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'He's An Emotionally And Socially Conscious Character' – Ming Doyle Talks Constantine: The Hellblazer At Boston Comic Con

Published Thu, 06 Aug 2015 15:00:30 -0500

By Octavio Karbank

I've attended Boston Comic Con for a number of years now. I remember when it was in some hotel's basement, before finally moving on to larger venues due to increased popularity. Along the way, comic book writers and artists, and even movie and TV celebrities, have also begun making the pilgrimage to Boston Comic Con, raising the Con's reputation and popularity all the more. This past weekend I had the opportunity to sit alongside DC Comics' writer and artist Ming Doyle, as she sketched out a couple commissions, and ask her about the new series she, and James Tynion IV, are working on. Namely, Constantine: The Hellblazer.

Octavio Karbank: With Constantine, what attracted you to the character initially?

Ming Doyle: I mean, obviously I like the classic comics a lot, but I'm not gonna lie, I did also enjoy the Keanu Reeves movie that came out in 2005. I think it got an almost undeservedly harsh rep. Not to anger comic's fans, but I've read a ton of Hellblazer as well. I've always enjoyed the supernatural genre and a character like Constantine is a great conduit to access pretty much any corner of the supernatural that you want to go to. The possibilities with him are pretty endless. He's also really an emotional and socially conscious character, because with Constantine you can talk about feelings a lot more than I think you can with some more traditional superheroes.

OK: Great answer! Secondly, what does John Constantine mean to you and what do you think he represents to his fans? Why do you think people love him as much as they do?

MD: It's always the allure of danger and wanting what you can't, or know you shouldn't have, for some people, because John Constantine is a bad idea; it's a bad idea to hang around him or associate with him. I think a lot of people take that as a challenge and say, "I'm going to love him, he's a bad guy, I'm going to get in there even deeper!" But what does he mean to me? I don't want to say he's the more tender or vulnerable side of human nature, but I think he's the more fallible side. When you create a character like Superman, and even Batman in a lot of ways, you can go through troubles and strife, but you can also explore the triumph of the human spirit.

With a character like John, you're just wallowing in the failure of the human spirit sometimes. I think that's something that everyone can relate to in some way. That's not to say he's an evil person, or anything, but he definitely…he's not infallible, he gets into bad situations, and sometimes he makes a call that's a shitty call to make even. He sometimes even has a choice not to make that call, but he has his own reasons, and he does things for his own needs and people find that refreshing. He's kind of the guy who could do what everyone wishes they could do sometimes; he kind of asserts himself and doesn't worry about all the bollocks.

OK: How do you balance negotiating between making John Constantine your own, and also honoring everything that's come before?

MD: (chuckles) I mean, I do co-write this with James.

OK: His writing is fantastic!

MD: Yeah, he's amazing and so creative and he's always thinking about all these different things. That's something that he and I are really conscious of. We've both read two to five thousand pages of classic Hellblazer before we settled in to write our own take. We were told to do whatever we wanted and to treat Constantine however we wanted, but we knew we didn't want to dishonor him or forget about all the things that he'd been through. We're very conscious of his past, and our take on him…it's not necessarily somebody that didn't exist.

I like to think he exists in such a way that if you have an affinity for a particular old Hellblazer story, whether or not it happened or didn't happen in this new continuity, I'd like to think you can still enjoy that story and access and enjoy our take on John as well. It's not so different from somebody like Batman with a seventy-year history. His canon changes, what happens to Bruce, changes in his age, all that stuff. I hope the core that we're representing is something that still resonates with fans, because it resonated for me.

OK: Let's talk about his sexuality and how it's depicted in Constantine: The Hellblazer.

MD: I love it! A lot of people I know did think that we hit it too heavy. They didn't like the fact that we were talking about his sexuality, when before it had never really been mentioned. To me, and to James, it was important. Visibility matters. Before it might have been a throw away line like, "Oh yeah, I shagged a couple blokes", or "I used to have a thing", and he has been shown to be in sexual relationships with men before, but it was usually for a plot reason. That's not to say it's not going to be for a plot reason or it's not part of a plot now, but we just wanted to show it in a natural, incidental way. It's weird, because I feel like people are saying, "They're really hitting us over the head with his sexuality," and it's more like, no, he just thought a guy was cute in a restaurant. To me it's a pretty natural thing. He thinks plenty of girls are cute too. We just wanted to show that's it's part of who he is and not this weird side tangent when he has to be in some BDSM relationship with a Bruce Wayne analog. In summation, it's not a big deal. He's a human being.

