Constantine the Hellblazer #3

One out of every fifty people finds this cover sexually exciting.

This blog is not for you. This is not a blog where I review comic books, no matter how much I dress it up to look like a goddamned whore ("Goddamned whore" is my preferred nomenclature for professional critics). This blog is a meditation. It is a private diary. It is my scalp torn back, my skull sawed off, and my brain exposed for the curious and perverse to gawk at and to judge. It is sometimes more honest than it professes to be, the honesty hidden between the lies. When I'm depressed, I can mope about here while trying to make others smile. When I'm manic, this place is a fucking circus where the clowns are allowed to jerk off in your face and the elephants allowed to run free. But far too often lately (and I blame Convergence and/or the death of my writing partner, Judas), it can become a chore. It's just another item on the list to be completed so I can earn a sticker and a brief amount of praise ("praise" meaning, as I learned as a child, "being ignored instead of yelled at"). I don't want this to be a chore. I don't want this to be work. So I'm taking this blog back from all of you. I'm taking it back from every person who complained that I used the word "cunt" or "retarded." I'm taking it back from every person that expected to know my opinion of a comic book after they finished reading a review and were left thinking, "What the fuck was that?" I'm taking it back for my sanity. Although I'm not going to take it all the way back to what it was when I first began because--HOO BOY!--some of that stuff was shit! Who was that guy from three years ago? Who let that asshole have a blog?!

Here's the very first entry on the original manifestation of Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea (a blog I created simply for the name) from February 16th, 2010:

How do people plan their lives? How does one go about it? If life is like a maze, never knowing what will be around any approaching corner, how do you stick to your plan? How do you find your way? Perhaps you hurry through the inevitable wanderings, arterials, and dead ends, since they're easily recognizable as not part of the plan. But what if the newly found path is more entertaining, more magical, more interesting than the path you've already chosen for yourself? Do you throw away your initial plan? Do you write up a new one? Do you throw in the towel or rally against fate or God or the universe? Do you throw your arms up to the sky in defeat or defiance?

How does one go on with life when life doesn't care about your plan?

My aunt once asked me when I was barely in my twenties, "Where do you see yourself in ten years?" I answered, "Where did you see yourself ten years ago?"

I've never had a plan. Perhaps, now 40 [actually 39 when this was written--Know It All Tess!], that was a mistake. But I had dreams. Maybe it's time to start following those instead of simply wandering.

So that was me five years ago! Guess who's still fucking wandering, bitches?!

Oh yeah! I'm taking back saying "bitches!" at the end of sentences too! Not all sentences. I don't want to seem insensitive.

So I will actually be 45 at the end of September [Actually, 44!--Know-it-all-but-only-on-the-second-edit-Tess!]. I think. Let me do the math. Where's the calculator app on this thing? Um...yep! Forty-five [Nope!--Know-practically-nothing-Tess!]! And I've got nothing to show for it except my own small business and an intense hatred for shaving and a dead best friend of fifteen years buried in the backyard and a loving Non-Certified Spouse of eighteen years or so. Let me get out my calculator app again. Hmm, this thing is useless! Why doesn't it have a button to show the date I met the Non-Certified Spouse?!

I don't know what anybody should expect to change around here. Probably nothing. What simply needs to change is my attitude.

Goddammit. My high school English teacher was right!

Oh wait. I lied about my first blog entry! The one I previously said was the first one was the last one from the first month of the blog being set up. The first entry was this:

My cat is staring at me.

Stop it. Stop staring at me! Go away. Thank you.

I must have been preparing to masturbate.

Here's another post from the first month which I just read and now I'm crying:

A Dream

I was in some weird refugee camp when a Mexican guy entered the camp and sat by me smiling. A number of versions of him entered and sat down by other people, whispering in their ears. I looked at him quizzically and he said, "Watch this."

An older woman entered the camp and began walking up to the people being whispered to. She'd touch them gently, smiling, and move on. She came to me and took my hand. She began to walk off but before letting go of my hand completely, her smile faltered. She looked concerned and held my hand a bit tighter. She looked down at me and said, "Tell me about your pet."

"My pet?" I said as she said the same thing at the same time, laughing. "He's black and fuzzy?"

"No, tell me about him. He's very affectionate, isn't he?"

"He is. He loves head scratches and when you take your hand away, he'll grab it with his paw and pull it back to him. I call him my familiar. He's very much like me. He's quite aware of his surroundings and quick to learn things to his advantage."

"Is he good or evil?" she asked.

"Hmm? He's good most of the time, I guess. But he can turn on you if he's in the mood. He's not good or evil. He's a cat."

"Would you kill him to save the world?" she asked me seriously.

"No," I told her and she looked sad and moved on.

