World Famous Comics: John Constantine, Hellblazer: Setting Sun
John Constantine, Hellblazer: Setting Sun
By: Warren Ellis Publisher: Vertigo Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Vertigo Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 96 Publication Date: October 01, 2004 Release Date: October 01, 2004
Creepy, sometimes grotesque, short stories This is definitely how you do an occult detective. Setting Sun is essentially a collection of short stories, each featuring the grimmest and greatest occult detective of them all, John Constantine.
Setting Sun reads a bit like Global Frequency, or even Warren Ellis's blog. It is clear that something attracted his attention, he wrote a quick story about it, and then he moved on. This is not meant to belittle the effort involved in Setting Sun - Ellis, aided by an all-star cast of artists, nails the tone and feel of the dirty, urban, modern John Constantine perfectly. And his excursions down into mystical London are fascinating, from start to finish.
Unlike Global Frequency, however, there's no sense of heroism. John Constantine isn't a good guy - he cleans up messes to help his friends (or make a buck) - but Ellis writes him as just another urban predator, doing what it takes to get along. Constantine is happy to get his hands messy (very, very messy - in the case of the Japanese torturer) to right a wrong, but he's also just as happy to drive an investigative reporter to insanity with stories about the true Royal line. (Lizard people!)
This is an excellent stand-alone volume - nothing happens in here that impacts the rest of the Constantine mythos and, as a short story collection, it is completely devoid of meta-narrative. I'd recommend it as the best introductory volume to the sprawling Hellblazer series. Constantine is poking a stick into the dark heart of London and seeing what comes crawling out - if a new reader doesn't like that, the rest of the series will be completely wasted.
Graphic SF Reader Pretty much anything Ellis writes is worth looking at, and Constantine as a character is a natural for his style, with stories looking at different facets of this dishevelled magician's character. Ellis is also probably jealous that John is better looking than him, and more women take off their clothes for him, too. Some short act pieces, here.
Constantine Behind the Sun Warren Ellis, John Constantine, Hellblazer: Setting Sun (Vertigo, 2004)
Before I start this review, let me state once again, categorically, that I do not believe that "intellectual property" exists. I believe copyright is a farce designed, like marriage licensing, solely as a way for the government to raise revenue. I am not raising any legal issues here; I just think that artists should be nice to one another.
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What constitutes plagiarism? Did Virgil plagiarize from Homer? Dan Brown from Michael Baigent? Michael Bolton from, well, all of Motown? It's an interesting ethical question, open to great amounts of stimulating debate. Or would be, if the government hadn't decided to codify everything. To me, what plagiarism is is artist A lifting something of weight: a visual scene, a paragraph, a series of sounds, for example-- from artist B and putting it into Artist A's own work without saying "this idea is (or is inspired by) this piece of Artist B's." "Of weight" there is also a term subject to large amounts of debate; while normally I'd say it has to do with the length of the snippet being plagiarized, in some cases it can be instantaneous-- as long as that instantaneous word, sound, image is something definitive. Something that Artist B's work is famous for. (You all know what I'm talking about. For example, that distinctive sound from the final level of the game Doom 2 that has made it into about a thousand TV commercials and movies since 1994.) Of course, we then have to move on and define the term "famous," and eventually we get as bogged down as the bureaucrats. (It also has to do with the amount of space the plagiarized material ends up occupying in the finished work; if you crib three lines from me and place them in a text the size of War and Peace, it's going to be less annoying than if you do the same thing and make them into a haiku. In the former case, after all, you've still done a good deal of work on your own.)
However, all that said: the title story of Warren Ellis' John Constantine, Hellblazer: Setting Sun seems to me to be a pretty clear case of plagiarism. Now, let me say: if I missed an acknowledgement, a dedication, anything along those lines, I apologize in advance, but I leave this out there; after all, the acknowledgement, dedication, etc. should have been with the actual work.
In the 1980s, T. F. Mous, a Korean film director, was commissioned by the Chinese film commission to make a documentary about a secret (at the time) Japanese army division called Unit 731. As the unit was still secret, and many of those who had been brutalized under its aegis were still too scared to speak, the documentary ended up becoming a fictionalized feature film, released as Men Behind the Sun in 1988. Men Behind the Sun is, when it comes right down to it, a mediocre film, but there are three particular scenes of brutality in the movie which are so horrifying that almost everyone who sees the film will remember them for a lifetime.
In Ellis' "Setting Sun," Constantine goes to see a Japanese doctor from a secret army unit, who tells Constantine of some of the horrible things he did while experimenting on human beings. Is there any possibility-- any at all-- that the three examples the doctor gives of his work are identical to those three scenes in Men Behind the Sun? There are some differences in the depictions and the particulars (the sonic chamber, for example, becomes a decompression chamber), but some similarities in other parts (for example, the doctor says that he is arrested while performing a live autopsy-- another scene from Men Behind the Sun) balance those out.
At the very least, there should have been a "for further information, check...". By the time the story was originally published, there was a wealth of Unit 731 info out there (the Japanese government finally admitted its existence in 1994). Now, again, I stress, I don't see this as a legal issue; it's just a nicety to me. But an important one.
As for the rest of the book, as every other reviewer on the planet who's read it has said, I found the final story the best-- Constantine meeting a tabloid journalist in a pub and spinning stories about what really goes on in London. The other two stories in the book fall between the two poles, the first towards the better end, the second toward the worse. Overall, easily the most inconsistent of the Hellblazer books I've read to date. **
Definitive Hellblazer Collecting the last four issues of Warren Ellis' notorious and all too-short run on Hellblazer, Setting Sun isn't a continuous storyline, but a collection of short stories with a team of revolving artists. In this collection our favorite hard drinking, hard smoking, bad luck magic mage John Constantine has run in's with depraved killers, reminisces about his love life, and in the final (and best) story, tells a journalist what "really" goes on in London. That story alone makes this worth picking up, as well as a story (drawn by cover artist and Punisher cover artist Tim Bradstreet) involving a series of murders and a box called the Crib which contains the aborted child of Satan. This is definitive Hellblazer, and this is definitive Ellis, and above all, this is an absolute must have for any Hellblazer who doesn't already own the single issues. And with the upcoming Constantine movie coming up, new fans will definitely want to pick this up.
Nasty gems The last four issues of Ellis, all stand-alone, all typically mind-warping creepy, including John having a long, uncensored chat with an investigative journalist about what *really* goes on in London, and a Tim Bradstreet-illustrated tale of a truly nasty artifact with an even nastier secret. Not for the faint of heart, but vintage, excellent Constantine.
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