Bully Says: Comics Oughta Be Fun!

Showing posts with label Hellblazer. Show all posts

Thursday, June 16, 2022

Today in Comics History, June 16: Happy birthday, Ron Hogan!

Born on this day: my personal pal and a good egg all around, writer and editor Ron Hogan!

'Hey Bully, wanna go out for exotic food?'

Ron's not a comic book creator, but he is the author of the excellent writing book Our Endless and Proper Work, which I consult all the time! Look, I have photographic evidence. You can get a copy for yourself!

'Hmm, according to this Ron suggests I use something called VERBS. Sounds fishy to me.'

'Hmm, according to this Ron suggests I use something called VERBS. Sounds fishy to me.'

Tuesday, May 10, 2022

Today in Comics History, May 10, 1953: Happy birthday, John Constantine, ye wanker

Hey, remember when we were all younger than John Constantine?

Celebrating your birthday in America? There's your first problem, John.

from Hellblazer (1988 series) #9 (DC, September 1988), script by Jamie Delano, pencils by John Ridgway, inks by Alfredo Alcala, colors by Lovern Kindzierski, letters by Todd Klein

Thursday, August 13, 2015

Today in Comics History, August 13, 1914: John Constantine regrets booking a WWI adventure holiday instead of going to Ibiza

'Yes, well, I've been on packaged tours many times before, so your advert really baught my eye. What's the point of going abroad, if your just going to be treated like a sheep? Carted around in buses surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Boventry. Their blothed backs and their bardigans and their transistor radios, complaining about the tea or they don't make it properly, do they? And stopping at endless Majorcan bodegas selling fish and chips and Watney's Red Barrel and calamaris and two veg. And sitting in their cotton sunfrocks, squirting Timothy White Suncream all over their puffy, raw, swollen, purulent flesh, 'cos they overdid it on the first day. Being herded into countless Hotel Miramars and Bellevues, Bontinentals with their international luxury modern roomettes and swimming pools full of draft Red Barrel and fat German businessmen pretending to be acrobats and forming pyramids and frightening the children and barging into the queues. And if you're not at your table spot on seven you miss your bowl of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup, the first item in the menu of International Cuisine. Every Thursday night there's a bloody cabaret in the bar featuring some tiny emaciated dego with nine-inch hips and some fat bloated tart with her hair Bryll-creamed down and big arse presenting flamenco for foreigners, and an adenoidal typist from Birmingham with flabby white legs and diarrhea trying to pick up hairy, bandy legged, wop dagos called Manuel. And once a week there's an excursion to local Roman remains, where you can buy Cherry Ade and melted ice cream and bleedin' Watney's Red Barrel. And one night they take you to a typical restaurant with local atmosphere and color and you sit next to a party from Rhyl who keep singing 'I love the Costa Brava! I love the Costa Brava!' And you get cornered by some drunken green grocer from Luton with an Instamatic camera and last Tuesday's 'Daily Express' and he's on and on and on about how it is running the country and how many languages Margaret Powell can speak and she throws up all over the cuba libres. And spending four days on the tarmac at Luton Airport on a five-day package tour with nothing to eat but dry British Airways sandwiches. And you can't even get a glass of Watney's Red Barrel because you're still in England with the bloody bar closes every time you're thirsty. And the kids are crying and vomiting and breaking the plastic ashtrays. They keep telling you won't be another hour, but you know damn well your plane is still in Iceland, because it had to turn back, trying to take a party of Swedes to take a party of Swedes to Yugoslavia. Of course it loads you up there at 3 a.m. in the morning. And then you sit on the tarmac for four hours because of unforeseen difficulties, i.e. the permanent strike of airtraffic control over Paris. When you finally get to Malaga airport, everybody's queueing for the bloody toilet, and queueing for the bloody half-customs officers, and queueing for the bloody bus that isn't there, waiting to take you to the hotel that hasn't yet been built. When you finally get to the half-built Algerian ruin called the Hotel Limassol, while paying half the holiday money to a license Spaniard in a taxi, there's no water in the pool, there's no water in the bath, there's no water in the tap, there's only a bleeding lizard in the bidet, and half the rooms are doublebooked, and you can't sleep anyway, 'cause the permanent are in the jungles in the hotel next door. Meanwhile, the Spanish National Tourist Board promises that the raging cholera epidemic is merely a mild outbreak of the Spanish Conleigh, rather like the previous outbreak in 1616, even the bloody rats are dying from it! Meanwhile, the bloody guardia are arresting 16-year olds for kissing in the streets and everybody's buying little awful horrid donkeys with their names on, and when you finally get to Manchester, there's only another bloody bus to carry you another 60 miles...'

