cmunn
Aspiring Loser
Posts: 21
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Post by cmunn on Oct 1, 2018 13:34:55 GMT -5
Hi everybody, my name's Chris Munn and I'm the new writer on John Constantine, Hellblazer. I've been away from fanfiction for several years now, but I still recognize a few of the names on here. Glad to be back aboard, thanks to David for having me! Here's a taste of what's to come:
****
The night had started out the same as any other, a dull London evening for a man who had lived his own share of recent excitement and, as such, was greatly anticipating an uneventful end to the day. So out John went, down the street toward the pub with visions of full pints dancing in his head. He walked past the woman of the evening on the street corner, nodding and smiling as he passed with smoke floating slowly out of his nostrils. It was the perfect ending, and as he approached the door to the pub he allowed his guard to go down in preparation of the safety that came with good drink and good mates.
Naturally, that's when the world came crashing down upon him, in the form of a bludgeon thumping itself across the back of his head.
When he awoke, John found himself cuffed to a chair in a candle-lit room with walls that were dripping wet and a floor puddled with something that smelled foul. He raised his hands, but the movement was halted by the handcuffs snapping to their fully chained extension. "Bollocks," John muttered as he let his arms back down onto the chair's rests.
"Hello?" a weak whisper sounded off from the opposite side of the room. John blinked and squinted his eyes, barely able to make out the form of another person sitting across the way. It was the prostitute he'd passed on his way to the pub, completely starkers and strapped down to a chair, just like him. As his eyesight adjusted to the dim light, he noticed the devices affixed to the naked woman - a bear trap fitted to her head like a helmet, waiting for the right amount of pressure to make it snap closed; electrical leads clamped to her nipples, corded to two car batteries on the floor at her sides; and her feet resting in buckets of something, possibly the same substance that was all over the walls and floor of the room, but possibly not.
In other words, John immediately decided, she was fucked.
"John Constantine," a gravelly voice exploded from the speaker box in the top left corner of the room, "we're going to play a game. If you win, you live and the girl dies; if you lose, the girl lives...and you die. Do you want to play?"
"It's Saturday night," Constantine replied, "and there' s bugger-all on the telly. Sure, I'm game."
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Post by johncheese on Oct 1, 2018 13:56:15 GMT -5
Interesting start indeed. Also welcome to the site
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Post by bkole on Oct 1, 2018 15:29:45 GMT -5
Welcome back, mate.
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Post by fairchild on Oct 1, 2018 18:05:40 GMT -5
Yeah!!!! Munn is back.
Good Hellblazer opening too
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Post by Gavin McMahon on Oct 2, 2018 2:47:30 GMT -5
Welcome back, Chris!
This looks like a very good start to the series. Constantine has always been darker and grittier than most "heroes" (maybe it's because he's Liverpudlian and not held to the same American ideals?) so it's good to see this won't be shying away from that. Besides, a big fan of characters not all congregating in the US and London's my second home so hope he spends a bit of time in the city.
You've really got the voice of Constantine spot on, I actually read it in a Scouse accent.
Looking forward to this!
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cmunn
Aspiring Loser
Posts: 21
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Post by cmunn on Oct 2, 2018 7:40:20 GMT -5
Thanks guys, I appreciate the welcomes and the kind words! The story snippet I posted isn't actually from the first issue, I have several Hellblazer short stories that I just wrote whenever the mood struck me and that was the opening to one of them. I may release them all in one go as a one-shot issue between arcs later on in the series, but that's where that scene came from, one of the short stories. I wanted to at least show off my work on the character as I'm preparing to write the *actual* first issue, he's a character that's dear to my heart and I wanted to prove he's in good hands. Cheers!
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cmunn
Aspiring Loser
Posts: 21
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Post by cmunn on Oct 2, 2018 13:13:41 GMT -5
And here's a look at the ACTUAL first issue of Hellblazer.
