#constantines

I know full well it's not going to sound great, but it's a question and you might have the answer, so here we go. It's about Johanna Constantine in Sandman.

I saw a tweet you wrote about Johanna being her own character - it was, i believe, in response to her being cleaner than John. You said she can be cleaner for the simple fact that she isn't John, or at least she isn't a gender-swapped John.

I have a question about that. If she's a different character, why is there so much that she takes from John ? Why giving her a Newcastle (even if it's not quite the same), why not modernize or reinject a version of her story with Pandora's box ? I think it's awesome to see a modern version of Lady Johanna, but I wonder what were your ideas behind keeping so much of John's in her episode, and why she wasn't push more into what makes her character different - money, sure, but also henchmen, guns and magic instead of tricks, to name a few.

I know how it sounds like - I met a few fans ever so annoying about the casting. I'm not trying to complain or bash the work you and so many talented people put behind the Sandman. I like this serie, I want more, I like Jenna Coleman as well as I'm thrilled by a Johanna Constantine in modern setting. I'm just curious about how she was thought about.

I also know you must get a whole lot of asks of the type, and i suppose it ends up souding like I'm asking for some justification. I'm not, I'm just curious - and if it seems to mean anything else, note that I'm sorry and that it's not what I meant.

Thanks, anyway, for all you do and have done, and for your attention ~

Because when you move the life essence of a character from universe to universe you keep some things and you change others. I grew up with DC Comics having Earth 1 and Earth 2, and a Batman and a Superman and a Flash on each. Both Batmans were Bruce Wayne, both Supermans were Clark Kent and Kal-El, but one Flash was Jay Garrick and one was Barry Allen. And these were ways of solving problems of time, of dealing with three decades of continuity. The John Constantine in Vertigo who was in his mid-thirties in 1989 is now a pensioner. And the Morpheus of that world escaped in September 1988.

In those terms, the TV version of Sandman exists on Earth-Sandman, a world that starts three decades on. It's not beholden to 1988 comics continuity, but it uses it when it wants to. The person holding the Constantine life essence in this world is Joanna. She didn't sing in a punk band in the 1970s. Her Astra Logue went to Hell, but it wasn't Joanna's fault in the way it was John's in 1979 in Hellblazer 12. She didn't spend the time in Ravenscar Secure Facility from 1979-1982.

She's smart, not grubby, a lot more like the original dandyish John Constantine who showed up in Swamp Thing in 1984 than the unshaven wreck of a man he became.

And we will get to see a lot more of Lady Johanna in Sandman, if we get future seasons.

Ian - Happy Birthday! There's a lot of music I don't think I'd have in my life if it wasn't for you, but the Constantines have to be number one on that list. I can still remember singing along to this song seeing them live with you in Guelph. It was really hard to narrow my choice down - I'd considered everything from Andrew WK to the National to "Smash" to the Kinks. I guess 40 years of enjoying music together will do that to you. I know we joke about you being the older one, but I have found myself looking up to you more and more as we've gotten older. Your compassion for others and emotional openness are both things I aspire to have more of in my own life. I know this past year isn't necessarily where we saw things going for our 40th birthdays but I hope you have the best day. Love you <3 

---Ben

Every Record I Own - Day 256: Constantines Shine A Light

My old indie rock band Roy did a three-week tour with The Weakerthans and Constantines back in 2003. We did not deserve the honor. Weakerthans had just released their venerated third album Reconstruction Site and Constantines were just a little buzz band with a new record on Sub Pop. I was a fan of Weakerthans on the basis of their sophomore album Left & Leaving but I knew very little of Constantines. But by the end of the first show, my allegiance went with the Toronto quintet. 

Over the course of those three weeks, I never saw Constantines play the same set twice. Every night featured a few key songs off their new album Shine A Light (the title track, “Insectivora”, “Nighttime/Anytime”, etc.) but the rest of their set was a rotating mix of songs from their debut album and the Modern Sinner Nervous Man EP. They weren’t the headliner, but the spell they cast over the room every night put them in total control of the evening. Singer Bryan Webb reminded me of Bob Dylan in both his sung/spoken delivery but also in his ability to exude this weary, road-tested, life-rich persona on stage. It was a humbling experience. 

Fifteen years later, songs like “On To You” and “Young Lions” still transport me back to those times. I’m 26 again---broke, getting drunk before shows, struggling with the need to make music while grappling with the reality that it was driving me deeper into debt, but feeling sustained by the still-new opportunity to put out records and go on tour. I feel down-and-out but inspired and hopeful.

First I want to thank you for sharing your brilliant imagination with the world, and for being so kind as to share some of your valuable time with us wackos on Tumblr.

I'm pretty much your age, and I've followed your career since Miracleman. (really. total comics geek. first run everything, i have no shame) You've created some of my favorite characters and stories, and I want to assure you that I am going to trust you wherever you decide to take my brain in the future. There's just one thing about the trailer for the upcoming Sandman series I CAN'T WAIT OMG that makes me a bit trepidatious. Joanna Constantine.

