I walk my path alone... who would walk with me?

Hellblazer (1988-2013) is a comic book series by various authors and artists, based on the character of John Constantine, a magician-cum-conman created by Alan Moore for his run on Swamp Thing.

See also:

Constantine (2005 film adaptation)

Issue 3, Going for It by Jamie Delano

John: [Thinking] I've never bothered with the cats for this ritual - too hard to catch, and they shriek like fury when you impale them. Anyway, all that messing about with rotten corpses and pain stuff is just to impress the marks - all you really need are the right contacts and a bit of nerve.

John: [Aloud] Wake up Blathoxi, you bladder of bile. It's me, John Constantine. I want a word with you. C'mon, you pus-sac. Don't keep me waiting. I'm calling in your marker, now.

[A demon dressed as a butler appears]

John: Who the hell are you? I called for the lord of flatulence, not one of his discharges.

Steward: In Hell I am the steward of the club wherein the Lord Blathoxi takes his ease. He commands me to inform you that your ritual was incompetent and insulting. You should have used the cats!

First Demon: I think we're going to have to skin him and tan his hide.

Second Demon: Good, I need some new seat-covers for the BMW.

Issue 41, Dangerous Habits, Part 1: The Beginning of the End by Garth Ennis

John: I'm the one who steps from the shadows, all trenchcoat and cigarette and arrogance, ready to deal with the madness. Oh, I've got it all sewn up. I can save you. If it takes the last drop of your blood, I'll drive your demons away. I'll kick them in the bollocks and spit on them when they're down and then I'll be gone back into darkness, leaving only a nod and a wink and a wisecrack. I walk my path alone... who would walk with me?

John: Few people really think about dying... paranoids worry about it without really understanding it. Victims of fatal accidents and murder don't have time to think. You only really think about it if you take the time to. And you only take the time if you know it's going to happen.

Issue 44, Dangerous Habits, Part 4: My Way by Garth Ennis

John: All I ever wanted was for the world to be free of your kind, whether you were here in Parliament on in senate or junta or Hell or Heaven. Maybe that's pointless, then. Maybe the people are too small and scared to be free. Maybe they want you there, shitting all over them. But like a salesman who's only too eager to sew up his market and stitch up his customers, you're happy enough to exploit that. Aw, sod it. Sod you. For whatever it's worth, you were always the enemy. So you can listen to what I have to say. Matt was right. I'm not ashamed. I'm not ashamed.

Issue 50, Remarkable Lives by Garth Ennis

King of Vampires: You seem very sure of yourself, you little mortal bastard, so I'll tell you what.... If you can tell me why your ordinary, piss-boring life is better than mine, you can walk out of here alive. If you can't, I'll cut your throat and drink my fill and leave you half alive forever.

John: Easy. Can you go for a walk in the park and hear the birds sing in the morning? Can you kiss a girl and know she loves you? Can you go out and get pissed with your mates? I can. And just so we're sure who's better off, why don't we sit here together and watch the sun come up in an hour or so?

Issue 76, Confessions of an Irish Rebel by Garth Ennis

John: [on Dublin] There's something about a town where nothing gets done 'cos they're all in the boozer talking about the best way to do it.

John: What was dying like?

Brendan: Could've done it in me sleep.

John: You did.

Brendan: There yeh are, then.

John: Tell you who else is dead, came as a complete surprise: Terry Butcher. Header did him in.

Brendan: Oh? I'd heard he ended up in a pie. D'yeh remember the time he lost his head wi' me? 'Cause I laughed at his idea for the book about the serial killer?

John: Was that "The Noise of the Sheep?"

Brendan: I tried to tell him, but what can yeh do?

Issue 78, Rake at the Gates of Hell Part 1 by Garth Ennis

John: Christ, I hope she's strong enough. After this it starts getting nasty.

Issue 79, Rake at the Gates of Hell Part 2 by Garth Ennis

John: It's just the way of it, son. We all sell our souls sooner or later.

Issue 81, Rake at the Gates of Hell Part 4 by Garth Ennis

John: Now I'm just like the bastards I've hated all me life.

John: You're not getting the bloody bible out are you?

Father Kellaway: Yes, I am. I think you need it.

John: Got all the bog roll I need.

Father Kellaway: This is the word of god!