The Detective Chief Inspector sighed as he leaned forward on the glass, his arm pressed against the window to allow his face a place to rest on his forearm. He closed his eyes and counted to ten, unable to remember the last time he had wanted a cigarette this badly. “I’ve seen some things in this bloody city that would scar you for life, Clemons,” he said to the constable standing behind him in the hallway of the hospital, “shite that seems to have been born in nightmares so disturbing that the only way to escape them is outright insanity. This girl you found, well,” he paused, rubbing his eyes with thumb and forefinger, “it ranks up there in the top five fucking saddest, that’s for sure.”
Police Constable Clemons glanced into the room through the observation window at the young girl squirming on the bed, her hands and feet secured with leather restraints. “I found her just off the Saint Johns Crossroads,” he said to his superior, “she was just wandering in the traffic, completely naked and screaming like a mad woman. I stopped the car to help her, and that’s when I noticed the wound.”
The constable’s rumination was interrupted by the sound of a Zippo lighter sparking to life at the end of the dark, silent medical hall. He and his superior both turned to see the dour man in the olive raincoat as he lit up his cigarette, directly in violation of the smoking ordinance Clemons thought. The Chief Inspector furrowed his brow and snorted. “Clemons, go have a cup of coffee,” he ordered, “I need a moment.”
Constable Clemons nodded and walked away, just a little bit confused. As he passed the scruffy newcomer he thought he saw the man wink knowingly at him. “Get on home, mate,” the stranger commented wryly, “Mum and Dad need a chinwag.”
The stranger made his way in front of the Chief Inspector, then turned to look past his shoulder, waiting for Clemons to round the corner out of sight. He turned back and blew a cloud of cigarette smoke in the detective’s face, sneering at the act. “If I didn’t know better, Watford,” he spat, “I’d think you had a sodding deathwish for getting me out of bed this fucking late at night. Did you get caught being…indiscriminate again?”
There was the attitude, the Chief Inspector rankled at the tone, and that goddamned fucking name. He had one incident on Watford High Street, one fucking incident, and to make it go away he’d called in a favor from the man in front of him. John Constantine made his problem go away, sure, but he also made sure he never lived it down. “I need your help, John,” Watford said, “but not for me, not this time. No, this time it’s all about you. This time, I’m doing you the favor.”
“Really,” John said with a chuckle, “this ought to be good.”
Watford led Constantine into the patient’s room and to the girl’s bedside, her body contorting under the restraints and dim lighting. “Its name is Patricia Robbins,” Watford began, “a former resident of Ravenscar Psychiatric Facility.” Constantine visibly flinched, which both pleased and terrified the Chief Inspector. “It was being treated for depression and suicidal ideations, but nothing in its history points to it engaging in self-mutilation.”
Constantine stepped forward and placed his nicotine-stained hand on Patricia’s head, trying to ignore the woman’s incoherent rambling. His fingers danced gently over the “wound” that Clemons had discovered, a circular hole in her forehead that had been made with what appeared to have been a drill. “It’s called trephination, or trepanning,” he explained to Watford, “and it involves a great fucking hole being bored into the skull to alleviate intracranial pressure. Some mad bastards believe that trephination can imbue psychic abilities by activating the “third eye” of the brain, but to my knowledge that’s’ never been substantiated.”
Suddenly, Watford’s cell phone began to ring, and the noise triggered a shrieking fit from the trepanned Patricia, who began to violently thrash against her bonds. Constantine stepped backward, “Bloody hell…”, while the Chief Inspector answered his call. He spoke only his name and listened to the caller for just a moment before hanging up and turning toward his associate.
“Another bloke with a hole drilled in his head was just brought into casualty by paramedics,” he informed the Batman, “he was identified as Edward Munch, another Ravenscar expatriate.”
“Guess that’s why you called me, eh?” John said as he flicked his cigarette into the medical room’s sink. “Was it as a potential victim, witness, or suspect?”
“Look,” Watford began after the two men walked back into the hallway, ignoring Patricia once her screams had died down into sad little whimpers, “I can’t get anywhere with Ravenscar, it’s out of my bloody jurisdiction. You know the place, you have the connection, and maybe this mad arsehole has you on his list just like Munch and Robbins?”
“I’m not going back to fucking Ravenscar,” John said forcefully, just the name alone was enough to make his skin crawl.
