Two Happy Returns

Today at First Age Comics in Lancaster, I learned of two "sudden and most strange returns" (to quote Hamlet):

after a Cosmic Convergence, the Superman of the (post-Crisis) DCU has been left stranded on the Earth of the (current) New 52;

Lucifer Morningstar has returned to Earth from the inter-cosmic Void.

Although DC superhero continuities make no sense, Lucifer's return could mean either Nothing or Something Big. Comic narratives of lasting value include the fantasy tetralogy:

Swamp Thing
John Constantine: Hellblazer
The Sandman
Lucifer

Will this new Lucifer monthly comic continue that legacy or not? How many fans will buy the monthly comic and how many will instead wait for it to be collected? - a practice that started with Watchmen but has since become standard.

The legacy of the Awesome Mage continues. He wrote Watchmen, the last Superman of Earth 1 story and The Killing Joke and his reconstruction of the Swamp Thing kick-started that fantasy tetralogy.

Swamp Thing And The Universe

Alan Moore's Swamp Thing explores the Terrestrial hereafters:

The Region of the Just Dead;
Heaven;
Hell;
the infinite Chaos beyond Hell;
the Original Darkness that was before the Creation rising from Chaos and advancing through Hell towards Heaven.

Next, he visits Gotham City.

Then, he travels through the universe:

exiled from Earth, he spends time on an uninhabited blue planet;

launching himself into space, he collides with the Zeta Beam routinely teleporting Adam Strange from Earth to the Centaurian planet, Rann, and lands on Rann, which is dying because of an earlier nuclear war;

Thanagarians plan to trade environmental technology stolen from the vegetable civilization on the planet J586 for the Rannian Zeta beam so that they can use the beam to conquer Earth;

a liquid animal from Minraud near J586 drowns one of the Thanagarians;

en route to J586, Swampy is trapped and raped by a planet-sized AI of a kind that wander through interstellar space, either meeting to procreate or eating spaceships that land on them;

J586 has a member of the Green Lantern Corps but has heard rumors of the decline of the Guardians of the Universe who appoint the Green Lanterns to defend specific space sectors;

after traveling from J586 to the Promethian Galaxy, Swampy meets Metron of the New Gods who tries, using Swampy as his vehicle, to enter the Source but succeeds only in discovering an Aleph, a point from which it is possible to observe all other points in space-time;

Swampy returns to Earth.

Gotham City In Alan Moore's Swamp Thing

Captain Jon Logerquist founded Gotham City in 1635.

The suburbs include Evanston with lawns and shrubs and Gotham Village with vacant lots.

The techno-belt includes Allied Metalurgical in Little Stockton.

Uptown is Gotham Park.

The business district with Gotham Stock Exchange is to the south.

West is Glendale, originally a separate town.

East are the slums of Bryanttown.

North are Charon, comprising a hospital and two cemeteries, and Sommerset with woodlands and Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane.

Transformations

When Alan Moore started to write Marvelman, later Miracleman, MM learned that all of his previous adventures had occurred inside a virtual reality.

When Moore started to write The Saga of the Swamp Thing, Swampy learned that he was not a man who had become a plant but a plant that thought that it had been a man.

In both cases, the entire basis of the series was completely transformed. And the transformations continued. MM's powers made him a benevolent global dictator, regarded as God. Swampy learned, thanks to John Constantine's intervention, that the passage of a man through fire and his transformation into a swamp plant is the first stage in the genesis of the next plant elemental, the guardian of the Terrestrial ecology. The elemental has powers that make him a nature god although Swampy had not suspected that he had such powers before he was written by Alan Moore.

MM changes the world. Swampy can change the world by transforming deserts into plains and forests but decides that it would be wrong to interfere in evolution in this way. The difference is that MM has his own continuity whereas Swampy must conform to DC Comics continuity where the pretense is that the world remains essentially unchanged despite the presence in it of powerful beings like Superman, other superheroes and the Swamp Thing.

In Watchmen, Doctor Manhattan and Ozymandias change the world because, although this group of characters began as the Charlton Comics superheroes who were incorporated into DC continuity, Moore was able to transform them into the Watchmen with their own continuity.

