Hellblazer: Good Intentions #1

I decided to review this story rather than the one just previous because, while 'Hard Time' was unquestionably the most ill-considered, ludicrous story Azzarello brought to the title, 'Good Intentions' fairly well represented his time as writer. In this I mean it's highly pretentious, utterly incoherent, and hilariously asinine.

I'll get the good out of the way first: the art is, as always where Marcelo Frusin is concerned, excellent and solid, and the colours are expertly done: subtle and appropriate for the slick lines and vast, bold shadows. Frusin is one of my very favourite artists to work on Hellblazer, and it's a shame that his talent is wasted here and on several other adequate-at-best stories (when he even gets to do the whole story at all). Tim Bradstreet's covers are something I've never liked though, despite enjoying his work in other media. His John looks like a doughy kewpie doll pushing middle age. Though he uses colours beautifully and appropriately, and his skill is superb, there's just something I really dislike about his image of Constantine.

But moving to the actual story here, 'Good Intentions' continues somewhat from the previous story, and that's enough for any reader to know what terrible storytelling we're in for. Azzarello tosses in needlessly awkward dialogue which is at times quite offensive -- it's not that strong language has to offend, but if it's used in meaningless, arbitrary ways calculated only to upset, it shows itself as highly puerile and offensive to anyone with any degree of maturity.

And that's really what marks Azzarello's writing: a complete lack of maturity. Sophomoric drivel is the adventure of the day with his John Constantine, with impossible or unlikely scenarios forced into being by 'because I said so' scriptwriting, encounters that come out of nowhere and go nowhere as well, and of course needless peppering of things meant to shock, but which only come off as an awkward dirty joke told by a teenager. 'Good Intentions' is clearly trying to be something like The Wicker Man, but all it really ends up achieving is not quite Hee Haw from Hell.

The most significant problem with the story is that, even assuming that we believe John could have ever had any sort of affiliation with these bumpkins (equally implausible as the previous story, since it revolved around that assumption), it's completely inconsistent within itself. We never really get what the writer is trying to present these characters as, if we're supposed to find them honourable or stupid, and what exactly the point of the inane non-resolution is. It's worth noting that it doesn't matter what the writer's intentions really are, because the characters all come off as stupid, backwards morons, John included. But it would have been nice to have some consistency or quality in crafting the narrative.

Speaking of which, why exactly is it that we have great stretches of fairly important plot omitted for pointless flashbacks or scenes cut between issues (!), but we have to sit through interminable sequences that add absolutely nothing to the story? It doesn't build any mystery at all. Even when one of the significant missing scenes is unfolded for us, it's a dull nothing of a sequence that doesn't live up to all the meaning it was supposed to have in the narrative. It just becomes yet another of the many elements that amounts to nothing more than spinning wheels.

More than anything, by the time this story finds its end, the major question it inspires is -- like one of the pointless scenes in it -- 'why?'

But rather than addressed at the characters or circumstance, it's addressed at Azzarello. And it's a question of 'why did you waste so much time on pointless asides, meaningless sequences, needlessly offensive elements, and above all worthless padding?' This story could have taken up a single issue's length and lost nothing of value. This story was six issues long! It still would've been a moronic waste of time at a single issue's length, but at least it wouldn't have overstayed its welcome so massively.

Was Azzarello just trying to recapture that Alan Moore Swamp Thing feel? Because not only did he fail spectacularly, he might also re-read some of those issues sometime; they weren't really that good, especially with regards to John, since at the time he was basically a background character helping to move the plot when it needed to move. In a way, it feels like the same rough concept here: John becomes whatever Azzarello wants him to be, which sometimes changes drastically between one scene and the next, in order to move a plot which -- to be honest -- didn't require John Constantine in it for most of the story.

If you're going to try and write a series about weird hillbillies, revive House of Mystery and make it a segment. It wasn't a good idea to begin with, but it certainly doesn't belong in Hellblazer. Then again, by this point, I think most of the writers they got were trying whatever ideas occurred to them and seeing if they stuck. Most of them didn't, especially since every writer with any time on the title at all would just completely redefine the characters and circumstances as they pleased. After a while, it became necessary since some writers just steeped John in crap and made him impossible to care about, but it didn't actually manage to build a consistent or strong character.

Characters like John are extremely versatile and lend themselves well to a variety of adventures and narratives, even unconventional ones. But if I could lend the production any advice, albeit belated, I would point to comics like Dylan Dog. Hellblazer always had the potential to be that enjoyable and consistent, but it never did quite get there. It had these moments of brightness that it could never maintain.

Getting back to the immediate point, 'Good Intentions' was not even a dim twilight moment. This is literally one of the worst stories in the whole series run, but that's indicative of Azzarello's abysmal run. More than any other story of his, 'Good Intentions' typifies his flagrant disregard not only for the characters even in concept, but also, and more unacceptably, his audience. It's not uncommon in this day and age of comic book writers seeming to presume rock star status, but it almost always is a bad idea and leads to tremendously sub-par output. When someone starts buying their own hype, it's time for them to take a step back and re-assess what's going on.

When a story that's supposed to be (taking a note from the aforementioned Swamp Thing run) sophisticated suspense ends up making the reader laugh with how immature and stupid it is, there's a serious problem. Gross-out sequences don't make something more mature or horrific. Scenes and dialogue meant to shock need to have a better build-up, especially if it's one after another, which inures the audience to it. By the end of the story, in part because it stretched on so long with the same tired tactics to unsuccessfully maintain tension, it's impossible to care about anything happening. Which is a shame because to read it, there's a feeling like you should feel something, you should pity this person or feel bad for this other one. But you don't. It's just so stupid and unbelievable. Not suspenseful, horrific, or tense -- just dumb and pretentious, clearly convinced it's much more important than it really is.