John: The edited word of God. Your mob had that little book locked away in Rome for a thousand years, Father. D'you know how much they chopped out? Changed? Made up?

Father Kellaway: They were Holy Men

John: They were wankers. They screwed everything that moved, killed anyone who messed them about and fed off the suckers they preached to... What would've stopped them doing a quick re-write on that thing?

Father Kellaway: I don't know what you think gives you the right to pass judgement on the Catholic Church.

John: First Priest I ever met tried to cut my dick off with a razor blade. That do it?

Father Kellaway: ... What's that got to do with rewriting the scriptures?

John: And they couldn't even do it properly, could they? Ever wondered why he's a god of Vengeance in the Old Testament and Love in the new one? Why An eye for an eye becomes Turn the other cheek

Father Kellaway: But...

John: Shut up for a minute, will you? And what about the end of it? "Love me or you'll burn in hell!" That sounds like a spoilt kid!

Father Kellaway: It isn't for us to judge...

John: I said SHUT UP! I'll Judge! I'll judge whatever I soddin' well want! That's all the pricks've left me!

Father Kellaway: Who?

John: THE PRICKS WITH THE POWER! I tell you what, Father, the next time you're talking to your lord - You tell him from me, right, you tell him Constantine won't give in. You tell him no matter how bad or sad it gets, how much it falls to bits on me. How many holes there are in me worthless soddin' life... [Grips Kellaway's Bible] I'll never plug 'em with this Bollocks!

Issue 82, Rake at the Gates of Hell Part 5 by Garth Ennis

John:You came back to find me: here I am. Whatever you want to do, wherever you want to go, just say the word and I'll do it. You want me to leave London and give up magic and even knock off the soddin' Silk Cut, no problem. Anything . Anything at all. I'm yours.

Kit: I'm sorry...

John: No. I don't want it. I don't want sorry, I don't want just friends, it's just bollocks that's what it is!

Issue 83, The End of Rake at the Gates of Hell by Garth Ennis

[John, dying of lung cancer, coughs up blood while the First of the Fallen stands over him and gloats]

The First of the Fallen: The air pressure alters and the air fills up with artichokes/A smell of piss and sodium, a noise like bitches twisting inwards, caught and left for carrion/(Razorlight, Razorlight)/And/I/Fall.

John: What the fuh- hch-- What are you on about?

The First of the Fallen: It's your friend's poetry. The twenty-nine-year-old teenage rebel. Execrable, isn't it? How does a bitch twist inwards? And is it only me, or do poems that don't rhyme reflect a fundamental lack of effort?

[Hugging Helen goodbye]

John: When I let her go, it felt like life itself was slipping through me fingers.

Issue 129, Son of Man, Part 1 by Garth Ennis

John: We are not children of celestial fuckin' light, walkin' arm-in-arm into the Age of Aquarius. We are wankers who wreck the planet an' piss on each other, 'til half the world's starvin' an' the other half's busy findin' new ways to keep from noticin' it. That's the fuckin' limit've our potential, believe me.

[On hating children]

John: I know, I know. "You were one once." I was a sperm once, but you don't see me wantin' to cuddle up to a fuckin' wankstain, do you?

Issue 130, Son of Man, Part 2 by Garth Ennis

Church Congregation: Satan! I'm worshipping Satan!/'Cause Satan has the things I adore.../Satan! I'm worshipping Satan!/'Cause Satan keeps me stocked with drugs and whores!

Mrs Potter: How are we supposed to worship alongside these-- these perverts? These practitioners of the black arts? This is blasphemy!

Rick the Vic: Mrs Potter, that's what the church of the blessed reconciliation is all about... How can we expect our dear lord god to welcome his fallen angel back into the fold, to love the unlovable-- if we ourselves turn our Satanic bretheren away from our door? Please, Mrs Potter. In the name of universal peace: share your hymnbook with Lord Gorgamoth Scumflagon.

Brendan: What in the name've Jaysis is he doin' this for?

John: Bet with the Pope.

Issue 132, Son of Man, Part 4 by Garth Ennis

John: Some soddin' possessed brat's about to rip this town apart an' God knows what else an' all of a sudden big bleedin' expert Chas Chandler turns into a fuckin' necromancer? Do me a favour...!

Chas: 'Least I know how to drive a cab.

John: Gettin' pretty fuckin' lippy in your old age, aren't you?

