Writer: Warren Ellis
Artist: John Higgins
Letterers: Clem Robins
Colourists: Alex Sinclair with Digital Chameleon
Collecting HELLBLAZER #134-139
Price: $12.95
Publisher: DC Vertigo
ISBN: 1563898136

Have you ever witnessed someone in the midst of a heroin comedown, strung out and incapable of even the simplest speech or action? I have.

Have you watched as one man chases another down a hallway, baseball bat swinging wildly, and then heard the crash as the pursued escapes via a second-story window? Yeah, I was there, a rubbernecker, gawking.

Have you been subjected to a room smaller than a prison cell, crammed waist high with pornography and bottled urine? I wish I hadn't.

These are the things I don't talk about all that much, and that I only recall in the depths of sleeplessness. Understand, everybody deals with Bad Shit in his or her life once or twice, but some people go out of their way to look for it, despite themselves. John Constantine, streetwise mage and conman, is one such lightning rod. Even when he tries to get away from it, it creeps up behind him like a stalker, with malice aforethought. After all, how appalling must it feel to read about an ex-girlfriend's death in the newspaper?

HAUNTED was Warren Ellis' opening salvo on HELLBLAZER, a six-part horror novella that would establish how the writer viewed Constantine - a character Ellis appeared to have an affection and inclination for, even going as far as to introduce his own version/interpretation, Pete Wisdom, during his run on EXCALIBUR. HELLBLAZER was also one of four titles that constituted Ellis' considerable market presence back in 1999 - the others being THE AUTHORITY, PLANETARY and TRANSMETROPOLITAN.

And what the latter series did with Spider Jerusalem and the United States, Ellis planned to do with Constantine and the UK, using the character as a vehicle to explore and question Britain's socio-political framework, illuminated by the dying light of the 20th Century - much in the vein of what Jamie Delano and Garth Ennis established during their respective tenures on the title.

As such, HAUNTED comes across as brutal and unflinching, but grounded in a reality familiar to anyone who's chafed against the workaday strictures of society. This was a stark contrast to what Ellis' predecessor on the title, Paul Jenkins, had made HELLBLAZER into: a fantasy title with little or no on-panel horror.

The horror depicted in HAUNTED, though, comes not from demons and other such fictional bogeymen - it comes from the kinds of violence people will inflict upon each other: psychological, physical and sexual. Constantine understands this, often to his detriment - and indeed, he receives an almighty kicking during the course of the story. It is a thoroughly revolting sequence, but it makes its point unmistakably: given the chance, people will sink to the lowest depths humanity can plumb. The difference is, Constantine makes the conscious choice not to dive all the way down. He's an evil scheming bastard, and an adrenaline junkie besides, but he opts to do the right thing despite himself.

Here, he wants to do the right thing by Isabel, his murdered ex-girlfriend. By bringing to justice Josh Wright, wannabe magician, Constantine can lay her ghost to rest. Through some manipulation and carefully laid plans on his part, Constantine soon learns the nature of Isabel's death...and how he may have played a part in it.

Ellis, too, understands how people can be more monstrous than any fictional creature imagined; as he puts it in his introduction to another HELLBLAZER collection, FEAR AND LOATHING, "[People are] the scariest things in the world." (His recent collection of essays on fringe culture, BAD WORLD, also played with this theme.)

HAUNTED is a masterful work of adult storytelling, which doesn't rely on cheap shock tactics or gratuitous sex/language/viscera for effect. The dialogue is trademark Ellis, salty and sanguine, while the plot reads much like a crime novel, bringing to mind one of Ellis' admitted influences, Derek Raymond. Ellis also employs the unusual technique of setting the narrative captions apart from John Higgins's artwork, a trick openly stolen from Frank Miller's SIN CITY. As a result, the methodical pacing allows the story to unfold at its own pace, giving both Constantine and the reader room to breathe.

Higgins, long a stalwart in the British comics scene, matches Ellis in terms of both bravura and understatement. HAUNTED shows Higgins at ease with Constantine and his surroundings, as he had warmed up prior to HAUNTED with an arc penned by Garth Ennis, 'Son of Man'. While a more cartoony style can be glimpsed here and there, Higgins demonstrates a certain fearlessness in the more harrowing sections of the narrative, while displaying restraint when the quieter scenes call for it. Constantine looks appropriately weather-beaten, as does the London in which he lurks, old and bowed by the weight of history.

Though Brian Azzarello later stole the limelight for his controversial take on HELLBLAZER, John Constantine is served far better here by Ellis and Higgins. They understand that even though Constantine has been responsible for some nightmares in his time, he's not one to shirk them; if anything, the darkness only serves to embolden him. Would that we were all so brave...

Brent Keane is a regular contributor to Ninth Art and PopImage and has also written for Opi8, Sequential Tart and Nerdbait.

This article is Ideological Freeware. The author grants permission for its reproduction and redistribution by private individuals on condition that the author and source of the article are clearly shown, no charge is made, and the whole article is reproduced intact, including this notice.