These were the years when "indie comics" became mainstream- available not just in comic specialty shops but Barnes & Noble, Borders, K-Mart, 7-11!! People I knew who never touched comics in the early '90s-by the early 2000s were now reading Sandman, Bone, Hellblazer, Love & Rockets, Fantographics, etc. NYTimes Book Reviews now featured the latest published graphic novels. And comic conventions & cosplay became anticipated cultural events for everyone.
Thanks for doing this video. I'm a huge fan of Garth Ennis and remember reading this run in the trade paperbacks that I bought almost 25 years ago now and have re-read it several times. Steve Dillon was such a talented artist and one of the few in the business who can draw different, often hilarious, facial expressions. I especially love the issue with John's 40th birthday party, where he makes Swamp Thing accelerate the growth of his friend's tiny marijuna plant (named "Treebeard") into a giant one. Plus, Constantine refers to Swamp Thing as "Sprout Bollocks." Always loved that. And then they did that one-shot issue where it's just Kit back in Ireland after she has left John. Really amazing issue.
It’s a pity you couldn’t find a minute to mention Ennis and Dillon’s ‘Heartland’ - the spinoff one-shot about Kit returning to Belfast. It’s probably the best ‘Hellblazer’ story they did, even though it doesn’t feature John.
Have you thought about covering some of Ennis' War comics (war stories, battlefields, Sarah,dreaming Eagles, out of the blue)? They're pretty good and show were Ennis puts most of his passion.
You quoted MARSHALL LAW & for that alone, I salute you! Regarding artist Steve Dillion, I’d say his art style was more uncomplicated than “simplistic”. I miss him.
I really appreciated your comments on his youth showing through. I found his obsessions with drinking culture and inserting Irish characters incredibly self indulgent. It took me out of the stories. But I recently read The Slaves and it was really, really good, so I guess he matured eventually.
Great video talking about Garth Ennis and Hellblazer and general works. You showing and bringing up the cultural and political and Ennis’s views, blatant and maybe surface level as they may be, have an appeal. I have just been introduced to your channel, and I am so glad I have. Hope you and your channel have continued success. And I hope we can always appreciate comics and all that
Steve Dillon drew the single greatest Deadpool sequence I've ever seen, in a Wolverine issue. Describing it could never do it justice, so I'll leave others to hunt it down and see for themselves, but Dillon's greatest strength as an artist, was his expressions: Dillon's characters acted, they performed, they felt feelings which you could see on their faces and in their body language. More aspiring comic artist should study Dillon, imo. edit: I misremembered, it was Wolverine Origins.
@@jamesfellows5081 I misremembered. After checking it was not an annual, but Wolverine Origins, written by Daniel Way, specifically issue 23, though the crossover starts in 22.
Great series, can't wait for the next part! Though I kind of enjoyed the behind the scenes information from the first part more then the plot summary here, still, great work over all, keep it up!
Oh, and. It's kind of too bad we'll never escape the legacy of "Nosferatu" at this point. Allegedly Murnau ran out of film and had to wrap up Nosferatu in a hurry, so had him burst into flames at sunrise. That's apparently why even now we think of vampires having that vulnerability.
I think Will Simpson is a great artist when he inks his drawings himself, as in issue #50. The other inkers don't do the drawings justice. Dangerous Habits is a home run, the rest of Ennis run mehh... But I have a bias with Hellblazer, because the first issues with Delano and Ridgway are some of the bestest comics I ever read.
