Despite DC Comics recently canceling John Constantine: Hellblazer, the current series’ writer, Simon “Si” Spurrier, is pushing for a stay-of-execution. The British writer has taken up the sword of social media to encourage the sales of the first trade-paperback collection, to be subtitled Marks of Woe, of his run with artists Marcio Takara, Aaron Campbell, and Matías Bergara in hopes of encouraging sales to convince DC to extend the lifetime of the latest series starring the sorcerer of sass. The collection is due in the Fall, the same month as a new spin-off series Hellblazer: Rise and Fall will launch.
Created by Alan Moore as a supporting character in 1985, John Constantine has become one of the most successful non-superhero comic-book characters in America. In 1988, his own title was first published spinning out of Moore’s acclaimed run on Swamp Thing and the crabby conjurer has gone through many writers, artists, interpretations and titles since. The character has been part of the main DC line, the Vertigo imprint, and now Black Label. The original comic-book was called Hellblazer and it ran from 1988 to 2013. It was followed by a string of new series under new writers and new editorial mandates with varying degrees of success. Constantine from 2013 to 2015, Constantine: The Hellblazer in 2015 and then The Hellblazer in 2016 into 2018. A gap of a little more than a year passed but the character returned in the current series John Constantine: Hellblazer in late 2019.
After news broke that the series would not continue past issue 12, the Twitter post you can see below was posted this past Thursday on Spurrier's account including a new hashtag, it says, "If you want to #SaveHellblazer, strong tpb sales are our only hope." This comes amid a fluid comics industry landscape affected deeply by the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and a new period of shifting distribution for DC Comics. They've broken from Diamond Comics Distributors, the de-facto monopoly shipper of new comic-books for the past 20 years. Marvel Comics has been forced to cancel several ongoing titles, make some issues digital-only (although that decision was reversed), and curtail the number of tie-ins for its major summer event crossover Empyre. DC's publishing line is finally being affected, it seems. A Change.org petition has even appeared.
The Constantine character was roughly adapted to film in 2005’s Constantine starring Keanu Reeves as the foul-mouthed Brit, although through Reeves’ Los Angeleno interpretation. It was widely panned. That led to more comics and, almost a decade later, a single season of a Constantine television series on NBC's 2014 slate. While that show was short-lived, the actor playing TV Constantine, Matt Ryan, has become associated so strongly with the character that he has portrayed him as a guest-star on several other DC Comics-adaptation shows and has regularly offered his voice for animated appearances of John since 2017.
Since the series in question, John Constantine: Hellblazer, was itself just the latest in a long line of continuations for the Hellblazer title, and Alan Moore’s dour-faced magician character is no stranger to all manner of resurrections, both magical as well as in publishing and on the screen. Si Spurrier and fans of the character everywhere are hoping for one more return from the grave.
John Constantine: Hellblazer vol.1 TPB Marks of Woe will be in comic-book shops on September 29, 2020.
Source: Si Spurrier/Twitter