I Want To Believe In A Doctor: New Constantine Trailer Released

With all the weird publicity surrounding Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man (including the recent comment by Michael Douglas, who’s playing Hank Pym, that he is “very disappointed” that Edgar Wright left the project), it’s easy to forget that there are other filmed adaptations that aren’t quite as… embattled? Struggling? Fucked?

Case in point: DC / Vertigo’s Constantine is still scheduled to start on October 24th on NBC, and a new trailer for the show has been released. It doesn’t show a ton of new stuff, but it features a couple of new visuals that DC and John Constantine fans are likely to enjoy, including John drinking beer (twice!), and the helmet of a certain doctor that might indicate the show’s relationship with the greater DC Universe… although since the show will be on NBC while Arrow and The Flash are on The WB and Gotham is on Fox, the chances of any kind of crossover seems minimal. With that said: Law And Order: Special Victims Unit is still on NBC, which means that John Constantine could, theoretically, meet John Munch, which would place Constantine in the same universe as Fox Mulder, thus causing the universe to explode.

But one thing missing from this trailer, same as all the other trailers? A fucking cigarette. The character caused a child’s soul to be ripped into hell, but the problem is that he likes cigarettes? Let the evil prick have a Silk Cut, for God’s sake! Because it’s all fun and games until some kid with pristine, pink lungs gets picked up for sacrificing some orphan to Ba’al.

Ah, well. You can check the newest trailer out after the jump.

Heckblazer: Constantine #1 Review

Editor’s Note: I’m the one who steps from the shadows, all trenchcoat and cigarette and arrogance, ready to deal with the spoilers.

Let’s start by talking about that cover. It is terrible.

It’s not terrible in a visual sense; it is a perfectly serviceable Ivan Reis cover with a sense of dynamism, and enough flashy lights to attract the casual browser’s eye as he or she wanders through the comic store. So from a pure advertising standpoint, the cover does its job. The problem with the cover is that, for a Hellblazer fan trying Constantine #1 in the hopes that this new title will deliver something even close to what they loved for about a quarter century in the earlier series, it delivers the worst message in the world.

Hellblazer’s John Constantine was a dude who worked in the shadows, mostly by reputation, braggadocio and ruthless cynicism, who used the traditional magics of sigils and binding when he needed to use it at all. The cover to Constantine #1 advertises Constantine as a refugee magic user from Diablo III, chucking force bolts around like there’s some pimply teenager driving him with a joystick while mashing the A button.

The cover promises John Constantine as fantasy action hero, throwing around “magic” ways that Gandalf would find ostentatious and flamboyant. It hints at the polar opposite of what Hellblazer fans like, and it gave me a sinking feeling in my stomach… particularly since I know that it wasn’t the first cover planned for the book. The original cover featured Constantine in a graveyard surrounded by monsters, before it was replaced by this monstrosity… and even then, someone made the decision to airbrush the cigarette out of Constantine’s mouth, further emasculating the character. Hell, based on that carefully-placed force bolt, for all I know they actually took John’s balls as well.

This was the wrong cover if anyone at DC editorial wanted to attract Hellblazer readers in the wake of that book’s cancellation. It is the equivalent of a bar pulling all the single malt scotch off their shelves and replacing it with Four Loco; sure, scotch isn’t a taste for everybody, but you ain’t attracting Islay aficionados with cans of Teenager-Punches-Cops juice.

And finally, this cover is a huge misfire because it commits the cardinal sin of comic covers: it in no way reflects what’s happening in the actual comic book. Constantine #1 has no force bolt slinging action hero in it. Sure, there’s some more straight-up action in the book than you’d find in Hellblazer, including more ostentatious magic of the force bolt variety than you’d find in the original title. But none of it comes from John Constantine, who writers Jeff Lemire and Ray Fawkes seem to have a pretty decent handle on.

My point is, for an old Hellblazer fan, there is enough good character stuff in this book to make it worth checking out, despite that Godawful “Pew! Pew! Pew!” cover.

