Hellblazer - Stations of the Cross

Hellblazer – Stations of the Cross (#194-200 – Mike Carey/Leonardo Manco, Chris Brunner, Marcelo Frusin)

This volume of Hellblazer starts Mike Carey’s next movement on the title. In the previous volume, John Constantine defeated of the creature from the Garden of Eden, a threat that had been building since Carey’s first issue, and lost his memory as a result. This volume picks up with an amnesiac John at the mercy of a number of unsavoury characters who want vengeance on their enemy now that he is such easy pickings. When this volume ends, John has his memory back, and it’s obvious this whole story was a means to get him into his next predicament. But that doesn’t take away from this volume’s strengths – Carey skilfully weaves a new villain through this volume’s issues, amnesiac John is an engaging character, and the chorus of villains dying to get their hands on him is a lot of fun. It’s another rewarding volume from Carey and his collaborators.

The first three issues deal more directly with the effects of John’s memory loss. He’s wandering around London, pursued by a spurned former enemy. Carey achieves a great effect here – for every John moment of peace John gets, that peace is wrenched away as his pursuer launches another violent attack. The story isn’t that compelling. It’s more interesting to watch John try to operate at half-capacity. Losing his memory has made him almost half a man. He has no confidence, we hear true fear in his words, and he genuinely doesn’t know what his next step should be. It’s not until he must come to the defence of Chas and his family that he regains some sense of himself. That issue is harrowing, with an unpleasant confrontation in a hotel room that is brutal to read. Through all of this is weaved John’s encounters with the underworld vixen Rosacarnis, who offers him his memories back in exchange for a day of service to her. Her appearances are seeded through nicely, starting with her disguise as a burnt little girl John finds on the road and culminating in a meeting in her lush, demonic palace. It’s an interesting layer to add to this story. These aren’t the strongest chapters of Carey’s story, but the mix of a violent opponent and John’s condition combine to make the story feel very unsettling.

These opening issues are pencilled by Leonardo Manco and Chris Brunner. I was a bit disappointed in Manco’s work, which has me worried, because I know he soon becomes the regular artist. There are some great images and a good tone, but I prefer the cartoonier influence of Marcelo Frusin’s work. The characters look a bit too real and too rendered and some of the expressions didn’t quite fit the vibe of the book. Brunner’s one issue is surprisingly great, though. He replicates the general feel and layouts of Frusin’s issues, but his depiction of the characters is quite unique. John in particular has a singular look to him that is kept consistent throughout the issue. It’s different than his normal look, which fits, because this amnesiac John himself is different.

The story then continues along, as John is dragged from the streets by two cheerful girls into their church, with the promise of food and shelter. Carey and regular series artist Marcelo Frusin craft an incredibly effective story in these three issues, leading to #200. The church is run by Ghant, the man deceived by Constantine in the Gemma story from the previous volume. Ghant presents John as an anti-Christ to his deranged congregation and eventually holds court with a group of demons who want to get a hold of the amnesiac Constantine. Through a number of gruesome events and the return of some old foes, Carey and Frusin present John’s journey through this labyrinthine church and the tunnels beneath it. These issues are bathed in shadow. Ghant exudes a spurned vengeance and the other characters seem a little unhinged. The imagery is astounding, as Rosecarnis continues to pop up and present John her offer on a number of disturbing pages. The whole story feels like an old fashioned witch hunt, and John must truly prove his mettle. In the end, as he is about to burnt at the stake, he takes Rosacarnis’ offer.

This leads into #200, a story told in three parts, each detailing a possible future domestic life for John. Steve Dillon returns to pencil a tale featuring the love interest from when he drew the book, Kit. This is the most straightforward story, as their young son seems to be at the centre of some violent deaths. Not unlike the amnesiac John’s plight, this John is completely alone. Kit is hardened and unfriendly when he voices his concerns about their son. The story is effectively chilling. Frusin pencils the second story, bringing back Zed, John’s love interest from the earliest issues of the book, when Jamie Delano wrote it. In this one, John’s older son is using the imprisoned body of the Swamp Thing to create a garden paradise for the family home, while nursing a homicidal side. Frusin paces and presents the sharp script like a horror movie and it’s a wonderful little story. Leonardo Manco is back for the third story, where John and current girlfriend Angie deal with a delinquent teenaged daughter who gets together with her friends to kill people. This one further neuters John – the daughter tries to make him feel like an old man out of his depth, and the loss of his swagger certainly seems to indicate that.

