Ixnay by Night

Much, much better than the Rebirth special. Still confused about the continuity timeline, with both pre and post-Nu52 stuff being referenced. Most importantly, John and Chas actually read like John and Chas. The main plot doesn't get much traction, though, so we'll see where Oliver takes things. My caution has turned to nascent optimism, I'm feeling much more comfortable with this than I was after the first issues of the last two relaunches.

While I liked Williams, McKean's covers never did anything for me. They were, I dunno, too vague for my liking perhaps? As for Tom Canty, he did the covers for the first half of Ennis' run, issues 41-50.

Apologies if something like this has already been a topic, but I felt like making a poll. Hellblazer was blessed with some fantastic cover art, so who tickles your fancy? As much as Phillips is my favorite *interior* artist on the series, I have to give my cover love to Bradstreet.

Yeah, those numbers may be great for a Hellblazer/Constantine series, but look at the distance between it and the sales for any of the other Rebirth one-shots. I'm honestly shocked that Hellblazer even got a Rebirth one-shot to launch, considering books like Superwoman and Batgirl went straight to issue # 1 instead. It wouldn't surprise me one bit to see Hellblazer be the lowest selling of the Rebirth one-shots once the initiative comes to a close (there's still another month of one-shot launches, right?).

The creators of the new kid-oriented Justice League Action animated series was talking on a CBR article a few days ago that John was in "quite a few early episodes". So, now we're getting Saturday Morning Cartoon Constantine, apparently.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/article/cartoon-networks-justice-league-action-will-feature-over-150-characters

Another reason I'm glad it didn't happen, though, was that it would have ruined The Nameless also. The ending is totally bleak and nihilistic. Vertigo would have wanted to a better resolution if this story took place in HB, so the ending we got for The Nameless would have had to be more positive, which would have taken away a lot of the impact of the mini-series.

 

I don't think it would have saved Hellblazer. Vertigo already had plans in place to end Hellblazer during the Milligan tenure. DC's editor-in-chief wanted all of the DC properties back in the DC box for the big New 52 relaunch, and they expected that Constantine would make more money than Hellblazer, which was true. I'm not sure that Morrison's name could have increased the failing sales of HB enough to compare to the sales figures DC got with Constantine #1, which were so much higher than HB's sales. Vertigo's editors got the go-ahead to keep HB going until #300, so they could end the book on a nice number. I think DC's editor-in-chief wanted to see HB end by issue #300 regardless of if Morrison or Milligan was writing the title.

I finished reading Nameless today, and you're right that I don't see Vertigo allowing Morrison to do that story in Hellblazer without major changes. God damn good series, Nameless was, probably the best work Morrison's done since Final Crisis.

I agree that the EiC was likely frothing at the mouth to axe Hellblazer as soon as he could, and I think he likely would have done it back when Diggle's run didn't really take off. I wonder how much Hellblazer's longevity came down to Karen Berger keeping the DC editorial hounds at bay, and once she was gone the book's days were numbered?

I had picked up the first issue of Nameless back when it first came out and just didn't keep up with it. After reading the responses here, I grabbed the rest off Comixology and just finished issue # 2. Yeah, I can totally see this as G-Mozz's Hellblazer with the serial number filed off.

Even if "Constantine in spaaaaaaaace" isn't the direction most of us would have wanted to see, I wonder if letting Morrison and Burnham do this in Hellblazer (maybe kicking off in # 300?) would have saved the title from cancellation?

Solicit for # 3:

HELLBLAZER #3

AUG160239

(W) Oliver (A/CA) Moritat (CA) John Cassaday

“THE POISON TRUTH” part three! In Constantine’s world there are old friends, useful friends, dangerous friends…and then there’s Chas, whose screw-up threatens them all.

In Shops: Oct 26, 2016

I think Delano falls middle-of-the-road for me. I'm currently re-reading "The Fear Machine", which I hated the first time through. It's an arc that reveals something new every time I read it, and now I quite enjoy it. "The Family Man" is the run's high-point, though, for me at least. Still, given a choice, I'd pick Jenkins over Delano every time.

If Oliver does plan on referencing old Hellblazer continuity, that permanent 30-something age will likely mean that only the Delano and Ennis runs are canon for him (which is likely, given his references to Astra in the Rebirth special that ignores Jenkins' run).

 

I be surprised if we just get Dani as the sole rep of Jenkins era for the new book should Oliver opt to bring back a past love interest.

If we do get an old love interest back, I have to think it would be Zed given the call backs to the Delano years and her prominence as the sidekick on the TV show.

fuck that i just want a book starring jjj, call it:

 

RELENTLESS - A true Journalist at War!

 

Starring John Jonah Jameson Jr. on the just cause of stopping the greatest menace to society: Super-Beings.

Was it The Voice where he set up an offshoot from the Bugle to cover that stuff and keep it out of his paper proper, as he'd finally realised that his constant pissing and moaning about that was hurting sales?

That was The Pulse, wasn't it? The series Bendis did as a follow-up to Alias, only with less anal sex.

If Oliver does plan on referencing old Hellblazer continuity, that permanent 30-something age will likely mean that only the Delano and Ennis runs are canon for him (which is likely, given his references to Astra in the Rebirth special that ignores Jenkins' run).