Ennis’ run is such a mixed bag for me. As a youth in Mississippi with familiarity with the Reeves film, I read about how influential and important Ennis and “Dangerous Habits” were for the series time and again in my dial-up searches through the web. I eventually read “Dangerous Habits” my last year of high school in 2015 and really loved it and desperately wished I could afford to buy the collections of the other issues. Then, two years ago, I read Ennis’ Hellblazer in tandem with a read of the entirety of Sandman. I really enjoyed the first half of the run, especially the Ripper and Grave robber arcs. After John and Kitt split, though, I felt like stories became much edgier and surface-level. In particular, I find Ennis’ handling of Satan to be very dull. He sets up that a priest became a killer and rapist after hearing “The Devil’s Confession” but when we hear it all he says is “God’s crazy and beats his meat and kicked Satan to Hell for questioning him” which feels like something a 15-year-old atheist on 4Chan would come up with. It’s especially frustrating since, as a Christian, I know there’s potential to say something really interesting that criticizes God or the church given the centuries of culture and philosophy surrounding them. I also think Ennis’ disinterest in genuinely heroic characters hurts John’s characterization in the back-end of the run. John’s a bastard and a liar but what made him compelling in Moore’s Swamp Thing and Delano’s Hellblazer runs is that he is genuinely altruistic in his goals of combatting evil, saving humanity despite his pessimistic posturing. Ennis, though, positions him more as an addict who refuses to get better despite how it hurts those around them and has no interest in growing him beyond this, only highlighting it. I really loved this video and I’m psyched to hear your thoughts on later runs that’re less discussed online ❤
Thank you for the video. I love hearing your takes on series i hold close to my heart. It's been a while since i read HB, need to reread them soon, and then compare my notes to your videos! Ive only read up until the Azzarello run, so i have circa 150 issues unread
While I feel you may be on to something with how much John acts like a man in his 20s during Ennis' run, I think you are missing something significant. John Constantine has struggled his entire adult life with mental illness. Jamie Delano introduced (it becomes especially noticeable in the specially issue entitled "The Horrorist") the idea and many other writers have built on John's struggles. You kind of brush over it in your video, but John didn't just get drunk when Kit left him, he became homeless. He was living on the streets for months, unable to hold down a job or a home despite the fact that he could use magic to just force people to hand over their wallets. This period was John's lowest point mental-health wise since he left Ravenscar Asylum. John wasn't just drinking, he was self-medicating.
He's so frustrating. Preacher is what made him big, and there are good things about Preacher, but he seems to have taken all the wrong lessons away from it's success.
Read Punisher: Slaves and Widow-Maker and his war story: Dear Billy and Hellblazer miniseries Heartland. Hands down his best work. None of that edgelord nonsense just pure staggering heartbreak. These are the gateway books I give to non-comic fans. Granted, the boys tv show, haven't watched it might be better than the comic but the comic is a middling work for Ennis and when Ennis is at his best I dont think tv writers can beat him.
@@constantinegarganta8364 His war stories are pretty great. Dreaming Eagles tells the story 2 Tuskegee airmen. Sarah is about a squad of Russian female snipers during WW2 War stories and BATTLEFIELDS is a collection of stories from different perspectives. Out of the blue, and stringbags are about British fighter pilots. Lion and the eagle is another war comic that I haven't read yet but have heard great things
@@4-a-e "The Boys" big mistake I think was establishing its main conflict early on and dragging it out over 65 issues with lots of detours, only to end in an anti-climax. It was a weaker variation of Preacher's main non-supernatural villain: whereas the big twist was on his character (he started off as a would-be world savior and ended as a bitter, revenge-obsessed sociopath), Homelander's end was a pointless revelation that basically changed nothing.
@@repussified Never finished boys. Could see through line with that cop arc on pun marvel knights, red team felt like the shield meets vigilante cops and the boys felt alittle the wire. I just think its ground has covered before hitman local heroes, and Punish marvel knights. 100% agree definitely dragged out. Just not enough meat on the bone.
Love Dillon's work during this period, also his short run on _Amimal Man_ with Milligan, immediately post Morrison, there's a looseness to his line that goes away with his later work, particularly the later _Punisher_ issues.
I thought of another dichotomy between Hellblazer and Preacher. Constantine, who rarely uses "real" magic, who bluffs and bullshits his way out of situations, and projects the tough guy image only to get his ass kicked, while Jesse Custer is honest and forthright, secure in his abilities to handle himself, doesn't act like a tough guy and usually does the ass kicking.