It turns out these three sequences were all part of the day of service to Rosecarnis. She reveals herself as the daughter of Nergal, the demon that goes back to the series’ beginnings. She mated with John during his day of service to produce these three offspring, who will torment the world. It’s a great anniversary issue for the book – the structure and the three artists make it feel like a celebration of the book’s history, but the plot itself is urgent and moody, propelling the next story forward. The atmosphere is incredibly strong. John constantly feels like he’s struggling to get his head above water, and being thrown into these three disturbing dream sequences is disorienting and unsettling for the reader.

This volume also marks the end of Marcelo Frusin’s time on this title. It’s some of his strongest work to date. John’s life on the streets feels vivid and terrifying. With large panels, Frusin depicts his confrontation with another homeless man, a cathartic shower, and his wanderings around the church. This John looks thinner, less sharp than normal, and completely out of touch with what is going on around him. Frusin also nails the shots of the demonic creatures coming after John, with some stunning splash pages and images that feel expansive and powerful. The issues set in the church are bathed in darkness, and Frusin depicts a variety of lithe and horrifying creatures ambling around it. Really great stuff on the art front.

The story is equally strong. It feels like Carey is moving through grand movements and testing John all along – first, he was tested to figure out what great evil was coming for him, and assemble forces to combat it. Then, he was tested to find the strength to face his enemies after losing his memory. It’s possible he failed on that, by reaching out to Rosacarnis for help. Now, he’ll face another test, defeating his children.

Hellblazer - 'We do not require the slow build and meaningful pauses.'

Hellblazer - Staring at the Wall (Hellblazer#187-193)

Mike Carey's first overarching story on Hellblazer seems to reach a conclusion in his third volume, Staring at the Wall. The big bad lurking on the fringes of our plane of reality fully reveals itself and is defeated. But the larger character arcs Carey is playing with continue to proceed, as this volume focuses on Gemma and her quest to follow in her uncle's footsteps. There's also a thread involving John struggling to keep his cool in the face of his opponent. It's more of what I've come to expect from Carey on this book - methodical plotting and presentation, well-realized characters, a strong script, and a sense of humour. And while the climax isn’t quite as methodical as the build-up, this volume is still stellar stuff, and it leaves John in a desperate position for future stories.

The volume opens with the two-part "Bred in the Bone," with guest art from Doug Alexander Gregory. It's a solo story for Gemma, who is recruited by one of Fredericks' men to wrap up a case left open by her uncle John years earlier. It's a nice showcase for her character - she's hard-edged and defensive about tidying up John’s business, so desperate to prove herself as a magician in her own right. But she has a warmer side when she's actually on the case. The case itself is a bit slight. The first chapter is driven by Gemma's portrayal and the second by Gregory's artwork, with the story getting a little lost. That said, Gregory's art really carries parts of the story. With a lot of sweeping shots of demon creatures flying towards Gemma over a setting sun, he plays with shadows and angular shapes to create some very nice pages. Some of the conversations are a bit too muddy, but he has a distinctive style and knows how to employ it effectively. On the flashback scenes in particular, his depiction of John's cigarette smoke as a horizontal lightning bolt is great stuff. They’re an enjoyable couple of issues, but they cruise more on mood and Gemma's portrayal than a really compelling story.

The rest of the volume contains the five-part "Staring at the Wall" - John's confrontation with the big baddie that's been hovering around the edges of this book since Carey started writing it. We've learned that this creature is a beast from hell that followed Adam out of Eden. As Adam didn't name it, it can take different forms, and has over the years. John assembles a crew of magician types around him to confront the creature, but eventually turns to old standbys to finish the conflict - Gemma, Chas, his girlfriend Angie, and Swamp Thing. Carey does something interesting with John here. He positions the character as a figure who must lead and inspire others to end this conflict. His trademark cool-as-a-cucumber wisecracking doesn't exactly go over well with the group of magicians. He finds himself desperate for their help and begging to get it. Similar to how Brian Azzarello took John out of his depth, it's interesting to watch the character's ever-cool facade get challenged. From here, Carey creates a wonderful mood piece, as the magicians hole themselves up in a decrepit old house to take down the beast, while the world spins out of control outside. These are great issues - Frusin bathes the house in shadows, with oranges and browns coming in through the windows, tension amongst the participants is high, and personal problems, like Angie dealing with her brother, anchor all of the action in the characters.

