. Except I liked it better when john and Ellie were on friendly terms

i just reread HB #162-#163. There is the book/ who is the guy who kills Angie White and takes that book?

i've been rereading my Jenkins era HB... and was thinking that i was fondest of sean phillips conjob.

i am also highly appreciate of jenkins. characters like rich the punk, crowley,

Tim Bradstreet aint no slouch neither