“Sure you’re not,” Watford said, taking his turn to sneer, “but I can see it in your eyes, John. You’re hooked now. You’ve taken an interest…”
John side-eyed him, then pushed past him to walk down the hall. He pulled the collar of his raincoat up around his ears, hoping to block out what the depraved Chief Inspector was shouting at him down the corridor. “You can’t let it lie, John! Now you have to know…”
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Post by Daniel Ingram on Oct 2, 2018 19:47:29 GMT -5
Wait, Munn's alive? I thought he and Moo killed each other!
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Post by Gavin McMahon on Oct 2, 2018 20:15:38 GMT -5
It definitely looks interesting. There's a typo (I think) though, "he informed the Batman". I presume that should be him informing Constantine. I do like Watford, he takes no shit from John. That could make him an interesting character if he hangs around as support. Is the entire series going to be set in England? Also, out of curiosity, are you gonna write John as bisexual? It's a trait that gets picked up and lost at the writer's whim. I'm very interested in finding out who your big bad is!
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cmunn
Aspiring Loser
Posts: 21
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Post by cmunn on Oct 3, 2018 6:42:35 GMT -5
What, I didn't make it clear that John was cosplaying as Batman during that scene? Thanks for catching that, lol, my 3 year old was playing with his Batman action figures and desperately trying to get my attention while I was writing that, so I guess ol' Bats subconsciously sneaked his way into my narrative. No Batman appearances in Hellblazer, I'm afraid. Funny typo, though!
Watford will show up again in a later issue, more as background than anything else. The series will be set in England, predominately in London but with at least two issues set in Ireland later on. As for the bisexuality thing, I actually do plan on addressing it eventually but it's not really something I'm all that interested in exploring. A few of John's exes will be getting play a few issues down the line, though, so if you're a Hellblazer fan you'll run into some familiar faces.
Oh, and for anyone that's curious as to where my series starts in terms of continuity, I know the cut-off for the site is Rebirth, right? I'm just ignoring the New 52 stuff, this is Vertigo Hellblazer era John Constantine, specifically after the end of Andy Diggle's run and before the start of Peter Milligan's run (so no Epiphany Greaves or married Constantine). Diggle did a lot of stuff concerning Ravenscar during his run, which I'll be picking up on in this first issue, but I'll be recapping briefly so no one's confused.
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cmunn
Aspiring Loser
Posts: 21
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Post by cmunn on Nov 13, 2018 17:40:14 GMT -5
Scene from the in-progress Hellblazer # 2:
“Bloody hell, John,” Chas Chandler said she watched his best mate emerge from the doors of Ravenscar Hotel and Casino, formerly Ravenscar Secure Facility for the Dangerously Deranged, “you look like something chewed you up and shat you out. Wha’ happened?”
John waved a dismissive hand at Chas, then motioned for him to get into the taxi cab he’d previously been leaning against. “I’ll explain on the way, if I really have to. Do I have to, Chas?”
“I know, I know,” Chas said as the two men entered the vehicle, John in the back and Chas in the driver’s seat, “just shut up and drive, right? Fuck you too, mate.”
John sighed long and loud, throwing his head back against the cab’s seat. “Fine, just stop your complaining and start the motor. Back in the day, when I was a patient at wonderful ol’ Ravenscar, I met a bloke by the name of Gavin Janus that shot his load by drilling a great fucking hole in the center of his head. He got picked up by the filth for trying to ventilate another poor bird’s brain with said drill, he had the motivation but not the brains in his head to do it without getting caught.”
“Sounds like a proper arsehole,” Chas commented as he navigated through the streets of Ravenscar Village, making his way toward the A1 and back down to London.
“You could say that,” John said as he lit his Silk Cut and cracked the window of the taxi, the smoke sliding through as it was vacuumed out, “you could also say he was a sodding maniac. When he finally got put in Ravenscar, the powers that be decided to make him me roommate. I’d had so much ECT during that stay that I was drooling and moaning more than anything, so you can imagine the scintillating conversations that ol’ Gavin and I engaged in.”
“Lifestyles of the mad and barmy, mate,” Chas again commented, a wry smirk helping his case for alleviating the tense conversation.
