Guh day. I am Piyo, better known as The Fire Gryphon or, even more, Fire Griffin (5). I am unhealthly obessessed with Akira, Megaman Legends and now Sandman among other things. I have other minor things I dote on too. Just sit back, watch and see.
I the Bonnes.
I also have a big mouth and I am what people would call "opinionated." If I know about something, then chances are I have something to say about it.
You could best say that I am a turd that loves to complain.
I DRAW:
The sub-human
Transformations
Beast-halves, anthroish things
Mutations (Lots of tendrils!)
Anything with a lot of technical curves and intricacies
My current obsession fandoms
The Serpentine and Draconian
Canids
Avians
... Among other things. Being a bit of a jack of all trades, I am willing to try my hand at anything and everything. Really. Honestly.
Bitchin' #3 - Constantine, Hellblazer and the Canon Pendulumposted Jan 6th 2006, 5:57AM
Mood: ALIVE!
(Contrary to popular belief, I live. And people have stumbled on here. That's pretty cool. They get hearts!
And watch out... This chunk is a piece of a multi-parter.)
This is more than a rant on the movie, more so than the typical complaint of what has been changed and what has been kept; this is about the canonical mess the fandom is in. Geeks and Keanu fangirls and collectors and normal people who just saw the movie because it looked cool and wanted more. This is my impression of a stratified fandom with different fans and "cores," two different worlds spawned from one cinnematic dump and comic book inaccessability from over 200 back issues. This is wha happens when you tack on a few names to an almost unrelated movie and call it an adaptation. Obviously, I will be biased in favor of the comic.
Part I: I Was A Teenage Movie Convert
On a kinda' cold February night (because this is Texas with days that now boast almost eighty degrees Fahrenheit in December), on it's opening day, I saw the movie that had been the scorn of Hellblazer fans from around the World and Web: Constantine. I had little idea of what to expect from it, other than it would more than likely be better than that shithouse disaster fest of toxic drek known as Alone in the Dark. My first impressions came from my friend Keet, who was foaming and describing the movie by its changes alone among the same lines as how I described my regretful viewing of Uwe Boll's latest bit of senseless pig vomit. I never thought of the movie as a big deal or the changes that supposidly were made to its canon as that crucial, and even defended the movie from her. Turns out there was more to this Hellblazer business than I had previously thought.
Up until then, I had never really heard anything of Hellblazer outside of the fact that it was one of these "normal" comic books, graphic novels, sold around here outside of the usual manga I used to drool over and stroke like a beloved babe. The local stuff that's uncool to read in high school. As evidenced by the shrinking supply of graphic novels I have been seeing nowadays in favor of a growing manga wall bloating itself to demand like a cancer, the majority of pre-teen mangaphiles obviously wouldn't care for the comic and still don't care. I could walk around my college campus or walk into an anime/manga/related interest club nowadays with a Hellblazer or Transmetropolitan and would probably be questioned for the lack of beautiful men or large, bulging eyes. A lot of Western comic characters (such as John Constantine and Spider Jerusalem, respectively) do not fit the manga youthful "cute" ideal and turns a lot of potential readers who might have enjoyed the series otherwise off. The fact that the public perception of Western comic books is typically geeky and a pleasure reserved for basement nerds and that Western comics are generalized to be about overbuff superheroes prancing in spandex (and even those seem to have humanized and wisened from "I will save the day!" and "I will stop you, [villian]!") does not help, but all this is another rant.
My first exposure to reading one of these collected piles of western morsels was Sandman. The culture shock from black and white to color to different kinds of storytelling and art styles made it difficult to get into, so my reading, which had been sadly the second trade paperback in the series because the first wasn't avaliable, was a little difficult. I had to probe myself to finish the book. I was lost in the web of a strange world without an introduction.
Of course, that was up until I had finally got to snatch "Preludes and Nocturnes" and have my first really good, deep bite. I had finished reading the damn thing in the tub; it was that good. I remember blazing through the last parts, anxious, hooked. This was a powerful storytelling at work, a new world beckoning me inside to see what it contains. I realized that I had to have the rest, I had to find out what happened to these wonderful characters Neil had created (or at least most of them). Preludes and Noctures, the trade name of the first installment, had also been my first exposure to the character, John Constantine.
Back in November, this character was but a man in a yellow coat with a cool name. He seemed ordinary to me with a sense of humor and little else to offer. I did not see the big deal with him, and figuring that he had been a Gaiman creation, had not questioned his existence or his own world in his own comic. When the movie was coming out and I had been getting the negative friend froths, I still had no idea and had taken hardly any interest in the character; Keet had spoken big of him but where is the big or the magical power? So the advertisements had done their work seducing me, and I had wandered into the theater on the film's opening day with zero expectations, having no idea what to expect from this butchered version of Constantine other than that the character had apparently been mangled.
Cue the defining moment:
First viewing, I really liked the film. I had no idea how this Constantine guy really was supposed to be but the movie had done its work and that was entertain. Out of the shit parade I have been subjected to in the earlier part of the year (since January and February is usually a time to avoid the theaters anyway), this had been the best of the steaming piles and I actually had hope for later on in the year. I had been braced for the hordes of fangirls that would come into the fandom and mangle it, and I had been expecting the worst. I had been into trolling Neopets at the time and I had seen more than enough of the children prancing about with their angels and demon roleplays; I was expecting a flux of mysterious smoking Keanu-wannabes with smoking Holy Shotguns. Hell, bring on the Constanteen roleplays! The children already stay up past their bedtimes to sneak the very "adult" shows like Trigun and Inuyasha on the so-called Adult Swim!
Thankfully, this never happened. I saw a few pathetic knockoffs frolick about until the flavor-of-the-week novelty wore of until they moved on, but this was just the begining.
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