A Finite Series

Standard practice with a comic that sells well is to continue selling it indefinitely through multiple changes both of creative team and of plot direction, thus generating, over time, thousands of pages of ephemeral quantity at the expense of enduring quality. When Swamp Thing  was scheduled for cancellation, Alan Moore took over the writing, reinterpreted the title character from mud monster to plant elemental and transformed the series into a top-selling title.

When Moore had finished the story that he had to tell, he gave the characters a happy ending and it is easy to stop reading at that point. His entire run has been collected and thus saved from transience. Rick Veitch continued the series well but differently. However, it had its ups and downs after that, ending on a high point with Mark Millar but revived a few times since then.

Neil Gaiman initiated a new Sandman series and insisted on it ending when he had finished the story that he had to tell. However, it has had several off-shoots, notably Mike Carey's Lucifer, also collected in its entirety, and, in any case, continues to sell better as collected editions. Because The Sandman is a lengthy but finite series, it has a comprehensible structure that can be mentally mapped:

Preludes And Nocturnes (8 issues) + The Doll's House (8) + Dream Country (4) = 20 issues;
Season Of Mists (8) + (Distant Mirrors - "Ramadan" (3)) + A Game Of You (6) + Convergence (3) = 20;
Brief Lives (9) + "Ramadan" = 10;
Worlds' End (6) + The Kindly Ones (13) + The Wake (6) = 25;
Total = 75.

Waves Of Madness

In Swamp Thing, Volume 2, Love And Death (New York, 1990) by Alan Moore, the Swamp Thing's former adversary, Anton Arcane, escapes from Hell:

"The returned man chuckles...
"...and a shockwave of nightmare ripples out across the sleeping continent...
"..and in Lafayette, Jody Herbert comes across the wino passed out in an alleyway and Jody has a box of matches in his pocket and there's nobody else around...
"...and in Alexandria, Tina-Louise Pierce says 'The hell with it' and lifts the ancient iron frying pan that her husband is too cheap to replace..." (p. 57)

In The Sandman, Volume 1, Preludes & Nocturnes (New York, 1995) by Neil Gaiman, the Justice League of America's former adversary, Doctor Destiny, escapes from Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane:

"News at Six. Is everybody going crazy? Reports are coming in from across the state about a wave of madness, suicide and bad dreams..." (p. 169)

"Listen: you can hear the screaming.
"Three children are trapped in an elevator with Bobby-Joe McCann.
"Harold Smith prowls the dog's home, a tire iron clutched in his bloodied fist.
"Maude Carillon screams with laughter as the flame devours the geriatric ward.
"Listen." (p. 185)

In both cases:

a villain returns;
there is "...a shockwave of nightmare..." or "...a wave of...bad dreams...";

named individuals, not continuing characters but created for this single incident, commit acts of horrific violence.

Reading The Sandman reminded me of Swamp Thing so I checked back and made the comparison. Arcane brings supernatural power from Hell whereas Doctor Destiny wields a stolen dream-stone.

In Swamp Thing, in Arkham, Woodrue bangs his head on the door and Two Face has to be sedated but the scariest thing is when the Joker stops laughing (p. 68). In The Sandman, the Scarecrow asks the escaping Doctor Destiny to tell the Joker to hurry back because "It isn't April Fool's day without his little jokes..." (p. 135) and, during the confusion, "Mister Dent [Two Face] tried to strangle himself." (p. 208)

Thus, both Moore and Gaiman make creative use of established Batman villains.

The Importance Of Knowing Who Wrote A Comic

When I got back into reading DC Comics in the late 80's after the Crisis on Infinite Earths, I followed characters, not writers, let alone artists. I asked a fellow comics fan why he read something called Swamp Thing. He replied, "Don't judge it without having read it," to which I replied, "I am not judging it but deciding whether to read it." After all, I decide not to read Mills and Boon romantic novels without having read them and, not having read them, I do not make any judgements about whether they are good or bad romantic novels.

Alan Moore's Swamp Thing is undeniably worth reading but only because it goes far beyond the limits of its title. In fact, Moore's reinvention of the character could more accurately be re-entitled Plant Elemental. I kept hearing the name "Alan Moore." He was writing the best-selling Watchmen. He sometimes wrote in 2000 AD which was one reason why the Swamp Thing fan, who was doing a PhD in Mathematics, sometimes read 2000 AD - something else that I could not understand at the time.