Constantine sighed, the smoke exhaling from his mouth and nostrils lazily before being sucked out the window crevice. “I remember this sodding understudy that worked under Huntoon, some university fuckwit that had taken a shine to some of the real mad bastards in the place and couldn’t help but wank off his curiosity. He let Janus back into our padded cell without patting him down first, didn’t bother to check him for the sharpened spoon he’d smuggled back from commissary. Janus tried his level best to open up me third eye that night, gouged a pretty wicked fucking spot in me forehead before the orderlies were able to drag him off me. I was so out of me mind on Thorazine and insanity that I don’t think I put up much of a fight. Still, though, not a nice chap that Janus…”
“So you think he’s out there now,” Chas gulped, “pokin’ holes in noggins?”
“Only one way to find out, mate,” John said as he leaned forward, pointing his cigarette toward the windshield from between the seats, “wagons south, down to Croydon and into fucking mystery.”
“Janus is in Croydon?” Chas asked. “Sod that, no wonder he’s mad as arseholes.”
“Even worse than that,” John corrected, “we’re going to see his fucking mum…”
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cmunn
Aspiring Loser
Posts: 21
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Post by cmunn on Jan 21, 2019 14:51:05 GMT -5
Scene from Hellblazer # 3:
“The problem with you shadow people,” John said aloud to the empty room, pausing his statement to finish off his second bottle of Adnams single malt of the night, “is that you’re so bloody contrary.”
Constantine was pacing around his flat, which was little more than an under-furnished room on the fourth floor of a council building in Islington. It wasn’t quite midnight yet, still about twenty minutes before the chime, and John was preparing himself mentally and physically for what he was hoping to endure. His preparation was to make himself as drunk as humanly possibly whilst still retaining consciousness (if not his wits) while marking his floor around the shabby mattress in the center of the room with a circle of protection. Achieving this meant the aforementioned liquor combined with a healthy application of chalk and candle wax on the soles of his shoes. He’d been circling around the bed for nearly an hour, and though his feet ached he found the whiskey to be excellent at making him not care.
“Now,” John said as he fell back onto the mattress, face and toes up, “let’s give us some visitations and prophecy, won’t you lads? If you did it for Dalton, surely you’ll come give me some words as well.”
With that, he blew a gust of breath into his closed fist, then opened his hand. All light in the room extinguished with that motion, and John found himself waiting for the room to stop spinning and for sleep to overtake him. As he waited, he thought about all he’d heard over the years about shadow people and his belief that the stories were nothing more than fantasy created by sleep paralysis and tricks of the light. Sure, there could be powerful things hiding in shadows, but the stories that had been spread around had always sounded more like night terrors than actual terrors in the night.
Perhaps all those stories were true, though? Perhaps there really was a demonic or interdimensional force that produced these men made of inky blackness that only visited people in their sleep. Some liked to stand and silently watch, the perverts, while others liked to take a more active hand by attempting to strangle the life out of their victims. A rare number seemed to enjoy doling cryptic warnings about future events, but who knew why or which of them were responsible for the prognostication in the shadow people family hierarchy? For all his luck and knowledge, John could get a visit from the one dark bastard that just giggled and fondled himself in the corner.
Then, of course, there was the white whale of shadow people, the one they called the Hat Man. Not terribly original, given that his defining characteristic was that he wore a fedora hat and trenchcoat as accouterments to his nocturnal visitations, but for all intents and purposes the demonic haberdasher seemed to be the one calling the shots in that aforementioned shadow hierarchy. It was him that John hoped to snag, the one that Dalton confessed about while on his deathbed, but even in his drunken state he had the common sense to not really believe that he’d see any people, shadowy, hat stricken, or otherwise.
So, there he lay on the mattress, the room spinning around him as he searched the corners with bleary eyes. Raising his head was an impossibility, it simply came crashing back down onto the bed with an accompanying wave of nausea, so he had to just dart his eyes from spot to spot. Was that corner a little darker than the others? Did something just move by the closet? “Oi, come on out!”
