Under the current circumstances I'm letting my novel-reading slide quite a bit (from attempting to read one novel a week to... I'll see if I can even finish one in under two months...) and instead fill my reading hours with comics, old and new. Mostly new, but there's one older title I keep coming back to. Usually I come back to it when I'm in a dark place but now... now I'm in a time in which, chemically, I am devoid of pondering, and so, thoughtlessly, I'm free to consume whatever I want. Mindless escapism is the name of the game.Whether it be comfort food or comfort fiction, without regard for taste, an omnivore, I'll down it like a glutton. My mouth chews without thinking and my brain, where before it rambled on in an endless manner, now, slowly, ponderously, does likewise.
With the medication I'm aware that there's stuff that worries and hurts me but I can't much focus on it. I don't look at it because, really, on the whole, it doesn't quite seem to matter. And yet I'm back here, sipping from this most darkly brewed tale. The familiar comfort fiction worms its way into my daily life and an alarm bell start to ring. This should probably be worrying me. But the alarm rings into a cavity, into an open void, and its echoes are soon lost. From past experiences I've come to know that the fiction to which I turn to when I 'need' comfort is dark. I suppose it's some form of schadenfreude. A feeling born from the idea that my world is less malignant if that malignancy is doled out in equal measure among its many inhabitants. Like Constantine says in the Antarctica storyline: 'And I like the way that feels'.
And Hellblazer doles out malignancy every chance it gets. And in this volume there's some truly horrifying stuf. As a result, the Devil You Know has some of my favourite Helllazer stories. Whether it's the disturbing (and yet uplifting) Antarctica two-shot, the bleak eco-nightmare of 'On the Beach', or the much built-up Exorcism-gone-wrong of 'Newcastle', the issues collected here are some of the series' best.
That's just me talking. Ask most Hellblazer fans and they'll proclaim that the Dangerous Habits storyline is the best.
But not for me the raging race-riots of Garth Ennis' run, or his meticulously built-up and believable friendships, John Constantine's most memorable girlfriend, nor his epic journey to the ultimate double-crossing of the devil, no. All I need to proclaim these my favourite stories is one thing and one thing only:
Jamie Delano's Beautifully bleak poetry-prose.
This stuff touches my soul, gives me something I don't get anywhere else. He consistently manages to weave a dark drama, giving me a deep well to hide in. There's nothing so compelling as the dark and if you manage to be poetic about it, well, then you've got my attention.
And, as I said, I've only read 8 volumes of this series, which amounts to around 80 issues out of the 300 that make up the whole thing, and that's not counting extras and specials, so I've still got a lot to look forward to.
Of course, Jamie Delano's run on Helllazer is a relatively short one, so the poetry that I'm practically raving about here is short-lived and already familiar. But you know maybe, hopefully, there's some great stuff still waiting ahead.
Volumes 18 and 19 are on their way to me bringing the count of what I can read right now up to issue 229. Volume 20 (up to 238 plus extras) will be out somewhere in January.
There'll also be a 30th anniversary celebration hardcover volume out in October, collecting various separate issues of the long-running series. Oddly, all of these are unconnected from each other, which, for a series that is pretty much all about long-spanning story arcs, seems a bit of an odd choice.
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