Elegy For A Bastard – Review Of Hellblazer #300

Yesterday, I bemoaned the fate of Hellblazer and the title’s termination at issue 300 before going on to say mostly nice things about a character that had been generally known as a cliche, prior to being brought back from the dead. Today, I will talk to you about a character who has also turned into a cliche prior to becoming dead: John Constantine.

I think my “wailing and gnashing of teeth” yesterday was primarily mourning for a character who has really been dying and on his way to dead from about issue 251 on. I’m sure Peter Milligan meant well, but this series – which managed to survive the literal dicking Brian Azzarello gave it back in the year 2000 – has been dead man walking for some time. Sure, there’s been some glimmers of good story, but this is not the John Constantine we all signed up for. This is a sad shell of a John Constantine, a Constantine that, had he been anticipated as a likelihood by former writers like Garth Ennis, would have eaten a bullet sometime back around 1994. Issue 300 does not serve so much as closure for John Constantine as make you wonder about the Constantine that might have been in other hands.

And, I think I’ve figured out why.

Join me as I spoil my way through problem solving, after the jump.

Days of Future Magic Past: Justice League Dark #15 Review

Editor’s Note: What is it with you people? Do I have some kind of sign on me back, “Walking Spoiler Bank – Withdrawals Welcome”? Is that it?

What with the news about Guillermo del Toro having a movie in early pre-production about basically every character from DC’s Dark line, it seems like as good a time as any to check back in with Justice League Dark, which features just about all the characters del Toro want to work with.

Frankly, my enthusiasm for the title has waned in the face of Vertigo’s cancellation of Hellblazer (sure, John Constantine’s in Justice League Dark, but that ain’t Hellblazer), despite the title being taken over by Jeff Lemire, who is a damn good writer of weird shit, and who seemed to understand that if you’re going to see people a team book, it’s probably a good idea to have them be a fucking team. But the fact of the matter is that there’s nothing like knowing a movie is coming out about a comic to ramp up your excitement about a book. And God knows, Justice League Dark #15 will remind you that, yup, there’s a comic book movie coming out.

Unfortunately, that movie is X-Men: Days of Future Past.

Guillermo del Toro Working on Dark Universe… Yeah, Basically The 90s Vertigo Comics Movie

Update, 6:40 a.m.: The video after the jump is fixed. What can I say? That Benzedrine’s a hell of a drug.

Guillermo del Toro is finishing up work on Pacific Rim, which will be in theaters in July. And since between movies and books and comics, he seems like a guy who likes to keep busy… you know, in the sense that a methamphetamine addict like to occupy the day by disassembling the television in an attempt to find parts to improve the AK-47 they use to keep the Goddamned bugs away.

Which, as analogies go, certainly is one, but my point is, del Toro probably has another project in mind. And it seems that he does. Is it the adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s At The Mountains of Madness that del Toro was working on before the project went tits up? Well, apparently maybe; supposedly he thinks he can get one more bite at that apple, hard R rating and ridiculous budget or no:

“I’m going to try it one more time. Once more into the dark abyss,” he laughed. “We’re gonna do a big presentation of the project again at the start of the year and see if any [studio’s] interested.” And yes, Tom Cruise is still game to be on board if they can find a home for it. “Yeah, Tom is still attached. I think it would be so fantastic to make it with him. He’s been such a great ally of the project.”

Okay, that’s pretty good news… certainly better than the news about the Hulk TV show that del Toro was supposedly working on a few months ago:

“After ‘The Avengers’ there’s been complete radio silence,” he said. “I had one more meeting after ‘Avengers’ with Jeph Loeb from Marvel and he said, ‘We’re working on it, we’re waiting for a writer,’ he gave me the name of the writer and their resume and I said, ‘That sounds great, let’s wait for him’ because we had delivered a teleplay and I haven’t heard since then.”

So yeah, those sound pretty good… but that’s not the good shit. The good shit is that del Toro is apparently working on a project with Warner Bros. A movie including Swamp Thing, John Constantine, Zatanna, Etrigan… pretty much all of the cast of Justice League Dark. And it’s actually in preproduction, with a writer attached and everything.

