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 - 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 - 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.