Hellblazer, not Constantinople—
As far as I’m concerned, it’s Hellblazer that’s the interloper. Check the pedigree: Alan Moore steals Sting from Brimstone & Treacle and has John Totleben and Stephen Bissette do him up as John Constantine, a right bastard foil to the Swamp Thing’s lumbering straight man; he did his business deftly, hinted at a dark and stormy backstory, got in some unforgettable licks, then vanished in a puff of cigarette smoke and an unanswered joke. Beauty.
Then Rick Veitch dragged him back onstage for his run with the bog-god. And then the right bastard got spun off into his own dam’ book, and Jamie Delano got to unwind a lot of that dark and stormy backstory for about 40 issues or so until a rousing what-if send-off with art by the one, the only, Dave McKean. Next month: new creative team! —And all this before the Garth Ennis / Steve Dillon run, which most folks think of as the definitive Hellblazer.
So I wasn’t too put out by the news of the movie. LA? Plenty enough mythology to work from, trust me. (Where else can you find such a hellish city of angels? Thank you, thank you, I’m here all week.) —Keanu? Pfft. Why not? (My knee doesn’t jerk at the mention of his name; him, I can take or leave. Maybe it’s how there’s only a dozen people in the world who know why it is I laugh with such delight whenever I catch him playing Don John.) —The movie can pretty much fly or fall on its own, far as I’m concerned: though it was on the small screen, we’ve already had pretty much the best adaptation of John Constantine to moving images we could hope for. I’m good.
The which said, initial reports aren’t all that enticing.
If Delano and Ennis’ Hellblazer is Mexican food, Constantine is best understood as Taco Bell.
But: on the other hand: Tilda Swinton as Gabriel:
(I do think it’s amusing, though, that the reporter, at least, appears never to have heard of Prophecy. Some might say, with good reason.)
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I, for one, consider Delano the definitive Hellblazer. Once I grasped that Ennis was just out to shock people, I grew weary pretty quickly. Still, his stuff was more coherent than the recent run. (Why the hell am I still reading this? Oh, yeah, I'm a Vertigo whore!)
I was just talking about this during lunch (with a ragged-blonde ex-punk British rocker, no less) and the thing that gets me most about Constantine is not Keanu or LA (I don't mind those by themselves -- it's that he seems to be carrying guns. A lot. That's not the Johnny-on-the-hex I've grown to grudgingly admire. I just hope he's got a bunch friends he can call on in this movie, if you know what I mean.
Meanwhile, I've got the American Gothic/Murder of Crows story in TPB sitting at home, and maybe I'll read that this weekend.
This intrigues me.
I first encountered John Constantine in the "Sandman" series - he appears in the first few issues (collected in TPC as "Preludes and Nocturnes", IIRC). I had no idea he was somebody I was supposed to recognize until much later.
He also appears in "Books of Magic" and one issue of "Planetary". By that point I'd found out a bit more, mostly how little I'd found out.
Thanks, Google!
Keanu Reeves playing John Constantine is like Clifton Webb playing Mike Hammer. "Whoa! I know sardonicism!"
I agree about the Ripper being a great adaptation / re-imagining / swipe, though.