Hellblazer - So. I guess Fredric Wertham was right.

Brian Azzarello wraps up his run on Hellblazer with this mammoth collection. Eleven issues are collected in Highwater (#164-174), with two single issue stories sandwiched between two longer stories. There certainly is a lot to digest here. Against all odds, Azzarello seems intent on having everything in his run connect into one larger story - the story is all about finding out how John ended up in prison, framed for murder for the suicide of his friend Richard Fermin, back in Azzarello's first arc. For me, I think it was a case of the parts working better than the whole. I didn't need all of this to come together into one full story and I wasn't as engaged with this as a narrative as Azzarello may have hoped. The strengths are still in John's portrayal, the compelling side characters (who alternate between sympathetic and horrifying), the snide sense of humour, and the climatic moments of confrontation. Is a ranting lunatic, homosexual pastiche of Bruce Wayne really where this story's strengths lie? I guess that's in the eye of the beholder, but he sure takes up a lot of page time.

The opening story, "Highwater," stands as one of Azzarello’s strongest efforts on the book. That’s partly due to the fact that it could easily be read as a freestanding story. John goes to the town of Highwater to apologize to Fermin's widow Marjorie, and ends up embroiled with a white supremacist group who lord over the town. It features John in a dark and hopeless place whose populace is so overtaken with irrational hatred that they barely acknowledge his typical parade of sarcastic comments. Azzarello has fun with John's supernatural side, as Fermin's hole-in-his-head corpse following John around and writes notes of advice. Azzarello expertly blends the true horror of the story, that a seemingly nice woman like Marjorie can sprout of racist diatribes during a casual walk down the street, with this title's typical tone. When some of the locals kill their arms dealer once they learn he also sells to black men, John is called in to clean up their mess. It's at this point that a character named S.W. Manor, the angry boss of the murdered arms dealer, enters the story to get vengeance. Marcelo Frusin draws this, and creates a vivid portrayal of the town and its inhabitants. It's a dark story, but he sells the lighter elements, like Fermin's corpse, just as well by playing it so deadpan.

Giuseppe Camuncoli does a superb job drawing two interlude chapters. His figures and faces are a lot more blocky than Frusin's, but it's a refreshing change of pace. The content of these issues is less compelling. The first starts as a fun bingo game, with John trying to win money to pay for a prostitute. Unfortunately, he ends up berating two older women in a lengthy sequence, simply for being old. It's completely out of touch with the character's true nature and this book's sensibilities. It's the wrongly-righteous, the stupid, and the troublemakers who deserve John's wrath. Not two old women who just want to enjoy their bingo. There are a lot of pages here devoted to building up S.W. Manor, and it becomes clear he is the American John conned in the flashback story in the previous volume. It's here that Azzarello starts to connect everything, and it's also the point when things start to feel a little scattered.

"Ashes & Dust in the City of Angels" is the difficult five-part story that closes Azzarello's run on the book. It's difficult because I wanted to love it. Certain elements are great, and others are so over-the-top, I'm not sure what to make of them. FBI Agent Turro joins a female detective in investigating the seeming death of John Constantine in an L.A. sex club, where he was burnt to death. This story does its absolute best to repulse, disturb, turn off, and excite (the last through Manor’s ridiculous portrayal), but it's the interaction and relationship between these two law officers that I really enjoyed. Azzarello did a great job with almost every side character in his run, and these two are fun to read. In the midst of the depravity of this case, the woman asks Turro on a date, and it's one of the strongest moments - an attempt to reach out and connect with someone. A parade of club goers are brought in as witnesses to the crime, and Azz pulls no punches here. The interrogations paint a disturbing portrayal of the club and John's activities there, with wonderfully moody art from Marcelo Frusin.

Into this investigation is dropped the home life of S.W. Manor. I can only assume he is Azzarello's take on what Batman would be if he were a complete nutjob, living in a giant home, surrounded by bats, ranting and raving through his various brooding sessions. Some would say that this is Batman, not a parody of him. Oh yeah, he’s also gay, living a life of obsession over the men he's encountered through in the past, starting with John. There's no disguising the Batman pastiche here - Manor's parents were killed, his former ward Jason (whom he lusts over) died, he has taken in a young child named Tim, and his butler is named Fredo. Also, he only perks up when John kisses him while he hangs from chains. Azzarello attempts to tie all of Manor's schemes to entrap John back to the three Fermin brothers we've crossed paths with, as well as Marjorie. The details are almost immediately lost because the real point here is that Manor did all of this due to his spurned, unrequited lust for John, Things continue to snowball, with Manor chewing the scenery to the extreme in his home, as the detectives arrive and violence ensues.

I honestly have no idea what to make of this finish. It's like Azzarello built up a story through careful construction, mood, pacing, and pitch, exploring different areas of American society as John passed through the country. And then, he attempted to bring it all together with a psychotic gay Batman who just wanted a kiss and cuddle. It's almost like he played a joke on the audience, who expected traditional story construction, and got a ridiculously over the top ending and a villain that doesn't have any credible motivation outside of getting back at a spurned crush from years ago. It's hard to take much of the final story seriously, even the strong interrogation scenes. And John barely appears in it. Outside of flashbacks, he shows up in the last scene, comforting the dying Agent Turro in a religious pose. What in God's name anything in this final story meant goes beyond me, but I still find myself getting enjoyment out of it and the bizarre backtrack it does on giving readers a genuine conclusion to the story of Richard Fermin's suicide.

So what can be learned from Brian Azzarello's tenure on Hellblazer? He sent John on a trip through hell via rural America, encountering townsfolk who make increasingly depraved pornography to stay financially afloat, the horrors of prison life, all the trouble that can ensue when someone is stabbed with an icicle, a bunch of crazy skinheads, and finally a homosexual Batman who just wanted to be loved. Everything besides the last story could basically exist as incredible compelling, well-paced standalone arcs. The final story, that attempts to tie them together, was almost a parody of stories that try to do so. I'll give Azzarello marks for aplomb in doing that. I enjoyed it to an extent. At the same time, I also understand comments I had been reading about people hating his run on Hellblazer. Because this certainly isn't for everyone.