Hellblazer - The icicle impaling heard round the world

Sandwiched between the gruesome circumstances of "Good Intentions" and what I assume is the big finish in "Highwater," "Freezes Over" (collecting Hellblazer#157-163) is Brian Azzarello's third collection on the title. Containing three shorter stories, it certainly felt like a bit of a middle chapter, with the titular "Freezes Over" the only truly impactful story in the bunch. But the craft here is undeniable. Azzarello and his artists produce some incredibly strong material.

The opening story is the single issue "... And Buried," with former series artist Steve Dillon returning to illustrate. Dillon is one of my all-time favourites. His work on this title and Preacher was crisp and controlled, while oozing grittiness and expressiveness. This issue is a talking-heads issue, with a bunch of unsavory types sitting around a bar talking, so it's tailor-made for Dillon's style. While John talks with Agent Turro at a bar in the unidentified next stop on his American tour, three men at another table start piecing together clues that a man they killed years earlier may be alive. A photograph of mercenaries in Sierra Leone depicts a man with the same tattoo as their victim, as well as scars from where they slit his face. Meanwhile, John learns someone may be behind his troubles in America, and receives the name "Highwater" from Turro. The story intercuts between the two and it's an amusing interlude. The three men work through an interesting little mystery, and Azzarello plays their ignorance and heightened sense of danger for laughs. It's the only part of this collection that seems to tie in to the wider narrative of John's American tour, and, while enjoyable, it pales next to the other two stories.

The remaining two stories are a study in contrasts, both against each other and the previous collection. In the previous collection, John was adrift in an unfriendly backwater town in the South, completely out of his element and powerless. Simply through his confidence and swagger, John once more has the upper hand in both of these stories. However, they contrast interestingly against each other, with the first depicting John in America and the second flashing back to his youth in England. It's fun to watch John slither in an out of trouble at these different points in his life.

The first of these, "...Freezes Over," is a fantastic four-parter. In the midst of a terrible snowstorm, a group of local townspeople, a young family, three hapless criminals (one sporting a concealed gunshot wound), and John Constantine are stranded in a bar. Azzarello has John wander up to the bar on foot, no vehicle in sight, covered in snow, and brandishing his trademarked grin and attitude problem. Tension builds as the criminals' true nature is revealed, a body with an icicle through its chest is discovered outside the bar (and, wonderfully, sits propped against the building for the rest of the story, as snow covers it), and the locals rattle on about the Iceman lurking outside, an urban legend terrorizing the town for over a century.

Azzarello is a master of pace and pitch in this story. The first chapter is rife with tension and an unsettling mood - and the criminals that provide the main dangerous element don't even arrive until the second chapter. John's entrance is treated as a portent of doom by the bar patrons, but we're laughing along with him, especially as he maintains his cool when a body impaled by an icicle is draggedinto the bar . Once the criminals arrive, it would be easy to have them terrorize the patrons for the rest of the story, but that trope rarely overtakes the story. In the midst of everything, John and the town dope take a stroll outside to look at the impaled body. Legends of the Iceman's exploits regularly crop up. And even though he is treated as a small-town joke, the stories of his murders offer some grisly twists. And Azzarello wisely builds up the bar patrons into compelling characters in their own right (particularly the young Asian girl and her husband), so much so that their efforts to thwart the criminals are riveting and heroic. The closing fight is as nasty as that of the previous collection, coupled with John convincing one of the criminals that dying will have more power than killing others. The story is a brisk read, but the mood is one of a slow burn, unrelenting tension, and I was completely drawn in.

Marcelo Frusin returns to draw this, and is really making the book his own. His characters never lose their slightly exaggerated, cartoony edge, but he brings these expressive figures into a world of grime and darkness, and it really works well. The oppressive snowstorm is wonderfully conveyed, and the setting of this isolated bar, housing a desperate group of stragglers, takes on a life of its own under Frusin's pencils.

Azzarello closes the trade with a two-part flashback to John's troublemaking days back home. The story is largely fun in nature, despite some portents of doom for John's future from a fortune-telling book. This one has John and Chas scam an American who wants to get ahold of a clock that also tells the future. The danger is largely played for laughs here, even before it's revealed that John has faked most of it to get more money out of the American. It all works wonderfully well in that context, with Azzarello having a great ear for the dialogue and humour of John's life in England. It makes me wish he set more of his stories there. The early scenes in the club, before the story even gets underway, are outright hilarious, and the rest of the story has a good clip to the dialogue to keep the story fun. It's not groundbreaking material, but for a light, "breather" story, it's outright fantastic. The art is by Guy Davis, who creates a grimy feel for the underground world young John operated it, with John himself just looks like trouble in every shot. The settings are alive with detail, keeping them dirty and unsettling, but because the tone of the story isn't very dark, they're oddly welcoming and bright at the same time.

As a collection of stories, Freezes Over is a triumph of mood, pacing, frivolity, nasty humour, and grisly deaths. As part of Brian Azzarello's wider story about John's trip to America, it's definitely the breather middle chapter. That certainly doesn't mean Azzarello is slacking here; the two later stories here could easily be read as excellent standalone stories in their own right.