When Alan (having met him, I think we can use first names), addressed Preston Speculative Fiction Society, he was asked, "Did the publishers place any restrictions on what you could write?" and he replied, "No. As long as it was about Swamp Thing, I could write whatever I wanted!"

I thought, "That doesn't leave you much scope," because I had not read it yet. What I had been reading was Miracleman so, when Alan said that Watchmen addressed the same theme of superheroes appearing in the real world, I remarked that I would definitely read that and Alan replied, "Yeah, check it out man!" And I still check it out sometimes to this day.

I told the Swamp Thing fan that he should definitely read the "last Superman story," "Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?" When I showed him my copy, the first thing he said was, "It's written by Alan Moore." I had not looked at the credits. So that is the true story of how I learned the importance of knowing who wrote a comic.

What Is Important Long Term

Perceptions At The Time

Very Important: The Crisis On Infinite Earths.
Less Important: The Swamp Thing/Crisis Crossover, dealing not with the main event but only with its spiritual consequences.

Very Important: Justice League of America becoming Justice League International.
Less Important: Morpheus visiting a JLI Embassy.

Longer Term

Swamp Thing led to The Sandman. Both are permanently in print and inspired the Vertigo Imprint. A page about pre-Crisis monitoring of super-beings is edited out of Swamp Thing reprints without detriment to the story.

The Crisis led not to a second fifty years of good individual DC Comics stories but to a pointless annual Company-wide crossover culminating in a mere twenty years with more continuity-changing Crises. The Justice League reverted to "of America" and the JLI is immortalised only in The Sandman.

Swamp Thing And Sandman

At Least Four Ways In Which The Sandman Follows On From Swamp Thing

(i) Cain and Abel appeared in Genesis, then hosted DC horror comics, then appeared in Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, then in The Sandman. Thus, although they did not originate in Swamp Thing, I think that their appearance in The Sandman follows directly from their roles in Swamp Thing.

(ii) John Constantine originated in Moore's Swamp Thing, then starred in The Sandman no 3, where he refers to the Swamp Thing as "...the big green bloke..." (Neil Gaiman, Preludes And Nocturnes, New York, p. 89).

(iii) In The Sandman no 4, Lucifer refers to the Swamp Thing/Crisis Crossover when:

"...the Dark, the shadow creature, came forth to challenge Heaven." (p. 116)

(Since the Dark, as Lucifer calls it, was in fact the Original Darkness That Was Before The Creation, I do not think that it is accurate to refer to it either as a "shadow" or as a "creature.")

(iv) The Bogeyman did not attend the Serial Killers' Convention in The Sandman because the Swamp Thing had killed him three years before. The Family Man did not attend because he was fighting Constantine in John Constantine: Hellblazer. The Corinthian, a nightmare who had escaped from the Dreaming during Morpheus' captivity and then inspired serial killers, did attend.

Episodic Adventures

In the "American Gothic" story line of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing (1985-'86), the title character plant elemental successively encounters several major horror fiction themes:

vampires;
a werewolf;
zombies;
a serial killer, "the bogeyman";
ghosts.

So far, unoriginal but there is a double point to this sequence:

first, the author creatively re-imagines each of these familiar ideas;

secondly, they build up to a horror beyond them all, in this case the conjuring of the Original Darkness that was before the Creation.

Poul Anderson had used the same technique thirty two years earlier in Three Hearts And Three Lions (London, 1977; first published, 1953). The hero of this novel successively fights:

an animated suit of armour;
a dragon;
a giant;
a werewolf;
what else? (I am still rereading.)

And these episodic battles build up to a major attack by Chaos on the Law of which our hero is the Defender.

(In Swamp Thing, the Darkness rises out of the Chaos beyond Hell and advances against the Light, even fomenting civil war between demons preferring the Devil they know and those welcoming ultimate darkness.)

I mentioned the dragon and the giant in "Magic And Science" on www.poulandersonappreciation.blogspot.co.uk. Anderson continues his scientific approach with the werewolf:

"...lycanthropy was probably inherited as a set of recessive genes." (p. 83)

Someone with a full set of genes will be killed as a wolf in the cradle.

"With an incomplete inheritance, the tendency to change was weaker." (p. 84)

A woods dwarf can follow the scent of a werebeast in its animal form:

"Holger wondered if glandular secretions were responsible." (pp. 86-87)

And, when the suspects have been reduced to four, Holger applies detective techniques to identify the shape-changer.