Before his eyes, which were struggling to maintain focus, the shadows around the doorway to the flat began to swirl and coalesce. A figure slowly began to take shape, and as it approached the prostrate magician a few distinct features started to form. There was the fedora hat atop its head, and the lengthening of its sides that appeared to take the shape of a raincoat. It was him, the bloody Hat Man! The whites of his eyes flared to life and his features started becoming more and more distinct.
“John Constantine,” the shadow creature said as it strode through the room, “I had hoped to visit you under less auspicious circumstances, without need for dire confessions of knowledge.”
Hold on, John thought, that voice sounds right bloody familiar.
“I see upon this bed a man crushed under the weight of inebriation and inadequacy,” the shadow man said as he came ever closer, revealing his identity when the darkness faded just enough, “and I realize that, as always, I must remain to you a stranger…”
John laughed, unsure whether to be impressed or enraged as he struggled to sit up from the mattress. “You have to be fucking joking,” he said, “the Hat Man of the shadow people is the Phantom sodding Stranger?”
The Phantom Stranger was a being that was even more mysterious and shrouded in conflicting stories than the shadow people themselves, so it shouldn’t have come to much surprise that the two were connected. As John rolled this new information around in his brain, connecting dots that were so damned obvious after such a revelation, the Stranger raised his hand and sighed.
“I have no connection to the creatures you are attempting to contact,” the dark visitor stated, his voice a flat monotone with just the slightest hint of sadness, a detectable longing that hung on each syllable. “I am forbidden to intervene in the events of humanity, to them I am simply…a stranger. However, I cannot let pass your attempts to seek the knowledge of the dark, for the doorway to Hell stands open and I am disabused of any notion of introspection. So it must fall to you, John Constantine, to save this realm from the tortures of the night, to act as I cannot. You must be more than I can offer, for I am nothing more than…”
“Don’t say it,” John sighed, cradling his face in his hands.
“…a stranger.” The Phantom Stranger stood motionless, his blank eyes staring out like headlights
“Look, squire,” John said as he lit a cigarette, providing an illumination in the pitch-dark room, “I don’t speak cryptic arsehole, so can you maybe bring it down a level or so?”
The Stranger nodded. “You cannot contact the persons of shadow in this manner, John Constantine. They will not approach you without the appropriate amount of pain and strife, they sustain their hollow existence on suffering and conflict.”
“Still vague, mate,” John said, blowing a purposeful cloud of smoke in the Stranger’s direction. The haunting figure did not cough, nor show any sign of annoyance at the disrespect.
“Family strife,” the Phantom Stranger countered, “they thrive off the pain of families in turmoil and domestic dissolution. It is a concept that is foreign to me, I admit, for what know I of families when I have always been simply…”
“Yeah, a stranger, I get it,” Constantine said as he flicked his cigarette at his visitor, “passing out now, thanks for the hot tip, feel free to fuck right off.”
The Phantom Stranger stood in the room, his mouth pursed open as if a word had caught in his throat and was balanced precariously on his lips. As he began to fade away, allowing the callously tossed cigarette butt to fly through his immaterial form, his voice could be heard as a whisper carried softly through the air.
“…a straaaaaaanger…”
John rolled over on the mattress and considered carefully the Phantom Stranger’s advice. The guy was a wanker, sure, but that didn’t mean that what he had said shouldn’t be taken seriously. If the shadow people needed a family in conflict, Constantine pondered as he slipped out of consciousness and into a fitful sleep, he knew just where to find one.
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cmunn
Aspiring Loser
Posts: 21
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Post by cmunn on Mar 4, 2020 13:53:56 GMT -5
Hellblazer just released issue 6, and I'm currently working on issue 10. It's a nice feeling to be ahead of a series for the first time in my life. Thoughts from anyone on the series so far? I'm not a native of the UK, I'm American, so I'm constantly worried that my dialogue is making John sound like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins.
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Post by johncheese on Mar 4, 2020 15:56:07 GMT -5
I mean I live and work in the UK, some of the stuff is a little off, but as of yet it's not enough to detract from the story
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cmunn
Aspiring Loser
Posts: 21
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Post by cmunn on Mar 5, 2020 16:38:58 GMT -5
Thanks for the feedback John, glad I'm not mangling it up too badly!
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