The stakes continue to grow into the final chapters, where John is taken into the creature's realm and Gemma must save the day. Frusin's fantastic depiction of Swamp Thing returns, hulking and brooding. He remains out of sync with the sense of humour displayed by Gemma and Angie. I love what Carey is doing with Swamp Thing's powers - he can grow, at will, out of a potted plant Gemma holds and he finds a way to use his plant powers to keep John's body alive. The humour is sublime here. Similar to how the Red Sepulchre, history's deadly weapon, turned out to be a piece of rope, Angie unveils a twig, a piece of pre-lapsarian wood from Eden, as the weapon that will defeat the creature. Swamp Thing creates a suit of armour out of it for battle, and later finds out the battle was just a distraction so the girls could enact their own plan. There a lot of good to these final chapters, chief among them the interaction between John and Gemma, struggling to find common ground as the latter tries to grow out of her uncle's shadow. I also love how the group come together to defeat the creature, another clever twist from Carey. And Frusin really stretches himself artistically, from Gemma's body contortions as she enters the creature’s realm, to the realm itself, to a weakened and hopeless John.

It all builds to a strong climax, where John emerges from his traumas, covered in blood, with no memory of what happened. And the craft here is undeniable - Carey has built to this conflict since his first issue, as a threat has slowly grown in strength, while the relationships John has with Gemma, Angie, and Swamp Thing have been leading to this point. The storytelling is controlled and skillful, but some of the wild set pieces and the strong undercurrent of humour add an exciting and fun layer to the story. Great stuff, once again, and highly recommended for fans of the character.

Hellblazer - Parliament of the Trees. Could use a bit of a pruning, in my opinion.

Hellblazer - Black Flowers (#181-186)

If Mike Carey’s first volume on this title, Red Sepulchre, was an exercise in constructing a strong story, building up mysteries and character relationships, and reaching a satisfying conclusion, Black Flowers shows that Mike Carey is attempting this exercise on a wider scale. Red Sepulchre was a solidly constructed single story, but, in Black Flowers, Carey reveals that he’s taking his knack for strong plotting to build up a mystery and a threat for John to confront that spans volumes. This volume comprises three shorter stories, each building on the threat that revealed itself in Red Sepulchre and is lurking on the fringes here. But these three stories are also brimming with a vibrancy that Carey was only touching on in his first volume. As the mysteries deepen, Carey is getting a stronger handle on John, the pace of his adventures, his connection to people around him, and how to bring excitement and danger into this book.

The first of these stories, “The Game of Cat and Mouse,” is a single-issue story drawn by Jock. It’s a chase story, in which three demons called Lukhavim are after John for killing Fredricks in the previous volume. Jock’s design for the creatures is great – they look hulking and imposing, but also sit quite naturally in panels with human characters. The issue itself has a great balance. It’s a very typical John Constantine encounter, with the magician walking the demons into traps and calmly gloating as they wither away. But, at the same time, danger lurks around the proceedings. Enough cryptic warnings are provided by the demons that it is obvious their pursuit of John is tied to a bigger problem. Their first attack on him is jarring, in that it actually hurts him. This puts John on edge through the rest of the story. For as calm and cool as he remains, he knows they mean business and can hurt him, and it shows. The pace of this story hits just the right balance as well. I also like that Clarice, the rich old woman from the previous story, is being used as John’s advisor on all things Hell. A fun ride, and there’s a lot happening here.

