It took a while to get here, but we knocked out yet another Champions League final today. The game itself, between Paris St-Germain and Bayern Munich, wasn't exactly a classic, but the tournament's format felt remarkably zippy, though it should be noted I didn't watch any matches until the final, because most of it was on CBS All Access (dammit!).
In fact, I quite liked how the last-eight matches took the shape of an American-style post-season, and I feel like UEFA could do worse than using the format again. The main thing I appreciate is how the regular seasons for the leagues had ended before the Champions League games started up again - in future it would be nice for the Champions League to start in the summer after the leagues end, with the league winners going into the knockout round, rather than the European tournaments taking place in parallel with the season and stretching teams that are participating in both.
Obviously UEFA won't go for that part, as the clubs themselves will also hate the idea. Currently fully half of the teams who qualify for the main tournament come from the top four countries, with another few countries sending multiple clubs to Europe as well. The richest clubs are already restive enough, threatening to pull out of their leagues entirely and just play one another - stopping them from spending their summers on promotional tours of the Far East and other markets probably wouldn't fly. But it'd be a fun idea.
Though it's worth noting how this was the first time in 16 years that a team from outside the top four countries made it to the final. Even more impressively, a full two teams from outside the top four (in this case France) made it to the semi-finals, which is uncommon enough. Though of course Bayern won, so the long winning streak of the top four continues unabated.
As far as the game itself, as I say, it was hardly a classic on the pitch. There were some good chances on goal, which both teams created, and I think it's fair to say that if Neymar and Kylian Mbappe didn't have excellent games, they also didn't embarrass themselves. I mean, I only saw one bit where Neymar rolled around as if he'd been poleaxed, so he's clearly feeling the gravity of the situation.
Also notable was the presence of two German coaches on the touchline. It's hard to draw a line from Ralf Rangnick to Hansi Flick (I tried) but while PSG's Thomas Tuchel is a Rangnick acolyte, Flick has played his own part in the reinvigoration of German football by having been Joachim Löw's assistant at the national team. If you count the last two finals, German tactics have been represented at the highest levels of European football for a while.
I've mispredicted this stuff before, but it's clear that the non-Rangnick coaches are in a bit of disarray at the moment, and it'll be interesting to see how they come back next season. But until then, football remains a game where 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and then the Germans win at the end.
Sunday 23 August 2020
Sunday 16 August 2020
Revisiting the Lord of the Rings
On a whim last month I decided it was time to reread my old copy of the Lord of the Rings. It's one of the earliest editions that collects all three major parts together - The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King - and floating on its cover painting by Alan Lee of Minas Tirith is a shield reminding us that this was an upcoming major motion picture from New Line Cinema.
To give an idea, I bought it in college, and it traveled to Germany with me for my exchange year, where it subsequently went on a series of travels without me, as I lent it to a couple of friends who took it separately to Barcelona and Poland with them. It's probably the best traveled of my books, and it's certainly visited a number of places I've never been to.
It's also fairly dogeared at this point, both because of those travels and the fact that I reread it three times before and during the release of the above-mentioned movies, once for each film. When I started that project, back in late 2001, it was to look for the bits that I expected Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens to change when they translated it to film. The easiest to deduce was Fellowship, since it has that long section early on where Frodo and co escape the Black Riders across the Old Forest and then meet Tom Bombadil - a section that while charming enough in spots, even then didn't feel essential.
The point of all this is to say that I know the book fairly well, so like all books that one rereads multiple times, it was comforting and reassuring to slip back into its pages and paragraphs, like putting on an old sweater that you weren't expecting to fit.
I've talked elsewhere about the oddness of rereading books with a few years' distance, how I'm a different person now than when I first read the book, but because I've read Lord of the Rings so many times that doesn't really apply here. Though it was interesting where I found myself most interested in the narrative and prose, and where I found myself switching off a bit.
As I recalled, my favorite bits have always been the ones most concerned with the Hobbits and the Shire (although Part 2 of Towers, which follows Frodo, Sam and Gollum sneaking into Mordor, is one of the bits that drags for me). The Scouring of the Shire, for instance, is one of my very favorite parts and I always thought it too bad that the movies couldn't include it, though Return's ending is long enough in movie form without adding a further hour of the Hobbits' return to find their homeland changed for the worse.
