Constantine the Hellblazer #6

Homophobic zombies are the worst.

I feel like "homophobic zombies" is a redundant phrase. Before the theme of zombie movies became the less than subtle "humans are the most dangerous monsters," wasn't the theme usually something along the lines of the loss of critical thought multiplied by apathy and increased by the power of selfish desires turns people into unthinking creatures driven by consumerism, prejudice, and fear? Wait. Are we currently living in a zombie apocalypse?! That's too bad because I don't own a shotgun. My only weapon is this blog and that's just fucking pathetic. And now I'm asking people to pay for it! Christ, who do I think I am? Christ? Although for just one dollar per month, you can enjoy being blasted in the face by my carelessly offensive words on a daily basis! You know what? It's probably a good thing I don't own a shotgun.

Has anybody tried defeating zombies with Pop Rocks? I don't know how it would work but I think I've grabbed hold of the tail of some fantastic scheme!

This story has nothing to do with Pop Rocks but you'll realize why I thought of it after I tell it. One time, I was on LSD while at the Great America amusement park in Santa Clara, California. My friend Mike and I were walking up to stand in line for The Demon (standing in line for a roller coaster while on LSD is like a sine wave ranging from overwhelming hilarity to soul-crushing paranoia). A small boy was standing around the front of the roller coaster where you enter. As I passed him, he looked up at me, held out a long sparkling plastic package and said, "Want some Fizz?" My eyes grew huge, I held out both hands as if I were pleading for alms, and said, "Yes. Please." Fizz, if you've never had it, is a hard candy with a center that fizzles like burning gunpowder when it hits your tongue. Except it isn't painful like I imagine a mouthful of burning gunpowder would be. If I were of a religious bent, I would claim that boy was a small miracle sent from heaven to provide me with an experience I didn't know I needed while tripping balls. I would probably also be really fucking annoying and use the word "blessed" way too fucking often. I would also need to look up the definition of the word "miracle" and stop using it in cases that most obviously aren't. I'm glad I'm not of a religious bent!

Constantine isn't religious either although I think maybe he should be. He does deal with demons and angels a bit too much for him to logically be anything but a believer. He might be a self-hating agnostic though.

The issue begins with Constantine dealing with a health and safety violation in his apartment building.

I feel like this would be less annoying than a tenant living with a dog.

The little girl turns out to be Walter, an ex-Arch-Duke of Hell. He figured Constantine would help more quickly if it were a little girl in trouble. Walter has been spending his time on Earth rescuing cats and getting them set up in nice apartments with subservient ape roommates. Constantine compliments Walter by calling him the most boring demon he's ever met.

Since I don't have anything horribly nasty to say about this comic book after the first four pages, I'll tear into Scott Lobdell for a second. If this were a Lobdell comic book, the first four pages would have been spent reminding everybody who the characters were and repeating the last four pages of the previous comic book (although sometimes changing things because he had a new idea in the interim between writing his scripts). I get that "every issue is somebody's first issue" but he takes it to the extreme. I suppose if I wrote comic books as poorly as Scott Lobdell does, I'd expect the only people reading each subsequent issue would be new readers because who the fuck would read a second issue after wading through the crap tsunami of my horrible story? Oh, um, the reason I brought up Lobdell is because the first four pages of this comic book are more entertaining than the entire run of Doomed. Oh, sure, I've seen some people praise that comic book. But those "people" are only defined as "people" by the narrowest of margins.

Now see what I mean about being "blasted in the face by my carelessly offensive words"? Any of you morons who enjoy Lobdell's writing are now suffering from my word flak.

I may be a plebe for watching shitty television shows but at least I've never damned anybody's soul to Hell! I don't think.

After John gets his fill of sitting around his house naked and causing me to think about how I will never again sit upon somebody else's furniture, he checks his Craigslist...I mean, "Kregslist" ad to find sixty four people seem to be in need of an exorcist. When Constantine mentioned he was going to pay his rent legitimately, I thought he meant he was going to go work as a line cook for a bit. I'm not sure an advertisement on "Kregslist" to do exorcisms counts as real work. Okay, maybe it does count in the comic book world and/or Portland, Oregon, but normally I'd just assume it was a scam.

Constantine accepts a job to exorcise some demon named Gordred out of a young boy. I'm sure just using the phrase "young boy" causes all of the latent pedophiles to giggle uncontrollably after which they rush off to troll women on the internet because they view all women as protective mothers which threatens their ability to destroy youthful innocence. In other words, misogynist trolls are all pedophiles. Quid pro exacto quorum.

I should probably learn the actual Latin used as the punctuation for an argument proven demonstrably instead of just making things up. Maybe it's "sum emptor caveat"?

I hope I didn't accidentally send anybody's soul to hell after writing out all that Latin! I'm pretty sure spells only work if the caster spouts a bunch of Latin.

Constantine solves the first exorcism of sixty-four because he knows the demon inhabiting the kid. They go out for a drink and then he moves on to some other cases.

No! Keep it as a pet! Constantine, you need a raccoon pet! I need you to need a raccoon pet, you tosser!

Constantine brings a raver down off of demonic molly, clears out a Karaoke joint of unwanted dragons, finds a family whose faces were stolen, fixes Nightvale's Dog Park, and repairs a washing machine before finally winding up in Central Park to find out some important information from a gargoyle named Bartleby. I think they meet at the fountain where Death took that kid playing soccer that one time.

Bartleby points out that Constantine is going to be forced to help the city whether Constantine wants to help New York or not. I guess some Ghostbusters shit is going down and Constantine is the only one who can save New York. I suppose other magic heroes could save New York but they don't have their own comic books, do they? Lazy bastards.

I really wish Madame Xanadu would get her own book so I could publicly vent my vile hatred for her. Maybe I'll buy her old series just to rant and rave. That fucking barn owl Xanadu pisses me off so much!

John's night ends with him running into Oliver hanging around his apartment with a big bag of curry. Mmm, curry. Mmm. Mmmmmmmm. Um, I think this comic book is over now. Something came up that I need to do! So, um, Constantine decides maybe fucking Oliver won't be the worst thing in the world since he's gotten people killed so many times before, what's one more? Especially if that one more can make him wail like a banshee who is coming because it's being fucked in the ass while getting a rough, ball-slapping reach around.

Constantine the Hellblazer #6 Rating: +1 Ranking. A real comic book reviewer would explain to you why the comic book they just read is better than a lot of other comic books they tend to read. No, wait. A real comic book reviewer would, in most cases, say a bunch of nice shit about any comic book they've read, especially if it were written or drawn by a professional whom they've met and with whom they feel they have some kind of rapport. But I'm just this stupid asshole who enjoys hearing myself type. You get what I mean. So I don't know how to express why this book is so much better than...let's say...Cullen Bunn's "Lost Army." I mean, I could tell you why that comic book is crappy crap of a...well, just smear crap on a bunch of words and that pretty much describes it. What I might be getting at is that when a story forms around a well thought out character, the comic book tends to be better than when a character is made to fit within the confines of the plot. Like Cullen Bunn's "Aquaman"! That isn't an Aquaman story at all, so it doesn't work. It's also possible that I just don't like anything I've read by Cullen Bunn and so I decided to use this space to criticize his writing. Yes, that's also possible. Who knows, really? Ultimately my intent doesn't matter because the reader is so fucking important that apparently whatever the reader concludes with their tiny minds is what matters. Pshaw! I mean, unless that reader is a Grandmaster Comic Book Reader! And then the Reader is more important than the Writer! Whew! I almost wrote myself into a corner there. Nice save, me!

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