John Constantine: Hellblazer #1 Poster FRAMED (1988) by Dave McKean

Description

You are purchasing the item pictured, framed. Priority mail, tracking and $50 insurance is included with purchase. Item will be bagged to protect from dust, packed in packing peanuts and boxed. Just open box and hang it on the wall…makes a perfect gift!

Alan Moore’s “blue collar warlock” John Constantine began life as a background character in Saga of the Swamp Thing, but the cocky con-man-cum-magus proved too popular to remain confined to someone else’s book. In 1988, he was awarded his own series, originally to be called Hellraiser (and changed to avoid confusion with the horror movie). The new nickname would prove apt for a character conceived as blazing a trail between realms of Heaven and Hell. The cover artist for the first twenty-one issues of Jogn Constantine: Hellblazer was Briton Dave McKean, whose spectral, distorted nightmare visions were executed using the distinctive painted and collage techniques he would later perfect on Sandman. While many fans see a resemblance to Sting in Hellblazer’s leathery visage, McKean modeled his Constantine on his friend Neil Jones. “I have an idea that most of the mystics in comics are generally older people, very austere, very proper, very middle-class in a lot of ways. They are not at all functional on the street. It struck me that it might be interesting for once to do an almost blue-collar warlock. Somebody who was streetwise, working-class, and from a different background than the standard run of comic book mystics. Constantine started to grow out of that.” – Alan Moore. Hellblazer (also known as John Constantine, Hellblazer) was a contemporary horror comic book series, originally published by DC Comics, and subsequently by the Vertigo imprint since March 1993, when the imprint was introduced. Its central character was the streetwise magician John Constantine, who was created by Alan Moore, Steve Bissette and Jamie Delano, and first appeared as a supporting character in The Saga of the Swamp Thing #37 (June 1985), during that creative team’s run on that title. Hellblazer had been published continuously since January 1988, and was Vertigo’s longest running title, the only remaining publication from the imprint’s launch. In 2013, the series concluded with issue 300, and has been replaced by a DC Universe title, Constantine. After favorable reader reaction to John Constantine’s appearances in the comic book series Swamp Thing, where he had been introduced by Alan Moore during his authorship of the title, the character was given his own comic book series in 1988. The series was intended to bear the title Hellraiser, but this title was revised before publication due to the contemporaneous release of Clive Barker’s unrelated film of the same name. Initial writer Jamie Delano was, in his own words, “fairly ambivalent” about the change of title. The initial creative team was writer Jamie Delano and artist John Ridgway, with Dave McKean supplying distinctive painted and collage covers. Delano introduced a political aspect to the character, about which he stated: “…generally I was interested in commenting on 1980s Britain. That was where I was living, it was shit, and I wanted to tell everybody.” In 2005 Constantine was released, a feature film that did not use the same title as the comic book, in order to avoid confusion with the Hellraiser horror franchise. The only links to the character of John Constantine were the name and a plotline loosely based on the “Dangerous Habits” story arc (Hellblazer #41–46). DC Comics announced a sequel to the 2005 Constantine movie was in the works, with producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura linked to the project. He stated: “I’d love to do it…We want to do a hard, R-rated version of it. We’re going to scale back the size of the movie to try and persuade the studio to go ahead and make a tough version of it.” In September 2010, Warner Brothers commissioned a sequel script from Frank Cappello, one of the original Constantine’s two credited writers. The story is said to be an original idea from Cappello and does not draw from any previous published Hellblazer stories. The screenplay’s tag line is “Through the Eye of The Needle”. In late 2012, director Guillermo del Toro publicly discussed the notion of creating a film that would star John Constantine alongside other DC/Vertigo characters such as Zatanna, Swamp Thing, and more. David McKean (born 29 December 1963 in Maidenhead, Berkshire) is an English illustrator, photographer, comic book artist, graphic designer, filmmaker and musician. His work incorporates drawing, painting, photography, collage, found objects, digital art and sculpture. McKean’s most recent projects are directing an original feature called Luna, and a book with the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. After a trip to New York in 1986 during which he failed to find work as a comics artist, McKean met writer Neil Gaiman, and the pair collaborated on a short graphic novel of disturbing childhood memories, Violent Cases, published in 1987. This was followed in 1988 by a Black Orchid miniseries (again with Gaiman) and Hellblazer covers for DC Comics. In 1989, he illustrated the Batman graphic novel, Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, with writer Grant Morrison. His work during this period was often compared to that of Bill Sienkiewicz. From 1989–1996 McKean produced the covers for Gaiman’s celebrated series The Sandman, all its collected editions, and many of its spin-offs. Further collaborations with Gaiman produced the graphic novels Signal to Noise in 1992 (previously serialized in The Face magazine), about a dying filmmaker and his hypothetical last film; and Mr. Punch, which explored similar themes as Violent Cases through the imagery of the Punch and Judy show.