The other parts that I thought dragged a bit were the battles in Return, on the Pelennor and the Ride of the Rohirrim. Tolkien's register changes from the simple, charming and almost folksy language of the sections focused on the Hobbits into what generations of less talented fantasy writers have tried to recapture - though it's worth noting that as a professor of Old English at least Tolkien, unlike David Eddings, gets his "thees" and "thous" right.
But the parts with the Rohirrim riding to war feel overwrought now, as if he's trying to recapture some of the flavor of the Old Testament, which would be okay except it gets tiring after a while.
More interesting though is the question of what place LoTR has, or should have, in the fantasy "canon". I'm putting that in quotation marks because I've been seeing some debates on Twitter about how important the canon is to new fans and writers of science fiction. For some the question of canon raises the uncomfortable specter of gatekeeping, where not having read a certain "foundational" text means you can't be a "true" fan; for others the canon as constituted contains too many authors of one type (white, male, heterosexual, etc) and not enough other demographics.
For myself I lean toward not really caring if something is a foundational text of the genre or not - I've read Dune and a fair amount of Asimov and Philip K Dick, but very little Heinlein or Clarke (other than the 2001 books and Childhood's End), but no Moorcock - so does that mean my education is lacking? I have read a couple of Octavia Butler's novels, though, so maybe it isn't? I find this discussion boring and would rather share the good stuff about it rather than engaging in ever more bad-tempered culture wars over it.
So if you ask me whether LoTR should be part of the fantasy "canon", I'd tell you to un-ask the question. Reading the story itself, and especially the 100+ pages of linguistics, legends and so forth that comprise its appendices, it becomes clear that Lord of the Rings only spawned the epic fantasy genre by accident, and that you could just as profitably shelve it alongside mythology-derived books like Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles, or Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (in the case of the latter English rather than epic fantasy).
Of course I'm guilty of perpetuating the second-artist syndrome with my own fantasy stories, which clearly owe a lot to Tolkien. Like Terry Brooks or Tad Williams or Guy Gavriel Kay, I'm engaging in a conversation with the earlier work and seeing for myself what makes it tick, but it's so easy for that engagement to fall into mimicry. That, of course, is the fatal flaw of the whole genre - and if you don't believe me, just read Joe Abercrombie's Third Law trilogy, which can't get away from LoTR even as it skewers and questions everything about it.
I also can't help thinking of China Miéville's dueling viewpoints on the book. On the one hand he calls it a wen on the arse of fantasy literature, needing to be lanced; on the other he grudgingly admires how it brings to life the Nordic mythology that inspired Tolkien, contrasting it with the Victorianized Greco-Roman pantheon that he calls sterile. Both can be true, and when you read some of the worst excesses of the genre (not naming names) it's hard not to agree with Miéville.
Taken on its own, of course it's old-fashioned (though not always cliche, in contrast with certain of the choices that the movies make). And not only old-fashioned, but quite uncomfortably racist, when he talks about the "evil" Southrons and Easterlings, the mingling of the Dúnedain with "lesser" men and the "foul" Orcs. There's loads more, and it's always made me uncomfortable, though I also appreciate that there was a different cultural context for talking about "evil" races that way.
At the same time, Tolkien still manages to partly humanize even a couple of Orcs, when they're talking about how the ongoing war affects them personally. It doesn't make up for the weird racism or the outright erasure almost all women from any pivotal role in the story (yes, spare me your Eowyns), but it's clear there's more to it than the detractors would like you to think.
So I'd argue that any newcomers to the book approach it from the viewpoint of English fantasy - go read some Norse mythology (or even Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology), Susanna Clarke and a translation of the Edda or the Kalevala, rather than lumping it with the Sword of Shannara, the Wheel of Time or Prince of Thorns or something. All of those newer books have their good points, but Tolkien's most famous work probably deserves to be read in a different, more scholarly context.
