All his engines..........have broken down.
Title: John Constantine: Hellblazer – All his engines
Writers: Mike Carey
Artist: Leonardo Manco
10 word review: Oi Oi! Diet Constantine. Trying too hard. Unimportant. Semi-Dull
Rating: 2 Death Gods out of 5
Review: I have an unusual taste in my mouth. It's not quite the taste of sheer revulsion but it is a taste which I almost certainly do not want in my mouth. It's like drinking your tea, noticing something slight, then peering into your cup and seeing small milky floaty bits that might, might be a little sour, but you are still unsure. It's that taste of wonderment, that half real and half perceived wrongness that you can't quite put a finger on or convey to someone without a half-shrugged “you know what I mean” type reflex action. Thus is All his engines.
It begins with the cover, the name of our 'protagonist' on display for all the recent movie converts (although really, they would be hard pressed to see what they want in the Hellblazer graphic novels if they were expecting Keanu Reeves vs the world, and really was there all that many converts?) to recognise that this 'the Hellblazer' is indeed the comic that the new Matrix movie with demons is based on. This feeling pervades throughout the entire trade, this attempt at blending movie Constantine and comic Hellblazer as John struugles around in L.A. for some poorly constructed and half-arsed reason. Plus, it also has a label at the back with the movie logo of Constantine and those immortal words now a major motion picture which always almost instantly ruins a comics appeal. So we push and wrestle with out fragile sensibilities already, before opening the damn thing, as mass market appeal is pulsing into view and cackling at me like some kind of screaming goat (!).
However push on we must, all this packaging is not essentially the writer Mike Careys fault after all. He merely inherited the character at an opportune, or inopportune time depending on your world view. Our tale begins when John's old mate Chaz gives him the call to look into the mysterious coma-ing of his granddaughter Trish. There is little emotion or heart (and is Constantine the kind of guy you call for this?), and a distinct lack of gravity to proceedings and by the first chapters end I have to admit I was completely nonplussed and not grabbed, I didn't have that yearning to see this through to it's end. Constantine doesn't feel right throughout, his constant cynicisms fall repeatedly flat and, contextually, are absolutely atrocious. At one point while talking to Chaz, John comments that someone is poking around his head and that he “better hope I don't catch him at it”. Wow John, your so cool! Surely this would work better in the tried and tested narration box? In fact this point is repeatedly hammered home in some dialogue so hammy I think the local butcher is suing for use of his product.
All of John's witty bastard cynicisms seem to lack any of the actual wit and bastardism that we know and love from our antagonistic anti-hero. There also seems to be a tremendous chunk of overextended exposition to get us where the plot needs to go to start being interesting, all of which proves to be highly unnecessary, and the most interesting side of the story, the coma plague which is apparently affecting the entire world, is given paper clippings in some small panels here and there. Despite a little girl being at stake the entire narrative just feels dull and unexciting, there is almost zero urgency and John seems to be completely lethargic in his position despite not doing anything overly taxing, well what we could consider overly taxing for him anyway. Yet the story has a false sense of grandiose that is never justified by the content presented. It is as if Mike Carey thinks that he has done enough to make us invested, a little girls life is at stake and the big bad is such a prick, but it all seems so superficial.
Take the big bad as a case in point. The character is actually rather non-threatening despite his menacing exterior and Carey frequently resorts to cheap tricks to force our emotions. He snorts cocaine in one panel so that we build up our negative associations, he uses a line about an air hostess that is so juvenile in an attempt to be repulsive that it just sounds pathetic. If kidnapping a little girl and playing with her life is not enough dramatic imperative to hate this guy then you are clearly doing something wrong that no amount of hard drugs and sex jokes is going to change it. The villain, his subsequent encounters with John and the other collection of death gods also hammer home another point that was just too big for me to ignore. I will say that it could be completely a preference thing and that others will love it but for me one of the defining thing's about Constantine's world is that allusion, and illusion, is stronger than reality
Let me further this point with reference to previous arcs in Hellblazer. In Warren Ellis short arcs and Brian Azzarello's consistently outstanding run the power of allusion is constant. The threat of something from the underworld is more of a current, flowing below the surface tension of the characters that Constantine meets, than an outright declaration of fact. In Ellis's run, the demons that haunt John are his past. The rest of the stories are tales of man's inhumanity to man and the darkness that lies beneath the surface of civility. The desire for something sinister more than the existence, and this is highlighted by Constantine's story about London in the bar in the last issue of Ellis' run. John tells a journalist these wild tales and stories yet there is some underlying truth that we are not privy to among them. Azzarello's run again very much uses the horrific nature of human intolerance with some sprinklings of witchcraft, occultism and hints at something bubbling underneath it all, ready to pop into the world. The Constantine that I want to read about is the one straddling this line between reality and trickery.
This sentiment sums up the character presented here, Constantine-lite, bastardised for a movie going age which needs him to be somewhat heroic, somewhat less human, less realised and more snarky than before. This is the shallow end of the pool for readers, there is no subtlety or nuance, merely demons eating each other and Constantine sounding stupid. The art provided by Leonardo Manco is very detailed and vivid, yet the shadowing lacks a certain something when compared to that of Marcelo Frusin, who worked on Azzarello's run, who imbued every scene with a character all of its own. Maybe it is all the comparisons to the stellar runs prior but I just can't totally get on board with this. It is not by any means terrible, I have just come to expect a little more from my Hellblazer I guess. Give a go if cheap, pick up Hellblazer: Freezes over or Setting Sun if not.
