HELLBLAZER: ALL HIS ENGINES

MIKE CAREY / LEONARDO MANCO

2005

Now this is more like it.

If the only encounter you’ve had with John Constantine is via the [actually not that bad, really] Constantine movie, and that film at least piqued your interest, then ALL HIS ENGINES would probably be a good place to properly acquaint yourself with the cunning magus and his general bastardyness. I just made that word up!

A quick character sketch: John Constantine is a powerful magician, chain-smokes, has a colourful turn of phrase, is from Liverpool, looks like Sting, and is also a total bastard.

Legendary comic weirdo Alan Moore created Constantine in the pages of his version of Swamp Thing, way back in 1985. Since then, different writers over the years (including Neil Gaiman and Brian Micheal Bendis) have offered slight variations on Constantine’s main personality quirks (enhancing the aforementioned bastardyness, toning down the bastardyness, or sticking him in London or even an American prison), but Mike Carey is perhaps the one writer who’s struck a near-perfect chord in his reinvention/enhancement of the tricky Scouse.

The magus we get in ALL HIS ENGINES is A Very Crafty Man. The plot revolves around a strange ‘coma plague’ that’s knocking out large numbers of apparently healthy people. The young niece of Constantine’s (only true) friend Chas gets struck down, making it a sort-of personal matter. The story takes Constantine and Chas from England to Los Angeles, where they meet a grotesque demon who’s made his body from cancer growths, and other Hellish creatures. Constantine then tries to wrangle a deal between the various demons and play them off against each other, possibly endangering the life of Chas, his niece, and a young woman who’s tagged along for the ride. Like I said, he is A Very Crafty Man, and a bastard.

To say any more would spoil it. All the characters get meaty parts, with some cracking dialogue, including a scene where Constantine calls a demon a ‘berk’. Fantastic. Chas is shown to be as fearsomely loyal as he is violent; as quick to come to Constantine’s defence in a fight as to start the fight in the first place.

Ironically enough, ALL HIS ENGINES (which takes its title from the John Milton's Paradise Lost) starts to run out of steam towards the end. We get a satisfying conclusion, but certain elements, such as the ‘coma bug’, start to feel a bit like a MacGuffin. Nothing wrong with that, of course, it’s just that it feels more like a misstep than a smart story twist.

Final mention has to go to Leonardo Manco, as everything in the comic looks amazing, from the vision of Hell Constantine gets, to the rendering of city skylines and crumbling churches.

And that’s it. If you’re tired of lycra-clad superheroes, and other goody-two-shoes types, and want to see how a real shit handles things, the HELLBLAZER series is where to go, with ALL HIS ENGINES an excellent introduction to everybody’s favourite bastard, John Constantine.