fajrdrako | Hellblazer: Highwater...

Brian Azzarello is currently one of my favourite writers in comics. I got into his stories through Batman and I'm now pursuing what he has written in the past. That includes Hellblazer: Highwater, the trade paperback that came out last week, reprinting Vertigo comics' Hellblazer #164-174.

I've loved John Constantine since Alan Moore invented him. I loved him even more when written by Neil Gaiman in The Books of Magic. I read Hellblazer until the middle of Jamie Delano's run, and then stopped, because I'm not crazy over the Vertigo style and didn't feel I was getting enough pleasure to be worth the cost. I still love John Constantine.

So this is the first Constantine story I've read in quite a while. And, yes, I enjoyed it for numerous reasons, especially Constantine's colourful sex life, and the character of S.W. - one of Constantine's lovers, a sort of inverted/perverted Bruce Wayne. I just wish I'd understood the plot. I guess I might have to go back and read the previous trade paperbacks Hard Time, Good Intentions, Freezes Over which - if I understand correctly - set up the situation to which this is the resolution. It was like reading the last few chapters of a murder mystery and thinking, "What?" when the explanations, such as they are, don't add up.

But you can find murder mysteries in the public library. The Ottawa Public Library, by some unfortunate oversight, doesn't stock Hellblazer and I have a feeling they never will. Elfquest and kiddie versions of Spider-Man are more their style.

I wish I knew someone who'd been reading Hellblazer all along, so they could explain it to me.

The cover art by Tim Bradstreet, and the section art, and some of the layouts were spectacular. Otherwise.. I didn't like the interior art much. It reminded me why I had decided Hellblazer wasn't worth the money.

Still.. it's John Constantine. I like the way he smirks and looks up with dark, blazing eyes from under his eyebrows. I like the way his cigarette is his icon. I like the way the story used silhouettes and shapes. This comic pulls me two ways: to buy or not to buy? Is there enough of a payoff despite the grossnesses I don't like? Sometimes. Maybe. I don't know.

A bit of dialogue I liked: the FBI agent (Turro) gives the female cop (Havlik) a cup of coffee, as they investigate the death of John Constantine in a sex club.

Havlik: Thanks.
Turro: My pleasure.
Havlik: Careful, that word seems to have caused a lot of trouble tonight.
Turro: Yeah? Well, there's gonna be plenty more of it before I'm done with these freakoids.
Havlik: Plenty more of what? Trouble? Or pleasure?
Turro: To-may-toe, to-mah-toe, detective.