Aging Along With John: 20 Years of Hellblazer, Part 2
By David DelGrosso
Denise Mina: On Finding Yourself in Glasgow (H. #216-228, 2006-2007)
Picking John up from this low point in his life is Scottish-born writer Denise Mina. While she is not the first writer to come to Hellblazer with little or no prior comics work, she is the first established novelist, including her award-winning Garnethill trilogy of psychological crime thrillers set in a suburb of Glasgow, and starring the former psychiatric patient and unlikely crime-solver Maureen O'Donnell. While new to writing comics, Mina is already a fan of the series. "I was an avid reader of Hellblazer," says Mina. "I find it hard to know what's good to read, comic shops aren't all that friendly over here, in the sense of being accessible to readers coming in off the street. Hellblazer was shoved under my nose by my boyfriend who said, 'You've got to read this: it's everything you're interested in,' and it was."
Mike Carey has left John exactly where Mina wants to pick him up: alone, and disillusioned with magic. "Somehow the more cornered a character is, the more I like it. I felt there was a total theology to the magic stuff that I couldn't quite get my head around. I'm not very imaginative or open-minded about things like that. I almost slapped a reflexologist once for telling me that she'd done something to my kidneys by rubbing my foot ('Do I look like a mug?'). Anyway, I was glad not to have to incorporate too much magic but rather have it foisted on John by other characters."
In Mina's first story, "Empathy is the Enemy" (H. #216-221), the foisting comes from Chris Cole, a lost soul who approaches a miserable John Constantine in a bar, desperate for his help. Like many who have sought John out in the past, Cole has dabbled in black magic and is now living out the consequences. He has caused the deaths of others through a reckless curse, and he feels that he may have also killed his wife, though there are gaps in his memory. John, having recently failed his sister, is not looking to make new friends, but he is interested in Steve Evans, the man who gave his name to Chris Cole. John senses that Cole is bait in a trap set for him by Evans, but chooses to travel with Cole to Glasgow, if not to help, then to spring Evans' trap his own way.
Many of the writers on Hellblazer bring their own experience and personality to the title by sending John to a place they know well. Garth Ennis brings John to Ireland, Brian Azzarello imprisons John in America, and Mina sends John on his first trip to Glasgow in the series. "He should live here full time," says Mina of her home city. "He'd fit in perfectly: he's melancholic, drunk, and self-hating, but also funny and justice-seeking. He's pretty stoic, too, which a lot of Scottish people are."
"Empathy is the Enemy" is a story dense with narrative threads. John's journey into Glasgow with Cole is interwoven with the history of a religious sect called the Orensay Contingent, as well as the story of a 6th-century martyr who found that, after death, there is not only Heaven and Hell, but also a Third Place, ruled over by a fearful Master. ("fearful" or "fearsome"?) As John and Cole arrive in Glasgow, there is a portentous influx of Praexis, carrion-eating spirits who feed on scraps of souls during troubled times. At the center of all these past and present threads is a conspiracy being led by Steve Evans to create the Empathy Engine, built out of large Council Estate buildings. Like the Fear Machine of early Hellblazer, it is a device that can harness magical energy and release it on the world. Whereas the Fear Machine was an attempt to weaponize fear, the Empathy Engine can force change on humanity by releasing waves of compassion. Evans believes that this would end famine and war, and he has drawn John Constantine to Glasgow because the magus's own power is a key to starting the Engine.
As empathy and compassion are not the kinds of forces usually associated with John Constantine, I ask Mina about her choice of empathy as the central theme in her story. "I don't think John is very empathetic at all. I see him as an archetype of the lone detective; as Chandler said, 'Down these lonely roads a man must walk alone,' or something like that. John doesn't empathize with people's feelings but headbutts his way through, and I thought it would be interesting to look at a quality as nebulous as empathy, and how it could change the world if it was made compulsory through architectural engineering. Yes, that old chestnut. It's regarded as a very feminized quality, but I think that's really wrong. We're all social animals, and successful animals need to be able to read those close to them. The theme of the monolithic individual in modern narratives is a fiction, but we don't question it because it's so all pervasive and familiar. There are so many stories never told because the fictions are so strong. It's a shame."
After a single-issue interlude, a story about John and Map in London called "The Season of the Zealot" (H. #223), Mina's second arc picks up right where "Empathy is the Enemy" leaves off. This second arc, "The Red Right Hand" (H. #224-228), finds an epidemic of infectious empathy unleashed upon Glasgow by the Engine, with results far more deadly and destructive than the Utopia that Steve Evans imagined, and the Praexis gorging themselves on the result. John and Evans are trapped in the middle of this crisis, and they are soon joined by John's niece Gemma, old girlfriend Angie, and stalwart friend Chas, who, in a rather unlikely gamble, blows through military checkpoints to get the three of them into Glasgow in his cab. In the story, which wraps up Mina's run on the series, John's group must gather and inspire enough hope and positivity in Glasgow to counteract the effects of the empathy epidemic. All this is further complicated by the presence of the soldiers quarantining Glasgow, who are all listening to the England vs. Portugal World Cup match, and whose reaction, should England lose, could overwhelm the efforts of John and his group. It is an unusual finale, as Hellblazer runs go, but beyond the humor of the end of the world hinging on a World Cup match, Mina seems to be tackling a question that is central to the title: What is John's relationship to humanity and how, after all these years and all he has lost, can he still empathize with those that come to him for help?
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