Lee Bermejo pencils the two-part “Black Flowers” next, and it is a treat to see his interior artwork. The human characters have a strong realism to their faces and the inhuman characters are so commanding on page that they truly feel like they are intruding in our world, which is the point of the story. The art is dark, but not overly so, with shadows being used to accentuate the locations. The story involves Angie getting John to help her with an outbreak of madness in the town where her brother is a psychiatric patient. This alls ties into the wider plot Carey is working with. Namely, that “there is a disturbance at the border” – something nasty from the otherworldly realms is creeping into ours. These spirits have turned the town mad, and three murderous shepherds from that realm have come here to set things right. The story does a great job digging into Angie’s character. Carey wisely places a lengthy scene between her and her jerk boyfriend early on, to give us more insight into her regular life before plunging her into this. She’s on edge for the rest of the story, struggling to accept John’s world but equally angry towards her brother. Carey also tells the story really well. The cutting of scenes between John discovering something is amiss as Angie gets deeper into it is expertly done, building up tension effectively. The climatic moments also work nicely, aided by Bermejo’s designs for the shepherds. And, as well as this works as a standalone tale to build up John and Angie’s relationship, Carey swings things on the final page to remind us how this otherworldly invasion seems to be part of a bigger danger John is facing. The tension is effectively built, allowing this story to fit into a larger whole.

Marcelo Frusin is back to pencil the final three issues, the “Third Worlds” story. John takes Angie across the world with him, first to South America to get Swamp Thing’s help and figure out what may be coming from another realm, then to Iran to find the followers of Cain, and finally to New Zealand for more information. This doesn’t feel like wacky globe-trotting, mainly because it is all tied together so nicely by the threat of the otherworldly invaders and the strong narration from John and Angie.

The Swamp Thing chapter contains some card game shenanigans that are a bit off-course, but the visit with Swamp Thing is perfect. Carey gets their antagonistic dynamic, and John brings a lot of humour to the situation. Frusin, an artist grounded in darkly cartoony Vertigo books, creates a captivating vision of Swamp Thing, growing out of a giant old tree. The visit to Iran is another fun chapter, as John must answer for an old theft and Angie comes into to her own as an adventuress. There are hints that the evil John seeks goes back to the Garden of Eden and also an old-school trial by ordeal with humorous results. Very strong stuff, and Frusin’s depiction of arid desert life is great. The Tasmania chapter swings things into the deeply personal category. John learned from Swamp Thing that the evil he seeks also escaped from Tasmania two centuries ago, and journeys back in time to colonial slavery to learn about it. At the same time, Angie must ward of Aboriginal spirits and relays the story of her brother’s mental illness to them. These two story threads, coupled together, create an incredibly compelling narrative of pain felt throughout the years. Carey doesn’t downplay the years of pain felt by the Aboriginals when their land was taken over, but it’s a very poignant moment to have one of the spirits acknowledge that Angie’s family has also faced great suffering. The issue gives Angie remarkable depth. Just the fact that she stands up to the spirits shows a strength she didn’t have when we first met her, and a growth since accompanying John on the road.

I think what I like just as much is that Carey keeps the ominous threat feeling both sharply drawn and very vague. The point of the Tasmania story is for John to get information from the natives in the past. He gets it, but the scene cuts away as that conversation starts. At the end of the issue, he relays that he learned what he needed too, but we still don’t know what it is. Throughout this volume, the vague threat of something breaking through the wall between realms and entering ours is pervasive. But the terms are never laid out in stone, the threat is never delineated, and the dangers don’t have to be spelt out. Something bad will happen, and John is trying to learn more to prevent it. The danger feels real, partly because it is so vaguely sketched. In presenting it that way, Carey is allowing these individual stories to live and breathe as standalone tales and leaving ample space for character interaction. But it always feels like these pieces are building towards something, even if we don’t have a clear picture of what yet. It’s incredibly strong story structuring, and, aided by three strong artists, a sharp and effective package.

Hellblazer - Where did I put that again?

I'm continuing my look at Hellblazer, thanks to the full run of the series offered by Toronto Public Library. Red Sepulchre (collecting issues 175-180) marks the start of writer Mike Carey's tenure on the book, picking up where Brian Azzarello's roadtrip through the USA ended. I have the utmost respect for Carey as a writer. My only experience with his Vertigo work is The Unwritten, but he has fought hard to make his run on X-Men (later re-titled X-Men: Legacy) into a thoughtful and worthwhile read, even as editorial has wrenched it in different directions and borderline ignored it for years. I know he has the chops to turn out a strong story. In this volume, John is back in England, and the series immediately returns to a much more familiar tone and vibe than Azzarello brought to it. In comparison to Azzarello's work, this is downright tame. But, at the same time, it's very good. Carey builds the story deliberately, adding layers and characters as the explanations of what is going on trickle through. He seems to draw from Azzarello's model of storytelling in the right way, ramping up the intensity and action in the later issues, but, at the same time, the story is built on solid foundations.