(By contrast, Alan Moore uses his werewolf story to raise some feminist issues.)

The New Golden Age

DC Comics immediately after the Crisis on Infinite Earths in the late 80's was in what I called, and still call, a New Golden Age. I got back into reading comics because I saw Green Lantern 200, Green Lantern Corps 201 and John Byrne's Superman on a magazine rack at Lancaster Bus Station. Fortunately, American comics were being distributed through British newsagents but, having started, it was then possible to go to an indoor market comics stall and to comics shops in other towns to buy back issues and order new titles.

Alan Moore was writing Swamp Thing and Watchmen. (Eclipse Comics were publishing his Miracleman. I was old enough to remember not only the Silver Age Green Lantern but also Mick Anglo's Marvelman.) Sandman started. Byrne had made Superman credible - but soon messed it up, bringing back Mxyzptlk, Lori Lemaris and (a version of) Supergirl. Marv Wolfman gave us the businessman Luthor who has survived all subsequent continuity changes. Roy Thomas wrote Infinity Inc and The Young All Stars, the latter an extended origin story.

All the monthly titles were renewed although the Batman titles did not live up to Frank Miller's Year One and Dark Knight. Miller's Batman, a masked vigilante, refers to the police as "the enemy." I said in a previous post that there was a Superman trilogy:

Moore's Man Of Tomorrow;
Byrne's Man Of Steel;
Hudnall's  Lex Luthor Unauthorized Biography;

 - and a Batman trilogy:

Miller's Year One;  
Moore's The Killing Joke;  
Miller's Dark Knight.

Some other works of the period deserve to stand alongside these trilogies:  

The Longbow Hunters miniseries;
the Hawkworld miniseries;
the Blackhawk miniseries;
Mindy Newell's Catwoman miniseries;
Byrne's World Of Krypton miniseries; 
Shaman (the first story arc in Legends Of The Dark Knight);  
Superman For Earth;  
Superman: Under A Yellow Sun.

Blackhawk was like: these are the real guys that we only read about in comic books before. The Blackhawk Squadron loses US funding because Janov Prohaska, "Major Blackhawk," was photographed beside a Communist Party member in the Spanish Civil War. While Janov goes on a binge, his men negotiate Anglo-Soviet funding. When told, Janov asks, "Why should Stalin fund us? He kicked me out of the Party as a Trotskyite!" This version of Blackhawk really is an ex-Communist! I could not believe that I had read that.

One of the Blackhawks, "Chop Chop," used to be drawn as a Chinese racial stereotype. Here, he is a regular guy who whispers, when introduced by his offensive nickname, "Janov, we will drop this 'Chop Chop' business or I will make your life hell!" Same characters, different world.

James Blish Compared With Graphic Novelists

In Black Easter by James Blish: 

the three superior demons, Satan, Beelzebuth and the Sabbath Goat, never appear;
however, the powerful black magician, Theron Ware, accepts a commission to release forty eight other major demons without restraint;
the demons initiate World War III;
Ware fails to recall them;
the Sabbath Goat does appear, is unaffected by an attempted exorcism and states that Ware has initiated Armageddon;
further, he claims that the demons are winning because God is dead.

That was meant to be a final conclusion but: 

the Goat said only that the demons were winning, not that they had won;
he may have been mistaken or lying;
demonic conjurations may have been the magicians’ hallucinations, although I will argue further against this last idea (see here).

In the later conceived sequel, The Day After Judgement: 

the Goat fails to return, as promised, for the magicians;
the world starts to recover from the nuclear exchange;
the white magician sees prima facie evidence for God’s continued existence;
the demon fortress Dis appears in Death Valley;
the Strategic Air Command attacks Dis and is destroyed;
Satan calls the magicians to Pandemonium;
he announces that, since evil is only opposition to goodness, he is now God but does not want the role so offers it to Man;
mankind begins a long development towards Godhood;
Satan/God undoes the effects of the nuclear exchange;
during his speech in Miltonic verse, Satan speculated that God had withdrawn, not died. ⁽¹⁾

Some graphic novelists (adult comic strip writers) address similar themes. 