Issue 133, Son of Man, Part 5 by Garth Ennis

Fuckpig: You belong here, don't you, Constantine? This is your world. Eyelids slit off and babies on hooks. Guttings and rapings. I swear to fuck, yours is the kind of life serial killers wank off to.

Issue 134, Haunted, Part 1 by Warren Ellis

Detective Inspector Watford: [On seeing a boy inhaling from an aerosol] I had one like 'im the other day. Little girl. She did five cans of that. Froze her lungs solid. Nine years old.

John: Hello, Watford. Life in the police still a little ray of sunshine every day, is it?

Detective Inspector Watford: Never been a better time to be a copper, John. Thought we'd miss a Tory government something chronic, you know? But this new lot: "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime." Great stuff. Things get worse every bleedin' day. It's like Maggie never left office. Lovely jubbly.

Clarice: John, I've known you a long time. I know you. I've known what you are since I went down on you in Highgate Cemetery when you were twenty-four years old. You're an adrenaline junkie. Don't turn some poor dead girl into today's fix. She can't deserve that.

Issue 138, Haunted, Part 5 by Warren Ellis

Clarice: Talk to me, John.

John: Dead girlfriends, Clarice.

Clarice: Ah. Your favourite drug.

John: And magic.

Clarice: Your favourite fuck.

Issue 139, Haunted, Part 6 by Warren Ellis

John: My name's John Constantine, and here I stay: haunted by London. And London, haunted by me.

Issue 143, Telling Tales by Warren Ellis

Man: I got into a fight with this bloke last night. Didn't like the way her was looking at me girlfriend, know what I mean? Weird fucker, he was, all covered in tattoos and shit. And, you know, I was a bit lagered up, know what I mean? He hit me. Here. And his hand was all twisted up when he did it, and he was laughing. So I go to the bog this morning, and... well, I've got it in the bag here. I think I shat out me own heart.

Issue 175, High on Life, Part 1 by Mike Carey

Angie: I'm into [magic] meself. I can probably help you.

John: Okay. So who are the big players locally? If I want my wife's toy boy to start shitting razorblades, who do I go to?

Angie: Oh, for fuck's sake!

John: What about zombies? Say I want to shag one, or rent a few to work someone over. Or I'm desperate to score a pint or so of baby blood. Where's the best place to buy?

Angie: Is that the lot, or is there more after the adverts?

John: I'm just making a point, love. Magic's a nasty game. Go and play with your dad's chainsaw instead.

Issue 176, High on Life, Part 2 by Mike Carey

Detective Inspector Watford: It's half past three in the sodding ante meridian. Whoever you are, your organs of generation are in hanging in the balance. Speak.

John: You couldn't find a balance big enough for my balls, Watford. Are you ready to play "Inspector Fuckwit Investigates"?

Detective Inspector Watford: Constantine, Interpol has got you down as dead. If you're looking for directions, move towards the light.

John: Can't, your fat arse is blocking the view.

Issue 177, Red Sepulchre, Part 1 by Mike Carey

John: I've already blown my cover, so I may as well drop my pants and bugger it properly.

Issue 182, Black Flowers Part 1 by Mike Carey

Slimy Demon: I am the emissary of King Arawn Pen Annuvin, who wishes you health and plenty.

John: Plenty of what? Mucus on my duvet?

Issue 186, Third Worlds, Part 3: The Pit by Mike Carey

Angie: You're going to stoke up on magic mushrooms and talk to ghosts?

John: I'm going to take a dream walk. Find some of the locals and have a chat. This is a quick and easy way to get started.

[Later]

Angie: And this is all historically authentic, is it? The torches? the mushrooms? The stripping down to your y-fronts?

John: I told you, they died out. And they didn't have a written language. This just-- just felt--

Angie: A) Pretentious. B) Stupid. C) A good excuse to get naked. Jesus wept!

Issue 194, Ward 24 by Mike Carey

Peter Gill: Thank Christ I can put this thing away now. I hate guns. Killing someone with a gun-- that's like shagging with a rubber on.

Issue 213, The Gift by Mike Carey

John: My talent's for lying. For sticking the knife in when people least expect it. Then walking away with a smile and a wave before they even realize they're bleeding.