OK: Are there any Easter Eggs people should be looking for when they read Constantine?

MD: No, no, I'm not Christopher Nolan. I don't have repetition of themes. I mean, we do fun things, like John's a music man, so sometimes there'll be flyers downstairs of Black Canary's music band. We just try to slip in cute little stuff like that. There's nothing really important plot wise, just little Easter Eggs sometimes. Like with our Assistant Editor, Amadeo Turturro, I know that in issue two John is doing a walk around of New York to all the Thin Places, where there's lots of magic, and he pops into a creepy store that's based on Obscura Antiques and it's called Amadeo's Oddities and I might have a butcher's shop called Ming's Butcher's Shop somewhere. Just cute stuff. I like cute things.

OK: Now for a heavier question: as both an artist and a writer, what does the art of storytelling mean to you?

MD: That's something I'm still defining. I'm a brand new writer pretty much. I've written on and off for the past eight years, but it's building a mood, I guess. To me it's good to have an interesting story. It's good to have a gripping plot and characters that you identify with. I really like the mood and the mise en scene more than anything a lot of times. That's what I like about movies; I like being transported to another world and just feeling like part of something that's different from where I am in my normal life. I hope that when people read stories that I'm involved in, that for a moment they feel immersed, or at least interested enough in that world, that that's all they think about for a while and they can just turn their brain off and just feel.

OK: What would you recommend for people to read alongside Constantine as an accompanying piece while they wait for the next issue to come out?

MD: Oh, good question! I guess a book on manners and how to be a gentleman to counteract all the terribleness we're teaching you! But in all seriousness, I don't know. It just makes me think of what John's recommended reading would be. Maybe The Odyssey and Dante's Inferno. Dante's Inferno is straight on for the conception of how when he's going through the Inferno in issue number one. That's very interesting. Also The Odyssey, just because you can go on a twisty, turny journey with lots of monsters. Any kind of big quest like that has a very simple emotional core. The Odyssey is all just about one many wanting to get back home to his family. John's life, even though it's got a lot of set dressing, ultimately is about a very simple, emotional quest for him and I think discerning readers will know what that quest is.

OK: Which leads to my follow-up question! What comics are you reading and what would you recommend to people?

MD: Well, I'm reading Howard the Duck. I love it! It's so laugh-out-loud hilarious and adorable. I'm also reading Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, which is super cute. Some really light-hearted stuff to counteract the darkness of what I'm writing! Not that Constantine is humorless, because we do have some humor there, but those are just two really sweet adorable books right now. I'm loving a lot of the new DC books that have come out. Specifically, Midnighter has been really cool, super, super cool. I've been meaning to get into Grayson, I haven't caught up with that, but it looks very interesting to me. The new Black Canary and Batgirl are so rock n' roll! We're very spoiled for choice right now. There are so many great things; I haven't been this excited for years! There's so much great stuff. We didn't even talk about Image or Boom, but everything! Just read it all!

OK: Final question: Do you think you'd get along with your version of Constantine and if you spent a day together what do you think would happen?

MD: Hell, no! He would offend me in ten seconds! I don't think we'd spend a day together! I think I would leave him immediately! When I'm writing John…every unfortunate interaction I've had with a guy who comes on too strong and turns me off and really scares me, I kind of funnel into him. Then I get to fantasize about if it was me and I had the power, what kind of an asshole would I have to be to act like that to someone? Somehow I also make it appealing to people, but I would not want to hang out with him. Not at all! He'd be funny, if he walked by and I overheard something he said I would laugh, but I would not want to spend any time with him. And because I want to live.

OK: Cool! Thank you very much!

MD: Thank you! See you around!

Octavio Karbank is a writer and bona fide Whovian. Living in Massachusetts, you can find him on Twitter @TymeHunter and his blog www.cozmicventures.com

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