In Last Days Of The Justice Society of America by Roy Thomas:

the Spear of Destiny has magical powers because it pierced Christ’s side on the Cross;
Hitler in his Bunker uses the Spear to conjure Ragnarok;
World War II superheroes merge with the gods;
they prevent cosmic destruction by re-fighting Ragnarok endlessly;
Ragnarok replaces Valhalla as a cyclical conflict. (2)

In Justice League: Paradise Lost by Mark Millar:

an angel enters the Palace of the Presence to challenge God;
however, the Palace is empty because God is in all things, not in one place. (3)

In Swamp Thing by Alan Moore:

male witches want to destroy Heaven;
so they conjure the Original Darkness that was before the Creation;
a dark tower emerges from Chaos and advances through Hell, fomenting demonic civil war;
the tower is then seen to be the index finger of an immense hand;
however, a hand of Light descends to clasp the hand of Darkness;
the Taoist symbol of interpenetration appears in the eye of the psychic witness to the supernatural events;
light and darkness, life and death, are interdependent;
no part of this polarity is “evil”;
the title character, a plant elemental, asks, “Where is evil in all the wood?”;
this question enables the Darkness to accept and merge with the Light after sweeping aside powerful spirits resisting it as evil.⁽³⁾

In Swamp Thing by Mark Millar:

the plant elemental acquires the powers of all the elements;
his daughter reverses the sound of the Word, cancelling the divine agent;
thus, the elemental becomes powerful enough to displace God and destroy mankind;
however, he realises that he has become vast enough to incorporate us. (3)

In John Constantine, Hellblazer by Jamie Delano:

John Constantine, a powerful magician, sabotages the Resurrection Crusade's attempt to prepare the woman Zed to be the new Mary;
a Masonic magician raises the masculine "God of all Gods" to facilitate Masonic regime change in Britain;
however, Constantine, Zed and Marj raise the anima which counterbalances the GOAG. (3)

In John Constantine, Hellblazer by Garth Ennis:

Constantine defies the demonic triumvirate;
then he sells his soul to each in turn;
if he dies, they will fight for his soul, thus dividing Hell and allowing angelic victory;
to prevent this, they cure Constantine’s lung cancer.⁽³⁾

In Sandman by Neil Gaiman:

Lucifer Morningstar tires of presiding over pointless anguish;
so he expels the demons and damned from Hell and retires;
however, Hell is a necessary counterpart to Heaven;
so a higher authority returns its inhabitants to Hell;
two angels are appointed to preside over pain that will now be neither pointless nor punitive but purgative;
the Endless - Destiny, Death, Dream etc - are anthropomorphic personifications of aspects of consciousness;
Despair of the Endless persuaded the star god Rao to destroy a planet but to let one inhabitant survive...
gods begin in Dream's realm, become temporarily independent and end in Death's;
thus, the Norse Aesir, the Japanese kami etc coexist with each other and with the Endless;
the cyclical Ragnarok (see above) is a simulation in a transparent sphere held by Odin;

^{Destruction of the Endless does not want to preside over nuclear war in yet another world;
so he abandons his realm;
however, he is the personification, not the process;
so the realm continues without him;
the Furies attack Dream's realm;
Dream enters Death's realm;
but ideas cannot be killed;
so Dream is replaced by another aspect of himself;
his death causes a reality storm affecting many times, realms and myths;
the storm strands travellers in the Inn of the Worlds' End.}

<sup>In Lucifer by Mike Carey: 

