'Hellblazer'

I remember the first time I picked up a Hellblazer comic. That image on the left? That was the cover. Hellblazer # 25, in Brazilian, at an age where I had never heard of John Constantine and for me, DC comics was all about Captain America. It was a time where every two or three days, I'd leave school, hit the store and try to find something to read during Chemistry (that was always lost from day one anyway). It usually takes me about an hour to go through six or seven comic books, so you see, one every two days was a mastery in self-control.

There were a lot of comics with the usual heroes clad in spandex and with awesome powers. And then there was this. Possibly some of the creepier shit allowed to go on a comic book cover back in the day. I picked it up, went through a couple of pages, and brought it home with me. After I read it once, I re-read it until I knew it by heart, and from then on, began scanning the shelves for it. Even after Pops gave away my whole comic book collection without my permission, this number got saved. When I finally found the time and availability to download the English version of the comic, you have no idea how happy I was to finally read this as the writers had intended it to be.

Hellblazer is all about John Constantine -detective, exorcist, regular English badass... and not Keanu Reeves. If the name doesn't ring a bell to you, try going to the club and picking up the movie Constantine, which is an adaptation of Hellblazer to the big screen. Like most adaptations from comic books, it sucks on toes if you're familiar with the original. Constantine is a chain-smoking guy caught between several layers of Hell on Earth, who solves cases and problems related to the paranormal because he can see paranormal shit. We're hinted from some sources that this is not something that he alone does, but that his lineage has been doing for centuries. In a number of Sandman, an ancestor of Constantine was contacted by Morpheus to recover his son's head during the French Revolution (the comic book would be Sandman: Distant Mirrors - Thermidor and the ancestor's name was Johanna Constantine -tell me you didn't see that coming...) All manners or weird shit happen in his comic book. I absolutely adore it.

Several good people already had Constantine on their hands. He first showed up on Swamp Thing, and from then on, he's been picked up by Gaiman (from Sandman), Grant Morrison (The New X-Men), Garth Ennis (Punisher) and countless others. His comic books never fail to impress. Strangely well-written, they regularly feature something most comics only pick during highly dramatic moments: a very good narratorial voice, which often not only describes what is going on in the panels, it also offers insight on thoughts and feelings of the involved parties in a fashion reminiscent of post-modern English literature. You know T. S. Elliot? His Wasteland was written using a similar manner of narrator. The art was very nice, the coloring made in strong tones and little variety, much like those comics meant to be in black and white that later are inked. I could argue DC comics are cheap bastards, but then again, they're still publishing in the original templates. Plastic paper pages and heavy coloring is Marvel's department. I should at this point mention I liked Vertigo comics very much (especially the compilations), which belonged to DC and among other good things, published Hellblazer.

Of course, the movie Constantine (2005) couldn't hold a candle to it. Like many lately, it's a decent, even pretty good movie, unless you're familiar with the real John Constantine. Like Silent Hill (2007) for those who never played Silent Hill, and the American The Grudge (2004) for those who never saw the original Japanese Ju-On (and as a punchline, it's the same director on both languages). And let me tell you, they went all out with the movie. It's the whole of mankind on the line in the movie. Usually the comic manages to afflict little more than a whole city. But hey, I cut them some slack: the city of Los Angeles has enough shit as is, to be cursed by demons on its own. Terminator 2 (1991) was set in Los Angeles, Transformers (2007) was set in Los Angeles, Pulp Fiction (1994) was in Los Angeles and so were half the sitcoms I liked to watch. Damn, it's one cool city. (on a related note, I just imagined Terminator bursting inside the Cheers! pub and killing everyone there, except for Maria de Medeiros who gets saved by Bumblebee).

I do resent a little that Keanu Reeves was picked for the part. I never liked the man a lot both for his face and as an actor, but since The Matrix he's never been without a job. I also resent Peter Stormare being picked for the part of Satan. Not that he's a bad actor, on the contrary. I liked him in The Big Lebowski and Birth, and saw him in a shitload TV series including Prison Break, he's a very decent actor, he has a cool voice, but I think he wasn't very well picked as Satan. When I think of the Price of Darkness, that's usually not what comes to mind. I expected someone not as old and a little more charisma. I did understand why he was picked, however: Lucifer was an angel after all, and I think production was trying to make their Infernal Majesty something that we could believe had been an angel, only he's spent the last thousands of years in the slammer. On that view, they did a good job. Loved Tilda Swinton as the archangel Gabriel (you probably remember her as the White Witch in Chronicles of Narnia), and yes, it is a woman. Awesome job make-up did on making her look genderless. Very well-picked and very well worked with.

Overall, I like the comic better. It's definately worth a look, if you have nothing better to do.