from Constantine (2013 series) #17 (DC, October 2014), script by Ray Fawkes, pencils by Edgar Salazar, inks by Jay Leisten, colors by Tanya Horie and Richard Horie, letters by Taylor Esposito

Thursday, April 10, 2014

Comics News for April 10, 2014

Cap 'n' Bucky enjoy just hangin' around.

Top: from "The Return of the Red Skull" in Captain America Comics #3 (May 1941), script and art by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby
Middle: from The Saga of Swamp Thing #38 (July 1985), script by Alan Moore, pencils by Stan Woch, inks by John Totleben, colors by Tatjana Wood, letters by John Costanza
Bottom: Whoops, I forgot to write down which Archie comic this came from

Saturday, December 21, 2013

Today in Comics History, December 21, 2005: zMail is invented

'I've...been...dying...to...get...this...to...you.'

from Hellblazer #214 (DC/Vertigo, January 2006), script by Mike Carey, pencils and inks by Leonardo Manco, colors by Lee Loughridge, letters by Jared K. Fletcher

Saturday, August 10, 2013

Today in Comics History, August 10: London's experimental early-morning whiskey delivery service is not successful

And, how will the alley cats lick the alcohol off the top of the bottles this way?

from Hellblazer #178 (DC/Vertigo, January 2003), script by Mike Carey, pencils and inks by Marcelo Frusin, colors by Lee Loughridge, letters by Clem Robins

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

This is your brain on Vertigo. And this is your brain on the New 52. Any questions?

Wow, being reassigned to the New 52 has really done a harsh number on John Constantine:

'I usedta...hic!...have my own Vertigo title, jus' like Swamp Thing...hic!...an' Animal Man an' the Doom...hic! Patrol...now lookit me. Hic!'

'I usedta...hic!...have my own Vertigo title, jus' like Swamp Thing...hic!...an' Animal Man an' the Doom...hic! Patrol...now lookit me. Hic!'

Splash panel from "The Demon Horn" in Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion #15 (February-March 1974), script by Gerry Boudreau, pencils and inks by Gerry Talaoc
Wow. Where did John learn this behavior? He learned it from you! From you, okay?!?

Remember: friends don't let friends buy watered-down pale reflections of great comic books!

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Today in Comics History, August 31, 2011: In honor of Diana Day, please adjust your horizontal hold

'I love Cheesy Chomps, you love Cheesy Chomps!'

from Hellblazer Special: Bad Blood #2 (DC/Vertigo, October 2000), script by Jamie Delano, pencils and inks by Philip Bond, colors by Pamela Rambo, letters by Clem Robins

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

St. Patrick's Day: When the world is too dark and I need the light inside of me, I'll walk into a bar and drink fifteen pints of beer

from Hellblazer #42 (June 1991), script by Garth Ennis, pencils by Will Simpson, inks by Mark Pennington, colors by Tom Ziuko, letters by Gaspar Saladino

The Pogues "If I Should Fall from Grace with God" (1987)

The Pogues "Streams of Whiskey" (1984)

The Pogues "Misty Morning, Albert Bridge" (1989)

The Pogues "Thousands Are Sailing" (1988)

I'm not supposed to touch it until the heads settles down. But I can LOOK at it.

So come fill up your glasses with brandy and wine
What ever it costs, I will pay
So be easy and free, when you're drinking with me
I'm a bull you don't meet every day