Constantine is Constantine -- this I know. Hair color, gender, age, race, whatever, none of that matters, gimme more I love it. Just one thing... she's so... clean! (*shudder*) Hair is nice, makeup perfect, even her trenchcoat is clean and well-fitted and nicely tied. From what little I see, this is a person who has never woken up with a hangover. Never gotten her arse kicked. Never gotten splattered with blood and gore. Never fronted Mucous Membrane. Never went to Ravenscar.

Like I said, I trust you. And I may have had one beer too many. But if you could give an old fan some kind of reassurance that there's something more here than Barbie Constantine, I'd really appreciate it.

Again, thank you so much for everything you do.

When Episode 3 starts, you'll meet the Constantine you're talking about. The scruffy one in Newcastle, quite a few years before our story proper starts. But that was then.

This Constantine, in the Sandman TV version of the multiverse, came out of Ravenscar determined never to go back. She's followed the money, has a credit card and a healthy bank balance, nice clothes and washed hair. Perhaps it's the lack of the Y chromosome, but she takes after the original Lady Johanna in the clean department, and, like Lady Johanna, she's luckier in some ways, and more sensible in other ways than John.

But she's still every bit a Constantine: a black hole of doom that sucks in and destroys everyone she loves or cares about, someone who will joke on the edge of the pit and charm her way out of Hell if she has to, even if it means leaving the people she loves and a little bit of her soul behind. Someone with nightmares.

Every Record I Own - Day 257: Constantines Tournament of Hearts

Starhawk in a street ritual / pleas from Herald Square to the heavens, earth, and seas / Let the land move its people / and draw us lines from our fiery designs

...Bryan Webb sings against a squall of feedback, synth-drones, and pounding toms at the beginning of Constantines’ third album. The opening track “Draw Us Lines” consists of one chord, but Webb weaves a melody around it in such a way that the austerity of the song feels forceful and triumphant rather than naked and sparse. Starhawk is an influential activist/author best known for expanding public awareness of ecofeminism and feminist Neopaganism, so what might seem like gibberish upon first listen winds up being an ode to the wonders of the natural world---an invitation to look beyond the concrete grind of urban life.

Tournament of Hearts was not met with the same enthusiasm as its predecessor Shine a Light. It’s a record of tension and reserve. The bombastic pay-offs of their first two album are reigned in, with songs like “Hotline Operator” and “Love in Fear” exercising so much restraint that it almost feels like some crucial climax was hastily cut from the final mix. It’s also a record fixated on the drab and dreary realities of the working class. But these aren’t proletariat anthems---the songs don’t romanticize the drill. Rather, Tournament of Hearts is a series of vignettes on average working folks, presented in with the band’s trademark neutral aesthetic. And maybe that’s why a lot of folks talked about Tournament of Hearts with the same degree of enthusiasm they muster for Monday mornings.

I was one of those people. After obsessing over Shine a Light, Tournament of Hearts was a disappointment. Only the crowd-pleasing Creedence Clearwater Revival-esque “Soon Enough” stood out, with its chorus serving as the clearest distillation of the albums unglamorous pragmatism.

Soon enough / work and love will make a man out of you

It took several years before the record clicked, but now it’s my favorite album in the Constantines discography. It’s their toughest album to love, but if you can fall in line with it’s tempo and temperature, it provides rich rewards.

Every Record I Own - Day 216: Constantines Kensington Heights

I’m hard-pressed to think of a better rock band in the ‘00s than Constantines.

It feels a little wrong to begin the conversation about the Toronto-based indie quintent by discussing their last record, but we’ll discuss their first three LPs when I get my records out of storage.

I purchased this used LP a couple of months ago, but I’ve had a promo copy of the CD ever since their label sent it to The Stranger back in early 2008. I had just started freelancing/interning at the alternative newspaper and the music editor tasked me with writing a review. It would’ve been my first paid piece outside of a few short concert previews.

My review for Kensington Heights was glowing. Perhaps too glowing… it didn’t get published. The editor cited lack of space, but I think he was just being polite. It was basically 300 words of me gushing like a fan boy without really ever talking about what the album sounds like. Given my write-ups here, not much has changed in ten years, I suppose.

So here’s my second chance. Constantines were occasionally described as sounding like a cross between Bruce Springsteen and Fugazi. I would say this is accurate, though not in the way one would expect. One could argue that Against Me! sounded like Fugazi and The Boss—a topical songwriter bolstered by roaring punk guitars. But Constantines conjure The Boss from the stark and soulful Nebraska years, not the anthemic E-Street records, and they pull from the dynamic space and understated interplay between instruments on the last three Fugazi records, not the post-hardcore archetypes of 13 Songs and Repeater. There are no sing-a-longs, no anthems—just earnest slow-burn rock n’ roll delivered with conviction, soul, brains, and good taste.