To give an idea, I bought it in college, and it traveled to Germany with me for my exchange year, where it subsequently went on a series of travels without me, as I lent it to a couple of friends who took it separately to Barcelona and Poland with them. It's probably the best traveled of my books, and it's certainly visited a number of places I've never been to.
It's also fairly dogeared at this point, both because of those travels and the fact that I reread it three times before and during the release of the above-mentioned movies, once for each film. When I started that project, back in late 2001, it was to look for the bits that I expected Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens to change when they translated it to film. The easiest to deduce was Fellowship, since it has that long section early on where Frodo and co escape the Black Riders across the Old Forest and then meet Tom Bombadil - a section that while charming enough in spots, even then didn't feel essential.
The point of all this is to say that I know the book fairly well, so like all books that one rereads multiple times, it was comforting and reassuring to slip back into its pages and paragraphs, like putting on an old sweater that you weren't expecting to fit.
I've talked elsewhere about the oddness of rereading books with a few years' distance, how I'm a different person now than when I first read the book, but because I've read Lord of the Rings so many times that doesn't really apply here. Though it was interesting where I found myself most interested in the narrative and prose, and where I found myself switching off a bit.
As I recalled, my favorite bits have always been the ones most concerned with the Hobbits and the Shire (although Part 2 of Towers, which follows Frodo, Sam and Gollum sneaking into Mordor, is one of the bits that drags for me). The Scouring of the Shire, for instance, is one of my very favorite parts and I always thought it too bad that the movies couldn't include it, though Return's ending is long enough in movie form without adding a further hour of the Hobbits' return to find their homeland changed for the worse.
The other parts that I thought dragged a bit were the battles in Return, on the Pelennor and the Ride of the Rohirrim. Tolkien's register changes from the simple, charming and almost folksy language of the sections focused on the Hobbits into what generations of less talented fantasy writers have tried to recapture - though it's worth noting that as a professor of Old English at least Tolkien, unlike David Eddings, gets his "thees" and "thous" right.
But the parts with the Rohirrim riding to war feel overwrought now, as if he's trying to recapture some of the flavor of the Old Testament, which would be okay except it gets tiring after a while.
More interesting though is the question of what place LoTR has, or should have, in the fantasy "canon". I'm putting that in quotation marks because I've been seeing some debates on Twitter about how important the canon is to new fans and writers of science fiction. For some the question of canon raises the uncomfortable specter of gatekeeping, where not having read a certain "foundational" text means you can't be a "true" fan; for others the canon as constituted contains too many authors of one type (white, male, heterosexual, etc) and not enough other demographics.
For myself I lean toward not really caring if something is a foundational text of the genre or not - I've read Dune and a fair amount of Asimov and Philip K Dick, but very little Heinlein or Clarke (other than the 2001 books and Childhood's End), but no Moorcock - so does that mean my education is lacking? I have read a couple of Octavia Butler's novels, though, so maybe it isn't? I find this discussion boring and would rather share the good stuff about it rather than engaging in ever more bad-tempered culture wars over it.
So if you ask me whether LoTR should be part of the fantasy "canon", I'd tell you to un-ask the question. Reading the story itself, and especially the 100+ pages of linguistics, legends and so forth that comprise its appendices, it becomes clear that Lord of the Rings only spawned the epic fantasy genre by accident, and that you could just as profitably shelve it alongside mythology-derived books like Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles, or Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (in the case of the latter English rather than epic fantasy).
Of course I'm guilty of perpetuating the second-artist syndrome with my own fantasy stories, which clearly owe a lot to Tolkien. Like Terry Brooks or Tad Williams or Guy Gavriel Kay, I'm engaging in a conversation with the earlier work and seeing for myself what makes it tick, but it's so easy for that engagement to fall into mimicry. That, of course, is the fatal flaw of the whole genre - and if you don't believe me, just read Joe Abercrombie's Third Law trilogy, which can't get away from LoTR even as it skewers and questions everything about it.
