Without much ado, let’s plop ourselves right where we were the last time. Feel free to refresh your memory with this entry. Oh, fine, because I am a generous person ( and also because I know how lazy I can be when reading an LJ entry, I would NOT have clicked, heh heh), here’s the rundown so far: John Constantine, along with his compatriots Frank and Judith, and with Swamp Thing in tow, plan to prevent these harmless cavedwellers called the Brujeria from launching a peaceful, non-violent assault on humanity. On the way, Judith decapitates Frank, Constantine is captured by a guy whose face he cannot see ( heh heh, Pee Jay only) and Swampy is stuck between worlds. Judith vomits out her innards, Constantine near-drowns in a pool of mud, and a single flower changes a lot of well-laid plans. John is saved, and Judith becomes a crow that flies away, and all something bad is about to happen.

There, nothing like a single page of exposition to get you up to speed. One of the neatest lines I had heard back then was Constantine saying “I was so upset, I nearly passed the cigarettes around.” *snicker* But something was wrong here, with the imagery, and I remember feeling a little out of place reading it. Some important element seemed to be missing.

You know what’s cool about reading comics or watching movies when you are a kid? It’s those moments when the hero is in a situation of complete despair, the moments when the villain’s minions, armed to the teeth, advance slowly. Your breathing slows down and your jaw drops a bit, you tense closer towards the screen, or your eyes travel faster along the page. Then you read out the line that comes next ( If I remember correctly, I had mapped Swamp Thing’s voice to that of Amitabh Bachhan in Shahenshah, a nice cross between a whisper and an echo) which says “Fools, you’re in a cave…beneath the clean earth…in the centre of a rainforest. You…do not even…have a chance.” I don’t even care to think of things like real life villains who do not wait for the Main Guy to complete such an exposition, it’s so freaking cool you can do a wardance all by yourself.

Look closely at the “artists” notice – the artwork is by Stan Woch and Alfredo Alcala, and not John Totleben. Which explains the out-of-place feeling I had while reading the first page. Slightly disorienting to have artists change in the middle of a storyline, but in the comics business, anything goes. ..

The next couple of pages are of Constantine narrating how he heard the screams of the Brujeria as he stumbled out of the cave, and pretty soon, the Big Guy had metamorphosed from a stray plant.

Constantine ( voice): “The birdhad flown, gone to wake a power that would level Heaven. We couldn’t alter that. But if we couldn’t stop the entity from coming back, at least we could be ready for it when it arrived. This was my contignency plan, although obviously we’d need help, we would also have to split up. I suggested he get in touch with his contacts and ask for assistance while I do the same for mine. Then we seperated, literally in his case, and I gave up the perpetual South American summer….”

I hate to say this, but not many people know about Baron Winter and The Night Force, created by Marv Wolfman in 1982, in one of the issues of New Teen Titans. Did I know this then? New Teen Titans, man, I reply with a smirk, was one of those series easily available in India at that time, and the particular issue in which Baron Winter appeared for the first time was one of the first I owned.

“You ask if I want in, when you mean ‘Can I borrow your house’. For a jumped-up street thug your nerve is extraordinary…”, the Baron says.

Bwahahahaha, Constantine totally PWNS the Baron in this sequence. Notice the look of utter hopelessness on Winter’s face in the panel above. That, my friends, is a painful pwn indeed.

The next page is delightful to read, as familiar characters make their appearance one after the other. What strikes out most is Moore’s description of these characters, he treats them with the reverence they deserve. I believe this was the first story of its time that united all of DC’s magical characters, and their relationships were to be dealt with in detail by Neil Gaiman in The Books of Magic.

While rereading the comic, it’s mindboggling to see how the narration from one page segues to the other, like this one – the third-person narrative from the previous page moving into Swamp Thing’s first-person account in this one.

Yes, as it appears, Swamp Thing has indeed floated his way into the Afterlife. This is the first time I realised what a powerful creature Moore has made him into, as opposed to the old Frankenstein whiner monster that we were dealing with in the past. The other character in the red suit has a vague Indian connection – a circus trapeze artist named Boston Brand ( yeah, that was his name) was shot by an assassin, but his spirit lived on because of a Being named Rama Kushna ( sic), and Brand became the rather whimsically-named Deadman. The dialogue also mentions that he was there before, looking for his “lady”. Grr, I had no idea of what Deadman was talking about, and I had no way of knowing, too, until some 10-odd years later, I was reading Swamp Thing Annual # 2.

