As with many of the reviews I've looked at this evening for Scab, to see what other people thought of it, this wouldn't have been a graphic novel Id have thought of looking at. I'm told it collects the issues at the beginning of Peter Milligan's tenure overseeing the Hellblazer title, which is neither here nor there for me, but I had been meaning to get into the Constantine world for a while- so what with it being the Hellblazer title the public library have here I thought I'd give it a whirl.
Aside from an awareness of John Constantine being a Brit, a Scouser, gritty, a smoker and a walker of the line between urban realism and demons, magic and curses, and the general nerd knowledge, coming with being a film geek and frequenter of the internet, that Hollywood screwed up the whole thing with Keanu 'Stoneface' Reeves and the abominable 2005 flick Constantine, this was my first foray into his story. It was a mixed experience.
The plot over both Scab and Regeneration was pretty solid, although the tacked on story The Curse of Christmas felt like exactly that and was pretty throwaway. The ghost of an MP has been following Constantine for a year after he and two others died at exactly the same time the Christmas before, and he wants to know why. There's no tension at all and the revelation over who killed them is plucked out of the ether with no working by Constantine- plus, after two proper volumes Scab and Regeneration with distinct political agendas yet more MPs and politics felt like overkill.
In Scab there is, quite literally, a scab on the loose, a skin condition that begins to bubble to the surface of both Constantine's chest (and later back, neck and arms) and the skin of a 'scab' from the 80s who took a gigantic bung, as most people see it, for some great betrayal. This scab prowls on the guilt and shame, repressed, unrepressed, embraced or accepted, of both Constantine and the 'scab', and even begins to prey on the past emotions of the latest girl Constantine is convincing himself he can get close to, Phoebe. This first volume is definitely the more horror-related of the two, with imagery that is not for the squeamish and a really nightmarish idea that this 'skin condition' (complete with a rancid, putrid treatment remedy) can become the terrors you didn't know you feared, and embody them, becoming incarnate through scab tissue.
Politics comes into play here, the first hint that perhaps Milligan has a bit of an idealistic axe to grind (is Constantine normally such a devout Old Labour bloke? I genuinely don't know). We see the 'scabs' of the 80s and talk of Thatcher, along with disdain for Blair-ite Britain and what has come after, and aside from being in the middle of a story but not revelatory or crucial it seems a bit of an end to the means of the comic, and to hard-pushed. The banking crises from the last few years are also slammed into the spotlight from time to time, jarring with the human story of guilt and corrupting influences.
The artwork in the first arc is good, drawn cleanly by Camuncoli and coloured very well by Landini, but it is basic and cartoon-ish compared to the Alex Rosses of the comic world. The gritty tone of Constantine as a character isn't reflected in the chiselled, cleaner cut Camuncoli designs, and it is only through the shading and detail added in by Landini that any sense of that plays out. That said, the illustrations of the scab incarnations is, oddly, quite detailed and expressive, despite being in the same style; I still wonder, though, what impact would have been made if a more realistic drawing style had been taken. The reveals of the scab creature in various panels, for one, would have been all the more jarring.
In Regeneration the art from Sudzuka and Ramos is better, with Ramos inking more subdued, less garish colours with a softer approach and more subtle range, so that the cartoon effect of blockier colour is dampened, and the basic shaping style of Camuncoli is refined to more realistic sketching by Sudzuka. Having said all that, it still isn't as strong as it could be, and with art from Steve McNiver and Alex Ross as the benchmarks for grit in the comic world it falls a little short.
The plot here similarly runs with two intertwined time periods, though the difference is that they are not connected by people from both; rather, spirits from the plague in 1660s London share common ground with the regeneration sites for the 2012 Olympics. This felt really jarring to me, such juxtaposition between stuff that is actually happening and the fictional but hardline and urban fantasy elements of Constantine, which is just about the extent of my knowledge of the series. But perhaps it's just the fact that it is so contemporary that bugged me, and older issues of Hellblazer would be more to my liking.
Either way, the agenda of capitalist vs communist, rich vs poor harped on about and thrown in the reader's face from the start of Scab comes back into play, with plague doctors and politicians being pitted against the poor in both eras of the plot. The result was the axe being ground by Milligan became huge, but incredibly one-note. And there isn't a happy ending, but then I didn't expect there would be- I'd actually hoped for Scab to be a bit more creepy and grim than it turned out to be
The other issue is that because it was quite a few issues collected into one it did feel as though it moved a little fast in places, without the time between each issue to adjust to the previous developments. For example, events in Constantine's relationship with Phoebe seem to run on into each other when they're actually quite a while apart, and it ends up feeling like a bit of a glut. You can blame me for reading it in one, but I personally reckon that a good comic arc should stand up to being collected at the end and definitely in terms of pacing should account for that to try and combat any such 'squishing'.
So, all in all not a stellar graphic novel by any means, but entertaining. And if the good elements of it are what the best Constantine stories are made up of, I'll definitely be dipping in again soon- perhaps to the black and white line drawn one-shot written by Ian Rankin, recommended to me by a friend months ago. And of course, when I've read it, I'll review it here- because what else am I going to do?
PS- any recommendations for good graphic novels are welcome, Constantine or otherwise. Sling them in the comments, but please, no manga/ anime- I've got enough on my plate at the moment without trying to understand/ get into Japan in any big way.
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