I also can't help thinking of China Miéville's dueling viewpoints on the book. On the one hand he calls it a wen on the arse of fantasy literature, needing to be lanced; on the other he grudgingly admires how it brings to life the Nordic mythology that inspired Tolkien, contrasting it with the Victorianized Greco-Roman pantheon that he calls sterile. Both can be true, and when you read some of the worst excesses of the genre (not naming names) it's hard not to agree with Miéville.
Taken on its own, of course it's old-fashioned (though not always cliche, in contrast with certain of the choices that the movies make). And not only old-fashioned, but quite uncomfortably racist, when he talks about the "evil" Southrons and Easterlings, the mingling of the Dúnedain with "lesser" men and the "foul" Orcs. There's loads more, and it's always made me uncomfortable, though I also appreciate that there was a different cultural context for talking about "evil" races that way.
At the same time, Tolkien still manages to partly humanize even a couple of Orcs, when they're talking about how the ongoing war affects them personally. It doesn't make up for the weird racism or the outright erasure almost all women from any pivotal role in the story (yes, spare me your Eowyns), but it's clear there's more to it than the detractors would like you to think.
So I'd argue that any newcomers to the book approach it from the viewpoint of English fantasy - go read some Norse mythology (or even Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology), Susanna Clarke and a translation of the Edda or the Kalevala, rather than lumping it with the Sword of Shannara, the Wheel of Time or Prince of Thorns or something. All of those newer books have their good points, but Tolkien's most famous work probably deserves to be read in a different, more scholarly context.
Sunday 9 August 2020
Message to Joe Biden: Pick Bailey Warren as VP
The topic came up in conversation with my girlfriend this weekend, but I wanted to throw out a suggestion for Joe Biden's vice-presidential pick. I know he's said he wants to pick a female running mate, but I think Elizabeth Warren's dog Bailey should be on the ticket.
I have clearly taken leave of my senses, but if you'll humor me for a second, until the orderlies drag me away, Bailey is a good dog. He marches for progressive causes, and he's in favor of redistribution of wealth, as evidenced by that time he stole a burrito from Senator Warren's staffer. The fact that he has no legislative or governing experience is a bit of a knock, but that means there are also no prior votes that would be difficult to defend.
One also presumes that, as the dog of a noted policy wonk like Warren, he'd have a better grasp of both the issues and their underlying causes than about 90% of other potential candidates.
He's also likely to have appeal across the aisle. He's a big, fuzzy, rambunctious dog, with a friendly smile and a nice golden coat. Golden retrievers originally came from Scotland, sure, but it's hard to imagine a more all-American breed, well-suited to the outdoors and to hunting. There may be some type of person who'd look at the face of a golden retriever and think, "No, I'd rather vote for the guy who doesn't even have a pet", but to be honest, I don't think the Democrats are going to get that person anyway.
The only problem I can really see is that Biden then loses the nationwide cat vote, but - without meaning to generalize here - cats aren't known for their reliable voting habits. I mean, when was the last time you saw a cat at a polling station?
Naturally, this is just a suggestion. I'm sure the Biden campaign has all kinds of lists drawn up of potential running mates. But I wanted to flag up one that they may have overlooked, who not only sat in for Warren during the impeachment trial and who the Des Moines Register called "a natural closer".
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| Canvassing for Warren in Iowa. Source: Getty Images |
I have clearly taken leave of my senses, but if you'll humor me for a second, until the orderlies drag me away, Bailey is a good dog. He marches for progressive causes, and he's in favor of redistribution of wealth, as evidenced by that time he stole a burrito from Senator Warren's staffer. The fact that he has no legislative or governing experience is a bit of a knock, but that means there are also no prior votes that would be difficult to defend.
One also presumes that, as the dog of a noted policy wonk like Warren, he'd have a better grasp of both the issues and their underlying causes than about 90% of other potential candidates.
He's also likely to have appeal across the aisle. He's a big, fuzzy, rambunctious dog, with a friendly smile and a nice golden coat. Golden retrievers originally came from Scotland, sure, but it's hard to imagine a more all-American breed, well-suited to the outdoors and to hunting. There may be some type of person who'd look at the face of a golden retriever and think, "No, I'd rather vote for the guy who doesn't even have a pet", but to be honest, I don't think the Democrats are going to get that person anyway.