Having been sidetracked by the debate about who did (and didn't) write a half decent Constantine:

I know it's ungentlemanly to speculate about a lady's age, but did anybody think Mercury looked to be in her early forties reading the first issue? (Still, if he looks twenty or thirty years younger than he's meant to be, there's no reason Merc and Chaz shouldn't have their ages and backstories rebooted as well, I suppose...)

I don't think they have actual "ages" like they did in Hellblazer proper. This is DC continuity, where Batman is always 30 years old, so having John and Chas both look 35-ish forever would make Mercury considerably younger than them. They've allowed her to age up to a certain 20-something age and then stop.

Resurrecting an old thread here, but if Hellblazer would have continued past Diggle and Milligan (man was this thread prophetic), what were some of the names you'd have like to see take on the series? Kieron Gillen is an obvious favorite, but I'd also put some hope in Paul Cornell, a writer that kind of got shafted by his work during the New 52 DC era.

Or, even better, James Robinson. Starman is probably my all-time favorite series (sorry Hellblazer) and his current work on Scarlet Witch is a real return to form for him.

That said, doesn't it tend to be people who've moved to New York from the sticks rather than locals who come out with that rhapsodic noise about it being the greatest city on Earth?

I don't know, I've never been to New York. Is that a thing?

Even so, I don't think it suited John at all, who always had a very nebulous view on NYC and America as a whole. Even Fawkes had him treat the city as a temporary bolthole, if I remember correctly.

Oh, btw: I've had a look at those Vision and Scarlet Witch comics you've been banging on about, and the Scarlet Witch one really is Robinson firing on all cylinders, so thanks for the tip.

Scarlet Witch is fantastic, but I'm a pretty big Robinson fan anyway. It and Carnage (which is also great, surprising since I have zero interest in the character) are the only two Marvel books I'm currently enjoying, though even those I'm just reading six months behind on Marvel Unlimited.

What was the one in the bingo hall? Where John fucks the hooker, and Turro wants to fuck his own sister or something? Yeah, Azzarello had some terrible stories, but he had some good to great ones too. I still enjoy "Highwater" when I re-read it.

So, last week Comixology had the entirety of Constantine: the Hellblazer on sale for .99 an issue. Curiosity got the better of me and I bought and read the whole run in the span of about two days. That sale took advantage of me. I had dropped the series after issue # 3, and ye gods did it get dreadful as it went on.

I'll take Peter Milligan or even Ray Fawkes over that run, thank you very much. Like someone else on the forum said, there were so many words yet the book ultimately said nothing. I also found it really grating how the writers had John romanticizing New York City like it was the greatest place on Earth, which is fine if you're from NYC, nothing against the city. I just don't think John would be writing 5th grade poetry about it when he's only there because he's exiled from his real home country.

I don't think there's a single run of Hellblazer OR Constantine that I disliked more than C:tH. Awful on just about every level.

So far, there's nothing to get excited about. Some members are more optimistic. It's just the first issue, which was pretty much a standalone story, so too soon to really say where things are going. If it keeps going in this direction, it's going to be a bland, riskless run that gets canceled with DC"s next relaunch, that's my opinion, so far.

I have a bit more optimism for the series, even though I pretty much agree with your opinion of the one-shot. The way I see it, Simon Oliver had a pretty hefty job to do with the Rebirth issue: he has to get John back to London, craft a plot around it due to what previous writers had established, and get it as close to PG-13 Hellblazer as possible, while ALSO introducing as much as he can for any new readers in a one-shot story. I can't imagine the editorial hands that HAD to be all over this comic to make it as Rebirthy as possible. Let's see what issue # 1 is like, when the Rebirth spotlight isn't shining so brightly. Hopefully Oliver will give two shits about the past of the previous relaunches and just get on with some actual Hellblazer.

Hard Time is really just as full of TV show clichés as most of Azzarello's run. I don't really consider it a good story-arc, just good by the standards of most of Azzarello's run. Freezes Over was pretty good, on the other hand. I don't really remember most of the stand-alone stories from Azzarello's run, but the ones I can remember, were dreadful.

"Lapdogs and Englishmen", the two-parter flashback that came out right after "Freezes Over", remains one of my favorite Hellblazer stories. That ending is so fucking creepy, even if it never got a resolution due to Azz leaving the book early.

I dropped the Doyle/Rossmo series after issue # 3 and fucked right off from comics in general. Read Hellblazer Rebirth off Comixology yesterday and, well, not BAD but a bit too dipped in nostalgia. And since I know there are sometimes changes between the digital and print copies, did the print version change Astra's name to "Astrid" like in the digital version? That bugged me to death.

I'll pick up the first issue or two of the new series, I'm cautiously optimistic.

I wasn't that sold on the first issue, but I highly enjoyed # 2. It's by far the closest to Hellblazer we've come since the switch over from Vertigo (though like Ade said, the last arc of Constantine was really, really solid with the Earth 2 stuff). I guess I'm pretty easy to please when it comes to this sort of thing, lol.

Straight 90s? The film cast didn't consist of Gambit, Bishop, and Jubilee; the latest creation in the film roster was who, Rogue?

I think the cartoon played into the results of that poll significantly.

I dunno, I appreciated Fawkes not even bothering to mention the Cold Flame flotsam and just finish his story at hand. I liked the Earth 2 arc, easily the best the book has ever been (though I admit to be damning it with very faint praise).

My condolences, Red.

http://www.comicbook...gerous-bad-dude

Just gonna leave this here.