Rich Handley & Lou Tambone (eds) – John Constantine

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Rich Handley and Lou Tambone (eds) – From Bayou to Abyss, Examining John Constantine, Hellblazer (Sequart Organization, 2020)

Contents:
Jamie Delano - No Hard Feelings: A Foreword
Rich Handley -Give 'em Hell, John: An Introduction
John Trumbull -Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know: Alan Moore's John Constantine
Tony Simmons - The Sum of His Parts
John E. Boylan - The Birth of a Mark: Swamp Thing Puts Revenge Behind
Nancy A. Collins - What Do You Do with an Undead Sailor? The Creation of "Dark Conrad"
Ross Johnson - Going for It: The Personal Is Political in Jamie Delano's Hellblazer
Alex Galer - The Making of a Forgotten Hit: Putting Constantine into Context
Martín A. Pérez - Chas Chandler: The Left Side of the Road
James Chambers - The Birth and Death of John Constantine: A Critical Analysis of Hellblazer #4 and #40
James Wilkinson - "The Odd Boyfriend”: John Constantine's Bisexuality in Hellblazer and Beyond
Julianne Clancy - What's Love Got to Do with It? John Constantine, Kit Ryan, and the Women of Hellblazer
Joseph Dilworth - Manifest Magic: John Constantine on Television
Robert Jeschonek - Dirty, Dirty Hands: Touring the Underbelly of America with Azzarello
Draško Roganović - Silk Cut Smoke Breaks: Exploring the Themes of Hellblazer Fill-ins
Adrian Brown - A Man You Don't Meet Every Day: Constantine's London
James Wilkinson - Hell to Pay: How the 2005 Movie Changed the Theology of Hellblazer and Doomed John Constantine
Lou Tambone - Constantine: Rhymes with Wine
Frank Schildiner - The Many Faces of Papa Midnite
Genevieve Williams - Ghosts, Grimoires, and Dealing with Demons: Hellblazer's Real-World Magic
Rich Handley - The Hell They Weren't: Hellblazer's Lost Lore
Sabrina Fried - Cursing the Waverider: John Constantine in the Arrowverse and in Animation
Brian Cronin - John Constantine's Banishment from the DC Universe
James Wilkinson - A Nasty Piece of Work? The Mercurial Morality of John Constantine
Richard Gray - A Total Wanker in London: The Poison Truth and the Hellblazer's Rebirth
Robert Greenberger - Prime Time and Vertigo Do Not Mix Well
Tony Simmons - The Constant Serpentine: Anti-Savior Resurrected
Lou Tambone - Still Blazin' After All These Years: An Afterword
Rich Handley - Appendix: From Liverpool to Swamp Thing's Fool
About the Contributors

This is a collection of essays about DC comics character John Constantine. Created by Alan Moore in the pages of Saga of the Swamp Thing in 1985, the character got his own book in 1988 as Hellblazer, which got later included in the Vertigo line. After remarkable 300 issues the series was cancelled in 2013, but the character lived on as a watered down version in the wider DCU in the Rebirth reset.

Constantine is a former punk rocker, working-class warlock, occult detective, and con man in London. Originally visually a dead ringer for musician Sting, the character stood apart through its anti-hero attitude, constant smoking and political commentary, established from the first issue of Hellblazer by British writer Jamie Delano. Throughout its run the series was mostly written by British writers.

Constantine was later done in other media. The movie with Keanu Reeves tried to made the trench coat wielding character more palpable for American action movie audiences, a decade later there was a short-lived NBC tv series. Despite its early cancellation actor Kevin Ryan performed as Constantine later in the DC tv universe in series like Arrow.

The essays are on the whole an entertaining and interesting mix with a lot of information and opinion about the long comics run and the different incarnations of the character. Most of it is well-written and even-handed.

What is baffling is that no essay is about the art of the book. There are bits and pieces in some contributions, but considering that the art is half of the appeal of a comic book and especially a major point in a horror comic, this is rather strange.

Also there is not a lot discussion about the writers and their stories. The only in-depth essay about a writer's work is about the Brian Azzarello run. It is very interesting and al least gave me a new perspective on it. (At the time of its release I hated it and sat the arc out.)

For comic fans who like a bit of background and opinion this is a nice volume.