The only problem I can really see is that Biden then loses the nationwide cat vote, but - without meaning to generalize here - cats aren't known for their reliable voting habits. I mean, when was the last time you saw a cat at a polling station?
Naturally, this is just a suggestion. I'm sure the Biden campaign has all kinds of lists drawn up of potential running mates. But I wanted to flag up one that they may have overlooked, who not only sat in for Warren during the impeachment trial and who the Des Moines Register called "a natural closer".
Sunday 2 August 2020
The Many Faces of John Constantine
My long-term reread of my comics collection has long since arrived at Vertigo, and I'm coming to the end of Hellblazer, which was one of my favorite comics back around 1999-2002 or so (though based primarily on storylines from years earlier). It seemed the obvious choice after reading Animal Man, Doom Patrol and (especially) Swamp Thing, where Constantine first appeared during Alan Moore's run on that series.
I've always found it interesting how Vertigo arose out of those comics that were doing interesting things with established DC characters. The first, who predated Vertigo by years, was Swamp Thing, when Alan Moore turned the character into a parable on environmentalism and on how screwed up America is (oh, if only the Alan Moore of 1982 could see us now). But then Grant Morrison went and did crazy things with both Animal Man and Doom Patrol, while Neil Gaiman grew the 1940s obscurity of the Sandman into one of the best comics ever created.
Hellblazer always had a weird position in that family of titles, since John Constantine showed up in all the magic-related books at some point, but wasn't himself a long-standing character who'd been forgotten for decades. It was also the title's bad fortune to be published alongside the books that were getting all the buzz (from the Sandman to Preacher to Transmetropolitan and beyond), and to be a sort of springboard for lesser-known British writers to make their mark in American comics.
The first case in point is Jamie Delano, who wrote most of the first 40 issues. He's a fine writer, and his first nine issues in particular are brilliantly atmospheric. He set the tone of commenting on the moral decay of Britain that he was observing, and started fleshing out the character from the occult wideboy that Moore envisaged.
But Delano is one of the great unsung writers of Vertigo - his name appeared on a multitude of ads for new Vertigo series, but none of them really ever made that much of a mark. So there may have been some disappointment from the fans that it wasn't Moore writing the book. Couple that with some of the very "deep England" storylines that Delano was writing, like the Fear Machine, which depicted modern-day pagans and hippies and Ley lines, and it was probably a very hard sell for American readers (though the atmosphere of the Fear Machine storyline stuck with me so much that, years after reading it, I was reminded of it very forcefully when I passed some sort of commune in Camberwell in 2018).
Garth Ennis was the next writer on the book, and my suspicion is that his is the defining run for most fans, at least given how many of his storylines were collected in trade paperback form at the time he was writing it. Revisiting those issues, it's interesting to see how many of Ennis's themes are already present, including his rage against self-serving people in power, as well as how much backstory he creates for Constantine separate from the backstory Delano created.
It's also funny how, despite being such a writer-driven book, it really took off when the late, lamented Steve Dillon took over as artist from Will Simpson. Ennis is a writer who demands a certain intestinal fortitude from his artists, but when he links up with one who fits him well, they hit the stratosphere together. Put plainly, Dillon drew the blood and guts so well that it spurred Ennis on to make things even more gross and horrifying - a sort of competition that led to them working together on Preacher, which became one of Vertigo's best books as it moved further away from the main DC universe.
(Even to this day, it feels weird to read a Garth Ennis book that isn't drawn by Steve Dillon - which makes the latter's death in 2016 even sadder for me)
Ennis's run did have something in common with Delano's, beyond the character, and that's the contemporary politics. One of the main subplots was around racist groups, which underlay a lot of Ennis's issues and played out in his final storyline, Rake at the Gates of Hell. What's also notable about that, and the look at far-right politics in Paul Jenkins's subsequent run, is how little has changed with regard to racism and the BNP and English Defence League et al, in today's Britain.