That was a dream about Judas who died October 22nd, 2014. I dreamt about him a couple of weeks ago. In the dream, I was simply happy to be cuddling with him (I was lying sort of over him restraining him so he didn't attack some newly hatched ducks. He was busy licking up the birth goo from the broken eggs). I said to Judas, "I thought you were dead! I'll never make that mistake again!" And it felt like reality had been the dream and the dream was now reality and I couldn't have been happier. Before I awoke, I was gazing into his eyes, just happy to be with him again. I was not sad when I awoke. I was jubilant, and satisfied.

Most of you still reading are probably wondering what this has to do with Constantine. I don't know. I haven't even opened it yet. But I will. Just let me go wash my face first.

This issue of Constantine begins in the past so that's what all this rummaging about in the past of the blog has to do with anything! So there! Nailed it!

Oh. I really thought he was talking about the adrenaline of being punched in the face!

I was punched in the face once (twice, if you count the time I was riding shotgun in a convertible BMW and my friend took a right hand turn way too fast and I tried to brace myself on the hood of the car which wasn't there and punched myself in the face instead)! The guy who punched me was five or six inches taller than me and full of muscles. After I jumped back up from the ground where I fell thinking, "He hit me!", I hit him with my Hosoi skateboard (I mention it was a Hosoi because if you know your skateboards, you know Hosoi made some motherfucking solid boards). I wasn't punched because I was being a dick. It was a total misunderstanding in which some meatheads misunderstood my passing by their house on a skateboard for...I don't know...terrorism or something. If I've ever been punched other than those two times, it was a really great punch which completely knocked the memory of itself out of my head.

Constantine was getting beat up so that he could steal two concert tickets to The End of the World show. He and the guy punching him say a few things that are just spelled with pentagrams. I think that means they're swearing! I usually just say, "Fudgsicles!" and then the Non-Certified Spouse says, "Now I want a pudding pop!" And then I say, "I was swearing! You're were supposed to hear a swear!" And then she says, "Fudgsicles!" and I say, "Stop swearing!" Then she says, "Fudge Packers!" and I go on a rant about how insensitive that is and how she really needs to think about how people whose job it is to pack fudge must feel whenever they have to tell people what they do for a living.

John's memory is about his first meeting with Georgiana Snow and Veronica Delacroix. They sound like vampires and/or plantation owners! One of them wants to fuck John and the other one wants nothing to do with John. That probably means he'll fuck George, the one that hates his guts. That's a typical story twist that everybody would prefer wouldn't take place but it always does. Although this is John Constantine and Hellblazer, so George probably still hates him and has always hated him and has never so much as touched him except to hold his hand during a seance. Especially since in the future (or present, depending on perspective), Constantine has traveled to London to get George's help killing the Ghostbuster in New York.

George currently has a lucrative career. Also dead people fucking! Did you see that panel?! Hee hee!

Constantine arrives and there are more panels of the dead people screwing and from different angles! I think I see some vagina! Unless that's a scrotum. Oh, who cares what it is! It all starts out from the same fetal material, so if I jerk to it, it doesn't make me gay or hetero or anything! Just horny!

Except now I've lost the mood because I said "jerk it" and "fetal" in the same sentence.

George's current problem is that the dead people didn't want to die fucking with runes cut into their bodies. They just wanted to not have runes cut into their bodies and to not die but they probably didn't mind the fucking bit. That bit is always a lot of fun. Except the first time when the girl you're about to lose your virginity to doesn't realize you're a virgin and she thinks she needs to prep your weiner with a little bit of sucking and you're thinking, "Should I come now? Does she want me to come now? I think she wants me to come now?" And then you just come because you really didn't have that much control anyway. I mean, a woman was touching your wiener! Just knowing that a woman wanted to touch your wiener when you're a teenager will make the stupid thing go off!

Anyway, um, Constantine wants to help George with her problem.

So what happened to Veronica? Did she get turned into a living marionette?! That loves to fuck?!

Constantine determines the demonic culprit behind the corpse orgy is a Succubus. He modifies his theory once he finds its lair full of lotion and video games and stacks of porn magazines. It's an Incubus. Constantine goes in to destroy it but he's quickly overwhelmed by the Incubus and its Incubus roomies. Luckily George was waiting for his arrogance to make him incompetent and she swoops in to rescue Constantine. Georgie tells Constantine that Veronica has been dead for three years and how it's John's fault and how it's always John's fault and maybe John should just go back to New York and never bother her again.

Oh, come on! Everybody knows that's not happening, Georgie! You especially!

Constantine the Hellblazer #3 Rating: +1 Ranking. Remember when DC Comics had that other book they were marketing which was called "Constantine" but it starred somebody other than John Constantine? I don't know who that guy was but it wasn't him. This is him. This is Constantine back to form. This is a comic book that I can point to when people say, "You read comic books?!" Then I point to Constantine the Hellblazer and say, "That?! No! That's not mine! I read things like Grape Expectations and War and Pizza!" Then I realize I'm hungry and I stop typing and I go to the grocery store. By, um...ahem...way of the comic book store, of course. It's Wednesday!