Rake At The Gates Of Hell: DC Cancels Hellblazer

I studied journalism when I was in college in the late 1980s / early 1990s, and one of the things I learned was the inverted pyramid lead, which means to open your story with the most important hard information. So, since it was one of the most important things I learned back then, I’ll go with it here.

DC Comics has cancelled John Constantine: Hellblazer. The comic, published under DC’s Vertigo Comics imprint, will conclude in February with its 300th issue, written by Peter Milligan with art by Giuseppe Camuncoli. The long-running comic, written for a mature, adult audience, will be replaced with a new comic series, Constantine, written by Robert Venditti with pencils by Renato Guedes. The new series, which will be published under the standard DC Comics bullet, will take place in DC’s superhero-filled New 52 Universe, and will be reportedly feature the younger, more action-oriented version of the John Constantine character as currently seen in Justice League Dark.

About the cancellation, DC Comics co-publisher Dan DiDio said:

We’re supremely proud of Vertigo’s HELLBLAZER, one of the most critically-acclaimed series we’ve published. Issue #300 concludes this chapter of Constantine’s epic, smoke-filled story in style and with the energy, talent and creativity fans have come to expect from Peter Milligan, Giuseppe Camuncoli and Stefano Landini. And no one should worry that John is going to hang-up his trenchcoat – he lives on in March, in the pages of the all-new DC Comics New 52 ongoing series, CONSTANTINE, by writer Robert Venditti and artist Renato Guedes.

The series, which expanded the story of the John Constantine character created by comics legend Alan Moore during his classic run on Swamp Thing, debuted as a DC Comic in 1988 and was written by Jamie Delano and drawn by John Ridgeway. Moving to DC’s more mature Vertigo imprint in 1993, the book featured work by comic legends Garth Ennis, Warren Ellis, Paul Jenkins and Brian Azzarello, as well as many others, throughout its nearly quarter-century history.

Constantine is expected to debut in February, 2013.

Okay, that’s the classic news version. My journalism professors, one of whom once looked me in the face and said, “You smell like a three-day dead dog in the dump tank of a whiskey distillery. Sit in the back, please,” would, for once, be proud. However, like the one, older professor who once slipped me a copy of Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on The Campaign Trail after defending me in a meeting to determine if I should be ejected from the journalism department after writing a story about the college’s president that included the term, “goatfucker” taught me: classic journalism isn’t always properly equipped to capture the whole truth.

The Price Of Friendship – Hellblazer Annual #1 Review

Last night I got into an argument with a bottle of vodka and the vodka won. I woke up feeling pretty low, but you know who probably feels worse? Anybody who makes the mistake of palling around with John Constantine, that’s who. This is a fact that we are told goes back as far as Constantine’s childhood in John Constantine: Hellblazer Annual. “Suicide Bridge” takes Constantine back to his old stomping grounds in Liverpool. The mother of a long missing childhood friend is dying and his family would like him to work his mojo to determine what happened to her son, so she can die with some piece of mind. As is typical for Constantine, the search for answers never goes smoothly.

Spoilers after the jump!

Sometimes You Need Detergent And Elbow Grease; Sometimes You Need An Exorcism – Hellblazer #283

This isn’t a review. This is what happens when I’m left alone in a room with a packet of Sudafed, a bottle of Scotch, and a stack of comics and start to free associate. You’ve been warned.

Menthols? What alternate reality is this?

In addition to John Constantine’s sizable, nay, myriad tragic flaws as a human being, in John Constantine: Hellblazer #283 – “The Devil’s Trench Coat Part 1” we learn that he also doesn’t do laundry. John Constantine would have been that guy who lived on your floor in your college dorm who deposited all his athletic wear on the carpet of the hallway outside his doorway after sports practice and just left it there, stinking up the joint until a squadron of RAs was dispatched to enforce a cease and desist – that is, if Constantine actually went to college. Constantine’s aversion to even hitting his trench coat with the occasional blast of Febreeze is so bad that the coat has, apparently, gained sentience and gone on walk about. Then some hapless chump buys it on Ebay: