Every time I give up on the Hellblazer comic book series, I end up coming back, because the tone is great. It gets two things just right: the continual sniping between mages, the presumption from self defense that any mage is likely to screw you over given the chance because so many do, is compelling, and the way magical rituals seem to follow a common broad theoretical basis within an endless variety of specifics born of the way magical knowledge would fragment in such a treacherous community.
And every time I return to the comic, I decide to stop reading it again, because those nifty bits, the hints of a broader world behind all the hubris and backstabbing, always prove only to be no more than hints. Like the X-Files, Hellblazer has an absorbing atmosphere, but there’s no there there. There’s only one story, told over and over. And it isn’t very good, always ending when Constantine pulls some obscure factoid out of his ass and makes the evil wizard’s magic blow up in his evil wizard face. Maybe he gets a little help along the way from a half dozen dei ex machina. Here, I’ll write a new three-issue series for you right now:
CONSTANTINE: Bloody hell. Bullocks. Spare us a fag, luv. [lights up] Being the world’s greatest magician bloody well sucks because I have to deal with wankers all the time and sometimes I wallow in guilt. Better find me old mate, who hates me, can’t say I blame him. Bullocks.
BOB REDSHIRT: Fuck off, Constantine. You just use people and get them killed. Get the hell off my doorstep.
CONSTANTINE: Come with me. I need you to get in way over your head investigating some insanely dangerous magical cabal. Bullocks.
BOB REDSHIRT: Okay.
CONSTANTINE: The great thing about being a magician is you never have to figure anything out for yourself. Just wait around and synchronicity will give you all the answers you need. Wankers.
THUG: Come wit’ me. Da boss says yer too dangerous to his plans, so he wants to talk wit’ yez.
CONSTANTINE: Fuck that. [kicks him in the crotch] Now take me to your boss. I’ve got some questions for him. Bloody fuckin’ hell.
THUG: Urk. Address is on dis piece o’ paper.
[Constantine travels to meet the evil wizard.]
EVIL BOSS: I have mastered this horrifically powerful magical relic, which I will now use to destroy the world and/or indulge my vile and decadent whims. Don’t even try to stop me, Constantine.
CONSTANTINE: Yeah, well, that’s the thing, innit? Your relic is the sacred whoozits of Czernobog, and it contains an ancient demon which will eat your kidneys the moment anyone in the world says “bullocks,†which I just did. Bullocks.
EVIL BOSS: Noooooo—aargghrh!
CONSTANTINE: Bloody amateur wankers. Pity what your goons did to my mate Bob before I got here. Don’t know how I’ll forgive myself. Bloody hell. [lights up]
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