dangerous primal gods are reactivated; 
the angelic host hires the retired Lucifer to destroy them; 
he is paid with a "letter of passage," an exit from God's universe;
the angel Meleos had created the Basanos, living tarot cards;
the Basanos warn Lucifer that his Gateway to the Void will close behind him, denying re-entry to the universe;
but he seals it open with the divine name;
an agent of the Basanos prevents the jin-en-mok, survivors from a previous universe, from seizing the Gate;
Lucifer's wings, cut off at his request by Dream, had remained in Hell and were traded for souls by Remiel and Duma, the angels now ruling Hell;
needing wings to navigate the Void, Lucifer regains them from the Japanese hereafter;
he places a monster in the Void;
it destroys angels who try to claim the Void for Heaven;
the angel Sandalphon had tried to breed a new host to attack Heaven, using the captured Michael's wounded body as an incubator; 
the new host includes Elaine Belloc, British schoolgirl, Michael's daughter, God's granddaughter, Lucifer's niece;
by releasing Michael's energy in the Void, Lucifer creates a new universe;
the angel Amenadiel of the Thrones adopts the talking serpent role in Lucifer's universe;
he advocates asceticism because Lucifer has merely told his creatures to enjoy;
Lucifer welcomes immigrants through multiple Gates but forbids worship;
Meleos and Elaine help Lucifer against the Basanos who try to kill him and rule his universe;
a jin-en-mok kills Elaine;
Lucifer annihilates a previously unknown realm of the hereafter by passing through it to rescue Elaine;
he lets Elaine and her dead friend become presiding spirits in his universe;
Elaine leads a team to expel immortals who have migrated to Lucifer's universe;
the demoness Lys takes damned Christopher Rudd as her lover;
Rudd rises in demonic society;
Lucifer and Amanadiel duel in Hell;
God leaves;
his universe will disintegrate without him; 
Lucifer helps the host against giants trying to replace God;
Fenris Wolf tries to hasten cosmic disintegration;
he induces Lucifer to shed fratricidal blood, Michael's, above Yggdrasil;
Elaine absorbs Michael's energy;
with Lucifer's advice, she creates a third universe;
Rudd preaches unity in Hell;
Remiel and Duma relinquish power to him;
Rudd stops the infliction of pain and plans an attack on Heaven;
old powers destroy the angelic Silver City to prevent God from returning;
Lucifer had persuaded Rudd to lead demons and damned in defense of the City;
Rudd fights Fenris on the steps of the Primum Mobile;
God lets Elaine and Lilith debate whether his universe should be uncreated;
at Lucifer's suggestion, God gives the decision to Elaine;
by combining the three universes, she prevents cosmic disintegration;
becoming God, she abolishes Hell;
by coupling with Lucifer, the Japanese goddess Izanami becomes the new Adversary;
Lucifer transfers his lightbringer role to his former companion, Mazikeen of the Lilim;
Elaine hires fallen cherubim to neutralize Remiel, now resisting her from the remnants of former hereafters;
God and Lucifer meet and part unreconciled in the Void;
Lucifer flies into the Void. (3)</sup>

Because Milton believed that sin caused death, he personified Death as a shapeless monster, begotten on Sin by her parent, Satan.
Because Gaiman believes that death defines life, he personifies Death as a perpetually young woman created by the universe.
Like John Keats, Gaiman’s readers are “…half in love with easeful Death…” but with better reason. We have seen her.

Constantine helped the elemental and Dream.
An anti-material attack on the multiverse initiated the Ragnarok and Darkness conjurations and a revised superheroes history.
Decades of interconnected story lines approach real life in complexity.

Conclusion

Graphic novelists, as imaginative as prose fantasists, can end the world but continue the series, as Blish did in Black Easter and The Day After Judgement.

1. James Blish, Black Easter and The Day After Judgement (London: Arrow Books, 1981).
2. Roy Thomas, Last Days Of The Justice Society Of America (New York: DC Comics Inc, 1986).
3. Swamp Thing, Justice League, Hellblazer, Sandman and Lucifer are or were monthly periodicals from DC Comics who also publish well-known superheroes and allow all their characters to interact. In Moore’s Swamp Thing: Gotham City Police, rounding up suspected prostitutes, arrest the elemental’s girl friend, then detain her because she had earlier been photographed embracing a humanoid vegetable and charged with “crimes against nature”; Swampy attacks the city and its vigilante; able to leave his body, grow another and accelerate plant growth, he seems indestructible so a covert Government agency consults Lex Luthor, an expert in the attempted killing of an indestructible being. Thus, the covert agency is unconcerned that an industrialist is trying to kill Superman. Characters familiar from childhood are presented anew from an adult perspective. They must have been like this all along but we did not realize it before. At Dream's Wake, we learn that Clark Kent and the Gotham City vigilante, though not a lesser known character, dream of being actors in TV versions of their lives. In case anyone does not know, the destroyed planet in the Rao system was Krypton and its survivor was Kal-El who has other names on Earth.
   DC has also collected Moore’s Swamp Thing, Gaiman’s Sandman, Carey's Lucifer and the multi-authored John Constantine, Hellblazer as four series of graphic novels.