the sense that constantine is a queer magician in 1988 specifically is important to me. it feels like an indelible part of the hellblazer vibe. which now that i think about it while i reread the early comics is probably why i’ve never gotten along with any movie or tv adaptation. like zed’s got the zebra striped hair teased to hell and back with that makeup with the crazy lined brows. iirc john literally calls one friend of his a camp fag and an old queen. his friends are all actually weirdos and counterculture punks. his whole aesthetic is informed by those subcultures; he wanders around greenwich village in a trenchcoat with a stud in his right ear. they reference AIDs as a contemporary marker several times. john’s frequently engaging with the bigotry of skinheads, ultrareligious reactionaries, conservative politicians. the urban decay and drug epidemic crawls into every single issue. the way he (and magic in general) interfaces with the civilian populace is completely entangled with the sociopolitical environments of london and new york in the 1980s. i could go on and on. it just feels like hellblazer is an aggressively 80s story to me. how can you remove that miserable bisexual occultist from his context! he won’t have nearly as much to kill himself over !
