HELLBLAZER: ALL HIS ENGINES
June 9th 2010 23:41
Category: Graphic Novels/Comics
Publisher: Vertigo DC Comics
Production Team: Mike Carey – writer, Leonardo Manco – artist, Lee Loughridge & Zylonol Studio – colourist & separator & Jared K Fletcher - letterer
Cost: AU$21.95/US$14.99
Unlike comic writer Alan Moore my first actual encounter with the character of John Constantine occurred whilst staying at a friend’s house in Canberra during the Australia Day long weekend and the gaming convention that is known to Aussie gamers as Cancon. I was there to take part in some Live Action Role Playing or LARP as it’s called by its aficionados, anyway it was my friend’s flat mate who introduced me to the Hellblazer comics and their primary protagonist John Constantine. Unfortunately the experience didn’t stick and when Cancon was done and dusted and I returned back to my humble abode the chain smoking magician wandered on out from my mind and I found other things to grab my attention.
It all begins in the past, in the past of the tales key protagonist John Constantine. We see the wandering trench coat clad magus as a young boy living in Liverpool in the sixties, he receives a visitation, an entity looking very much like the Grim Reaper confronts him and engages him in a conversation that seems somewhat one sided, the entity knows Constantine but he as boy does not know it. Flash forward to the streets of Putney, South London some forty three years later. An argument between a woman and her estranged ex husband is occurring outside the family home, the woman is Geraldine, daughter of Chas and Renee Chandler, her ex husband is Brian they’re about to make a startling discovery that will lead to a sequence of bizarre and infernal events unfolding.
The daughter of the estranged couple, Trish, has somehow fallen unconscious and once she is transported to the hospital by paramedics it’s revealed that she is in a coma. And she is not the only one; apparently there have been dozens of similar cases over the last few days. Some kind of terrorist attack, a chemical aerosol released into the air of Putney bringing down people hither thither and yon? Or perhaps a psionic detonation let loose in the ether that has hit latent psychics scattered throughout the region bringing them undone? In fact neither of these scenarios is the case instead the cause behind these rash of comas is something older and more reminiscent of sulphur and brimstone above all. Which is why Trish’s grandad Chas has called in a marker with his old mate John Constantine, he has no idea what’s going on but he suspects Constantine will be able to ferret something out and help Trish.
When my friend’s flat mate first introduced me to Hellblazer he mentioned that Constantine as a character operated on the Mrs Marple effect or negative synchronicity. He appears whenever something bad happens or is about to happen, just as Mrs Marple always seems to be somewhere where a murder or crime is about to be committed or has just been committed. Of course Mrs Marple is far too gentile to deal with the kind of incidents or villains that Constantine encounters; he literally deals with Hell on a frequent basis in his life. Not greeted too kindly by the young girl’s grandmother Constantine turns up at the hospital and immediately gets the low down from Chas. Once he knows what’s going on he gets to work, recruiting Chas as his driver.
Many artists, scholars, theologians, raving lunatics and televangelists have depicted Hell as a fiery inferno were all manner of torment, castigation and depravity are visited upon sinners. It is not a place you would want to visit and certainly not one where you’d desire to stay under any circumstances. So how does it feel for the demons that make up the local population? There is only so much power to go around but there are legions of such entities, all of them wanting to carve out their own place but it can only take them so far. The demons at the top are too heavily entrenched to be deposed and thus cause a power vacuum waiting to be filled by a new up and comer. So what is an opportunistic, hungry demon to do? Go west as they say, set up a veritable hell on earth, and so demons have made their way to the source as it were. Why wait for the souls to pass into the infernal regions when they can harvest them direct in the world of the living.
In investigating the sudden illness of his friend’s granddaughter this is what Constantine has stumbled onto. But what the demons who have decided to adopt this agenda fail to realise is that they are poachers in someone else’s territory, intruders on another entities patch as it were. This infernal outreach program for want of a better term had its origins in LA, where else would you expect Hell to appear in the world, but has branched out across the Atlantic into the British Isles. What those who have set up shop in LA are not completely aware of is that there are others who laid claim to that region of the world, older entities, bloodier entities and very very vicious. Constantine has already met one of them, although it is not until he is deeply mired in events that he realises what had occurred to him all those years ago.
Hellblazer: All His Engines is a fantastic read and a truly well produced graphic novel, hats off to Mike Carey , Leonardo Manco and team for creating this work. It’s a shame that the producers of the Constantine film didn’t elect to go with this as their inspiration, I reckon this would have made a far better film. Who knows maybe sometime in the future this might get a Guernsey to appear on the silver screen, it would be a better premise than that used in the film that did make it to the silver screen. If the occult styling’s of John Constantine is up your alley then I suggest getting your hands on this. Oh and if you’re wondering the line All His Engines is from the epic Milton poem Paradise Lost…
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