quentinquire

This is a great discussion of #212, "Down in the Ground", and Carey's run. I think I find myself somewhere in between the two sides of the debate.

I had misgivings about the story. It seems like absent a few really beautiful moments in "The Off Season" and "Cross Purposes", we have not really been given very much of the kind of detail that would allow us to become emotionally invested in the goings-on, even though there's been no shortage of melodrama. In those stories where Carey does really pause to do character work, we get a searing intensity. But Carey has really chosen to keep the plot very tight, with the result that nothing's been explored thoroughly, or really in a very interesting way.

For instance, Maria's moral awakening seems like it's missing scenes. It's hard to imagine the demoness carving body parts out of homeless men in #200 is, by #212, the sensitive girl so horrified by what's happening around her. But at the same time, because of the richness of all the characters, all the characters' histories and all their complex interrelationships--Nergal and Rosacarnis, Nergal and the First, Rosacarnis and the kids, Constantine and Gemma, Gemma and Tony, the list goes on--the past year of Hellblazer would have filled five years worth of issues.

So I think Carey made a choice to leave out some of the backstory and some of the character work. And what that left was less than ideal. For instance, I agree that Saul and Adam were disposed of way too easily. But to tell this story in any kind of practical way, Carey would have to make some of these choices. Especially since, as I said before, I think he's trying to write this series more accessibly than Lucifer (ironically while making use of 200 issues of mythology).

But some of the story that Carey is leaving untold can also be made use of later. Depending on the execution, it could be either great or disastrously sit-com-ish for Maria, because she has nowhere else to go, to show up on John's doorstep.

But I think on balance I like Mike Carey's run here. And I even think it compares favorably to the last few years of Lucifer, where the story of a bored and disenchanted Creator abandoning his Creation for greener pastures seems to be an allegory for Carey's relationship to the series.

Weirdly enough, my favorite Carey story of the year may yet be the two-part "Mad Thinker" piece in Ultimate Fantastic Four, precisely because it's not written with any great epic ambitions in mind, allowing Carey's real strengths in storytelling and dialogue to come to the forefront.

Maybe Carey's problem is that he's too writing too ambitiously.

On one hand, I think the critique that Carey's Hellblazer lacks some of the realistic flavor and character-based storytelling of Ellis or Ennis is completely valid. At the same time, I find what Carey is doing deliriously fun.

Carey--maybe stinging from Lucifer's low sales?--seems to be writing the series as accessible and action-driven as possible. Other people have commented on the board previously that the result is a very super-heroic John Constantine. To me it seems the guiding influence on Carey's run is none other than Buffy--cliffhangers, belly-shirt girl-power, wisecracking arch-villains all included. What makes this ironic to me is that early Hellblazer had to have in turn been a huge influence on Buffy--not one but two different versions of JC were written into the show, Giles and Spike, and if you added the different Buffy episodes based on Hellblazer plots together, you might get an entire season.

So something about the Carey run is a bit derivative, a bit too mainstream. Even at its high points (for me, the shorter arcs like Black Flowers, Third Worlds, and The Off Season), the readers are not being pushed or challenged very much. And people can say that this isn't really what Hellblazer is supposed to be, and it's not really what Vertigo is supposed to be doing, and these don't seem like unreasonable points to make. And it's true, for instance, when I compare the recent Carey arcs to the stories collected in Rare Cuts, the recent stuff seems bland.

BUT...

Carey is executing what he's doing marvelously. His ear for dialogue is just brilliant, and it's improved over the course of his run. Admittedly, lines from the beginning like Angie's "I'm a piece of work, ask anyone" introduction were grating, but we're not seeing these anymore. Instead, all the characters seem to have highly developed, individualized voices.

But my favorite thing about the series right now is that it's asking some interesting questions about what separates humans from demons. Nergal's narration put this front and center last issue, but we see it too in Chas's actions after Nergal's possession and Maria's misgivings about the family business. So the series is doing some interesting intellectual work right now, asking what it means to be human in a way similar to the way Lucifer is currently asking what it means to be free.

(BTW: Am I alone in thinking Maria is going to turn on Rosacarnis? An army of Constantine tykes has the obvious drawback that part and parcel of the gene pool you're dealing with is the tendency to betray everyone and everything. The real cliffhanger ending to next issue would be John getting "custody" of one or more of the kids.)

One last thing: Not only because the whole First of the Fallen/Lucifer thing has been so confusing for so long, but because I think the story could be jaw-droppingly funny, I'd love to see Mike Carey write some type of post-script to Lucifer and his run on Hellblazer that would have Lucifer and John and the First, all interacting. The sniping between the two arch-fiends, especially the contrast between Lucifer's refined hauteur and the First's rancor, would be awesome fun to read. And I can totally see Lucifer and John dealing with each other with a healthy, detached respect for the other's talents.

(As far as any continuity inconsistencies between the First and Lucifer go, I defer to the scene in Sandman where Lucifer explains various demons are always declaring themselves the rulers of hell, and he pays them no mind because that sort of intramural politics is beneath him.)

Clarice has been consistently my favorite character in the book, definitely since Carey took over. And she actually wins among the candidates thus far mentioned in the category I think's most necessary to being John's "paramour"--a healthy sense of self-preservation. There was something about the way she called up the demon during the "Red Sepulchre" storyline and sent him off to kill JC that was cold, calculated and delightful--"The moon, the stars, an old friend for dinner."

In the end John may have to settle for her because everyone else will be eventually killed off.

But I am shocked that no one one the board has mentioned Rosacarnis. She's intelligent, she's sophisticated, she knows how to eat a human eyeball with impeccable table manners, and she was able to keep John tied down for forty years. Who else is going to match that?

Nevertheless, Angie's sendoff to John in this week's issue was kinda special. It was, easily, the high point to maybe the first Mike Carey issue I didn't really care for.