A two-parter, drawn by returning Hellblazer legend Steve Dillon, opens the trade, and directly leads in to the title story. The strength here is in the character work - John, still presumed dead after the prison riots in Brian Azzarello's first story, returns home to check in on his sister Cheryl and her family. Outside of these characters and Chas, this title has never had much of a supporting cast, so I like that Carey grounds this story in them, after the title has drifted for so long. The story here is simple but compelling, with Cheryl spiraling into anti-depressants while John's niece Gemma is off in some unspecified trouble. The bulk of this story is fairly conventional. John senses a 'spike of evil' outside of Cheryl's apartment building, and enlists a waitress named Angie to help him investigate. Their interaction naturally builds, and, on, the whole, Carey's handling of the characters is top notch. He delves into the family dynamics more than most writers have, and it's strong stuff. The story leads John to pin a string of disappearances on a kindly old woman in the apartment building. Their big confrontation is quite good, and her dying words lead John to believe that both Gemma and his old friend Scrape are in trouble. No one is going to accuse this story of being groundbreaking, but it's good to see John back in familiar territory, The character work is strong, and the mystery is built up and resolved in an economical fashion.

"The Red Sepulchre" proper gets started and slowly builds into a compelling mystery. Quite typical of Hellblazer, numerous unsavoury types are introduced in somewhat cryptic scenes, and then the plot details behind who they are and what they're talking about are eventually revealed. This slow burn approach is part and parcel of the title by this point. It can be a mite frustrating, but I have faith in the writers, and the scenes are usually ominous and effective, as they are here. It's John's character that centers the book through these encounters, as his sure hand, concern for his niece, and sense of humour provide a focus around which we meet spindly old glamour queens, disembodied forces that live in the subway tunnels, and violent mobsters. Carey builds quite a strong framework here, with Gemma being used by a man named Fredricks to lure John in, so that John can help identify the red sepulchre, an ancient weapon connected to John's bloodline. It turns out that Scrape borrowed money from Fredricks to acquire it. He was killed by Fredricks in short order, and now Fredricks has to actually identify the sepulchre, amongst hundreds of boxes of Scrape's belongings, and needs John's help. It's a plot like this which proves Carey gets this title's sense of humour no problem. The story is built around the foibles of a desperate idiot, and that is the perfect setting for John to operate in. Add to this John's continued interaction with Angie and a mystical couple named Clarice and Albert, who also contributed to Scrape's purchase of the weapon and want in on it, and Carey builds a strong tapestry on which to hang this fairly straightforward story.

Carey has the fight for the weapon play out over the two final issues, and it's a wise choice. There are a number of players on the board (including a demon Clarice has summoned, and Map, the aforementioned disembodied consciousness who begrudgingly helps John), and the scene cutting that builds up the tension is very well-structured. The action of the story builds to a number of good crescendos, but it always remains rooted in the characters. Gemma, desperate to be recognized as a great magician herself, realizes she isn't, and that Fredricks only used her to lure in John. The story is rooted in her desire to get out of her uncle's shadow, and it's a compelling central conflict. In the ensuing firefights, it’s revealed that the sepulchre is merely a rope used to strangle people, one which John burns in short order. Carey does a great job pacing the build up to the end, and it’s the twist of humour about the much sought-after weapon turning out to be a piece of rope that proves he has the right stuff for this book.

Marcelo Frusin thankfully sticks around as regular artist. It's a boon for the book to have artistic consistency coming out of Azzarello's wild run, and it's great to see Frusin finally depict John operating in England. Frusin mastered the grim and dark elements of middle America, and brings those skills to London, angry demons, a séance, and a host of unsavoury characters. His style blends well with those elements. In some ways, it feels like Carey is only dipping his toes in during this first story, but I commend his craft in setting up the players and their relationships, naturally building the story, and expertly structuring the climax. It's not the dog-licking, head-shaving, getting-burnt-to-a-crisp-in-a-sex-club fun of Azzarello's run, but does everything need to be? This story boldly returns John to his more typical setting and tone, by reintroducing strong characterization and building a solid story. That's good comics to me.

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.

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.