And I wondered why Ennis was considered the definitive Hellblazer writer. It's easy to project your woes when your middle aged, might make you feel younger.
Spot on: I love Ennis but he wrote JC like a volatile mid-20s guy rather than someone around 40. I always found Delano more authentic because he was the same age as JC. And he channelled the BBC Play for Today meets Clive Barker vibe which was the foundation for the character. JC was a direct lift of the visitor character in Dennis Potter’s Brimstone and Treacle after all.
I connected to the Delano run so intensely that the Ennis stuff felt empty. I appreciate your take on it and, upon reading Preacher, could appreciate Ennis’ writing.
I preferred Ennis on this title to Delano. Ennis hadn't become completely obnoxious yet. I feel Constantine's drinking and slef destructive behavior was due to guilt over that botched exorcism as a youth and then all the bad stuff since then. Magic has a cost and he pays for it. That's why it's used sparingly which I liked so it's not just a super hero book.
"...and he was a lot less subtle." Heh. Yeah. Ennis at the helm, here. Now I'm also wondering how many characters were secretly Jack the Ripper, generally but in DC specifically. The masked Mandelbrot butterfly guy who is also God in Doom Patrol comes to mind.
Of course you haven’t read the run and are just smug and sneering and content to be ignorant. There is depth in this run. There is humanity that will catch you off guard and shake you to your core. But sneer and write it off all you want.
The drinking is a good sign of a twenty year old writing a 40 year old. Fun binge drinking in your twenties just looks like sad alcoholism in your forties.
Jesus, I remember when Ennis was as popular as Wolverine at the height of that characters popularity. He lost me when, in an issue of Preacher, 3 or 4 pages passed in succession where the only dialog spoken (and it's said by everybody) is "Fuck." Just "Fuck." That could work, if the artist gave us panels that supplied visually what was missing from the text, to give the expletive context, but Dillon just showed people looking up. It brought the juvenalia into sharp relief.
I thought that was pretty good. I do see what you mean about context; if I remember correctly (this was, what, going on 30 years ago?) the preceding issues would have shown that. It probably would work better in a collected format and a straight-through reading.
Ennis had a knack for coming up with interesting premises but not really ever exploring them well enough, imo. It was a solid run, but so often bogged down by edgelordy moments and an annoying sentimentality- “cor, me and me mates down the pub,” blah blah blah. None of the real emotional depth of Delano or Mike Carey or Si Spurrier. It’s so weird to me that his run was the most popular on Hellblazer. Not that he was bad, not at all, just… weirdly juvenile compared to some of the other writers on the title.
Hey, thanks for good content! I am so sick of the avalanche of "comic" channels that just read comics out loud. I see that as blatant theft, nothing more. This, on the other hand, is a whole other matter. This is quality content.
As a superhero fan, I will never quite forgive Ennis for being so far up his own rear with middle school level "criticism" of the genre But if he really does hate superheroes, and he writes other genres like this one so well. I would encourage him to stick to those and leave the capes and cowls alone for 10 seconds
@samwill7259 he has. He's written tons of war comics and crime comics. But since most of comic readers don't care about any other genre other than superheroes, they don't get as noticed. That's what Garth Ennis' criticism comes from. He doesn't hate superheroes. He hates that they've taken over the medium and left no room for other genres to get noticed.
@@mttylerdurden9 He can say that as much as he wants, but disinterest is not what he WRITES. Hatred, juvenile hatred at that, is the only way to read what he's written
Ennis mocking the concept of god and heaven just exposes his poor understanding of metaphysics and religion. He is one of the OG "subverters" who brought all the classic satanic / marxist inversion and subversion tactics to comics. It makes his edge lord writing style insufferable. People comparing him to a toddler throwing a tantrum with very dubious morals were right about him
You clearly don’t know Garth or have never met him. He’s an extremely moral person and his writing reflects that. He just rejects the idea that morality comes from religion, as do I. Religion is an attempt to explain morality, not the other way round.