As mentioned, Paul Jenkins took over after Ennis, and went in a more consciously English-mysticism direction, more in common with Delano's run. He also created a new history and supporting cast for Constantine, though I suspect he referred to more of Ennis's plot lines than Ennis did to Delano's. There's a lot to like about the Jenkins run on Hellblazer, but it's sadly overlooked, possibly because he wasn't as bloodthirsty as Ennis or Warren Ellis, who followed him. I also suspect that Jenkins was too English for the American readers, like Delano.
Warren Ellis is another writer whose tics and preoccupations are all over his run of the book. Rereading his only major story arc, Haunted, it's long on atmosphere and gore, but not necessarily on plot. He tries to turn "London" into a character, but with my jaded 41-year-old eyes it feels a bit cliche, especially because he was writing during those sunlit uplands between the Labour general election victory of 1997 and the Iraq War - London was cleaning up and becoming more the stomping grounds of Baddiel and Skinner's Three Lions than Derek Raymond's I Was Dora Suarez.
(BTW I only know about Raymond because Ellis name-checked him in a blog post)
Ellis also creates his own backstory for Constantine over his ten issues, of which I have eight, but he does a good job, despite my criticism of the noir above, of balancing the magic with Constantine's innate scheming nature. Other writers portray him as less powerful than Ellis does, but Ellis shows him using overt magic in a way that adds to the mystique of the character.
Brian Azzarello, the next writer after Ellis, went way in the other direction in his run. He also took Constantine more fully into the US, because Azzarello's American and wasn't as steeped in London as his predecessors. This may have something to do with why that's my least favorite run (of the ones I know), and why I stopped reading the book during that time. This isn't to say that Azzarello wrote the character badly, apart from not nailing John's accent - but he's a crime writer more than a horror writer, and so it never really gels for me.
I lost sight of the book after that, though I remember hearing when Mike Carey took over, and then subsequently when Peter Milligan did. I've seen recently that the book has been revived, and Si Spurrier is the new writer, taking in themes like Brexit Britain, the way Boris Johnson is literally fucking the country over, and so on. I no longer have a local comic shop, and due to the coronavirus, it's possible local comic shops won't exist anymore - but I'm intrigued enough that I might look to pick up a few new issues or collections when I can.
Constantine is a good lens through which to talk about what's happening in Britain now, and while that may have stopped the book from ever taking off the way Sandman or Preacher did, I love that it's the one remaining link to the late 1980s, before Vertigo even existed, and now after the Vertigo line has been discontinued. At any rate, I'm glad there's still a book for interested viewers of his short-lived NBC show and of Legends of Tomorrow to explore (btw, Matt Ryan is a great Constantine).
I've always found it interesting how Vertigo arose out of those comics that were doing interesting things with established DC characters. The first, who predated Vertigo by years, was Swamp Thing, when Alan Moore turned the character into a parable on environmentalism and on how screwed up America is (oh, if only the Alan Moore of 1982 could see us now). But then Grant Morrison went and did crazy things with both Animal Man and Doom Patrol, while Neil Gaiman grew the 1940s obscurity of the Sandman into one of the best comics ever created.
Hellblazer always had a weird position in that family of titles, since John Constantine showed up in all the magic-related books at some point, but wasn't himself a long-standing character who'd been forgotten for decades. It was also the title's bad fortune to be published alongside the books that were getting all the buzz (from the Sandman to Preacher to Transmetropolitan and beyond), and to be a sort of springboard for lesser-known British writers to make their mark in American comics.
The first case in point is Jamie Delano, who wrote most of the first 40 issues. He's a fine writer, and his first nine issues in particular are brilliantly atmospheric. He set the tone of commenting on the moral decay of Britain that he was observing, and started fleshing out the character from the occult wideboy that Moore envisaged.
But Delano is one of the great unsung writers of Vertigo - his name appeared on a multitude of ads for new Vertigo series, but none of them really ever made that much of a mark. So there may have been some disappointment from the fans that it wasn't Moore writing the book. Couple that with some of the very "deep England" storylines that Delano was writing, like the Fear Machine, which depicted modern-day pagans and hippies and Ley lines, and it was probably a very hard sell for American readers (though the atmosphere of the Fear Machine storyline stuck with me so much that, years after reading it, I was reminded of it very forcefully when I passed some sort of commune in Camberwell in 2018).