These folks then meet up with another mysterious entity, the Phantom Stranger, who’s the kind of Supernatural Character that winds in and out of events without really letting on what he knows or how much, but manages to influence the way things turn out. These three then go deeper into the Afterlife, note that Heaven isn’t being shown, and mention is made of The Ruination Beyond Heaven. Moore was the first writer to map out such details, and don’t worry, there are better things coming.

The next character they meet is The Spectre, one of the most powerful inhabitants in the DC Universe. This was the guy who held TWO PLANETS from colliding with each other using his bare hands, dude! Both the planets were the same, by the way, just vibrating at different frequencies, yeah, I know, I know, the DC Universe is really confusing sometimes. What turns out from the conversation is that the Spectre had willingly allowed the crow ( remember the crow? Judith transformed. She had been flying through the same regions with a black pearl held in her beak.) to fly past him, he was welcoming the Horror that would be unleashed, just to prove that he can destroy it on his own. The Spectre is completely bad-ass, so it’s rather a letdown to see him wearing green elf-boots, as he walks away.

John Constantine, in the meantime, is doing what he does best, wheedling, persuading, browbeating, blackmailing people into joining his alliance. The guy’s powers of persuasion were an inspiration to me. Remember when he was talking to Baron Winter, and how he said that Sargon was ready and willing to join him. He was not entirely truthful with the good baron, it seems, as we find out when he comes and talks to Sargon the Sorcerer.

That’s right, John Constantine plays dirty. I totally like this guy. I wish Keanu Reeves meets him sometime in a back alley and gets buggered by John.

If there’s any doubt remaining about John Constantine’s claim to godliness, he dispels it all by convincing the master magician Zatara, and his daughter Zatanna to join him, and also flirts with her in front of her father. And on top of that, we find out that John and Zatanna have a bit of history. While parting, Constantine mentions Zatanna’s older costume, which is right now her current costume again. Tsk tsk, DC Continuity.

Meanwhile, Swamp Thing has reached Hell, with his companions – and who should they find there, but a very poetic old friend!

Etrigan the demon was created by Jack Kirby in the 1970’s, he was a slave of Merlin the magician, and later was bonded to earth through a human being named Jason Blood. Blood would change from his human form to that of Etrigan by a rhyming spell that began “Change, change, transmogrify.” Which is how I learnt the word “transmogrify” – and love it to this day. Moore took the rhyming spiel a step further, and made Etrigan speak entirely in verse, rhyming becoming something of a high status in Hell. Ensuring that all future writers who employed Etrigan as guest stars also display how bad poetry can get by trying to make the demon speak in rhymes. Etrigan had seen the crow, and spat flame at it, but the crow had flown away. When the Phantom Stranger is surprised at Etrigan’s disloyalty towards Hell, the rhymer replies –
“On that point, Hell’s unable to agree;
the baser fiends look forward to the show.
While higher cadres tend to side with me,
in favouring the devil that we know.
Perhaps two hundred in rank and file,
nine rhymers, and a troop of cavalry
take arm against this resurrection vile,
as many siding with our enemy.
This war shall burn white-hot,
and should we fall,
madness without end
shall claim us all.”

We are then inside Baron Winter’s house again, where all the people John has been coercing have assembled, and Zatanna’s back in her fishnet costume. ( I knew she would wear it!) And now John’s trying to wheedle the fifth richest man in the world into putting on his mental ability-enhancing helmet. There is a reason why Mento ( that’s who the character is, and I must say I had not heard of him before I read this comic) is not wearing the helmet – because John Constantine is telling him it wouldn’t be dangerous, heh heh. ”

This is the part when you get an inkling of Dr Occult’s power for the very first time. He’s an old-timer, this guy, he was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster before they created Superman, so he’s been around for quite sometime, though as a second-string character. His character blends the Private Investigator/Supernatural Mysterious Guy/Superhero archetypes perfectly.

Mento uses his helmet to “lock on” to the crow. The clock is ticking, and the bird is very close to its goal.

(The three demons you see there are named Abenezar, Rath and Ghast, by the way. They hang around with a villain named Felix Faust. I know this because I read the Official Handbook of the DC Universe back to back.)

Ok. Deep breath. Suppose you read the story until here, and then you find out that there’s NO WAY you can find out what happens in issue 50. Because issue 50 is nowhere to be found. What do you do? Do you weep silently and gnash your teeth in frustration? Or do you wait for 12 years and then buy the issue from eBay? Actually, I was lucky, two years later I found a kid in school who had a copy of Swamp Thing 50. I did what was good for him and traded it off him for a couple of Tinkles. I read through it during recess, and then read it again about five times when class was on.

Up next: A surprise. Let the majesty of the cliffhanger sink in. Alan Moore Appreciation Week will continue, but with some different material altogether.