Garth Ennis was the next writer on the book, and my suspicion is that his is the defining run for most fans, at least given how many of his storylines were collected in trade paperback form at the time he was writing it. Revisiting those issues, it's interesting to see how many of Ennis's themes are already present, including his rage against self-serving people in power, as well as how much backstory he creates for Constantine separate from the backstory Delano created.
It's also funny how, despite being such a writer-driven book, it really took off when the late, lamented Steve Dillon took over as artist from Will Simpson. Ennis is a writer who demands a certain intestinal fortitude from his artists, but when he links up with one who fits him well, they hit the stratosphere together. Put plainly, Dillon drew the blood and guts so well that it spurred Ennis on to make things even more gross and horrifying - a sort of competition that led to them working together on Preacher, which became one of Vertigo's best books as it moved further away from the main DC universe.
(Even to this day, it feels weird to read a Garth Ennis book that isn't drawn by Steve Dillon - which makes the latter's death in 2016 even sadder for me)
Ennis's run did have something in common with Delano's, beyond the character, and that's the contemporary politics. One of the main subplots was around racist groups, which underlay a lot of Ennis's issues and played out in his final storyline, Rake at the Gates of Hell. What's also notable about that, and the look at far-right politics in Paul Jenkins's subsequent run, is how little has changed with regard to racism and the BNP and English Defence League et al, in today's Britain.
As mentioned, Paul Jenkins took over after Ennis, and went in a more consciously English-mysticism direction, more in common with Delano's run. He also created a new history and supporting cast for Constantine, though I suspect he referred to more of Ennis's plot lines than Ennis did to Delano's. There's a lot to like about the Jenkins run on Hellblazer, but it's sadly overlooked, possibly because he wasn't as bloodthirsty as Ennis or Warren Ellis, who followed him. I also suspect that Jenkins was too English for the American readers, like Delano.
Warren Ellis is another writer whose tics and preoccupations are all over his run of the book. Rereading his only major story arc, Haunted, it's long on atmosphere and gore, but not necessarily on plot. He tries to turn "London" into a character, but with my jaded 41-year-old eyes it feels a bit cliche, especially because he was writing during those sunlit uplands between the Labour general election victory of 1997 and the Iraq War - London was cleaning up and becoming more the stomping grounds of Baddiel and Skinner's Three Lions than Derek Raymond's I Was Dora Suarez.
(BTW I only know about Raymond because Ellis name-checked him in a blog post)
Ellis also creates his own backstory for Constantine over his ten issues, of which I have eight, but he does a good job, despite my criticism of the noir above, of balancing the magic with Constantine's innate scheming nature. Other writers portray him as less powerful than Ellis does, but Ellis shows him using overt magic in a way that adds to the mystique of the character.
Brian Azzarello, the next writer after Ellis, went way in the other direction in his run. He also took Constantine more fully into the US, because Azzarello's American and wasn't as steeped in London as his predecessors. This may have something to do with why that's my least favorite run (of the ones I know), and why I stopped reading the book during that time. This isn't to say that Azzarello wrote the character badly, apart from not nailing John's accent - but he's a crime writer more than a horror writer, and so it never really gels for me.
I lost sight of the book after that, though I remember hearing when Mike Carey took over, and then subsequently when Peter Milligan did. I've seen recently that the book has been revived, and Si Spurrier is the new writer, taking in themes like Brexit Britain, the way Boris Johnson is literally fucking the country over, and so on. I no longer have a local comic shop, and due to the coronavirus, it's possible local comic shops won't exist anymore - but I'm intrigued enough that I might look to pick up a few new issues or collections when I can.
Constantine is a good lens through which to talk about what's happening in Britain now, and while that may have stopped the book from ever taking off the way Sandman or Preacher did, I love that it's the one remaining link to the late 1980s, before Vertigo even existed, and now after the Vertigo line has been discontinued. At any rate, I'm glad there's still a book for interested viewers of his short-lived NBC show and of Legends of Tomorrow to explore (btw, Matt Ryan is a great Constantine).
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