Issue 214, R.S.V.P. Part 1 by Mike Carey

John: Four o'clock and it's already getting dark. Solstice only a few days away. Winter magic, where we kill and eat the sun to give us strength to make it through the cold. Only it feels like it's already dead.

John has been handed an invitation to a magician's ball.

John: Well I'm just lost for words, mate. Overwhelmed, that's the only word for it. I mean, two hundred generations of bearded old geezers have used magic as a tool for unlocking the mysteries of creation. Breaching the walls of life and death. Stuff like that. But fuck them if they can't take a joke, right? It's time we all put our glad rags on and had a good old knees up. A verbal answer? I'd rather have my guts drawn out with hooks than waste an evening with a shower of chinless fuckwits like you.

Etheridge: That's-- I'm-- I find that really disappointing, John.

John: I don't know where it comes from, this impulse to set everything by. To save it up. As if the past doesn't die unless you give in and fucking bury it. Or as if you can read your own past, like runes. But the past is another country, and there's razor wire along the border and machine-gun nests every fifty yards.

Issue 215, R.S.V.P. Part 2 by Mike Carey

John: So. Magic. What's it all about, then? I wonder what you were after when you go into the game. It's usually something. Something specific that you think is worth taking risks for. Money. Sex. Revenge. Power. Enlightenment. Thinner thighs in thirty days. It's a long time ago for most of you, I know. Maybe you don't remember. Fuck, maybe you don't even want to. But I'll tell you something for free. At rock bottom, it's always about the same thing. It's always about entropy. The Universe is winding down. Things fall apart. The moving finger writes, and what it writes is "Tough shit." You can't get something for nothing. Like God said to Adam when he kicked him out of the garden, "Now you've got to work for a living." If there ever was a free lunch, it ended right there. So we push and we pull and we sweat. Putting in a shit-load of energy to get a little back. Third Law of Thermodynamics, right? The one we all love to hate. Cheers. But with magic, it's different. Or it could be. Case in point -- this fine old plonk. How did it get here? Grapes had to ripen. Peasants had to toil. Some plucky kid in Marks and Sparks had to zip a long the aisles with his pricing gun. Lots of effort. Lots of energy. And once it's gone, it's gone. When things fall apart -- they do not put themselves back together again. But if you ask a demon to bring you some wine -- or jiffy some up with a spell -- well, you're cheating the taxman, aren't you? It comes for free. No grapes. No peasants. No entropy. So here we all are, then. Chasing the earthly paradise. Trying to sneak back into Eden through the back door, because work is for mug punters. You stupid arrogant little shits. We're not playing fire, -- here we're playing with napalm. There's a war on and we're whoring with the enemy for pennies. Innocent people die when we fuck up. And we fuck up all the time. Oh, don't get me wrong. Eden's a nice place. I was there a few months back. Left a piece of myself buried in the ground there, for reasons I won't go into. So I can tell you, God hates our kind most especially. The cheats. The hellblazers. The collaborators. Look -- this is what Heaven has to say to the likes of us.

Clarice: They'll never forgive you. As long as you live, no magician in the world will ever lift a finger to help you again.

John: London isn't the world, Clarice. It just thinks it is. You people need to fucking well get over yourselves. I like to think I've helped.

Clarice: You showed them their death. You showed them how small they are.

John: Yeah. Total perspective vortex, that's me. They should give me a vote of fucking thanks. After all, there's no point in kidding yourself, is there? That way madness lies.

John: All my best mates. Just like old times, eh? Because the old times were never less than fucking terrifying. I don't know if they're an honor guard or a jury. Probably both. So I walk down the avenue they've left between them, past Frank, Ben, Judith. Looking them all in the eye, one at a time. Because you can't smack a roomful of people in the face with their own mortality and then hide under the bedclothes when Death comes calling on you.

John: It's coming on to rain, with perfect timing. The first drops running down my face so that from a distance you could mistake them for tears. Don't you believe it, mate. Don't you fucking believe it.

Issue 232, Wheels of Chance, Systems of Control, Part 1 of 2 by Andy Diggle

John: (internal) The old place still smells the same, that's the wierdest part. Beneath the new carpets and the fancy wallpaper, the gloss paint and velvet drapes-- --the lingering taint of blood and sweat, piss and shit. The tang of human fear. Takes me right back, it does. I never expected to come back. Not after last time. I thought I was done with this place. Thought it was done with me... But here I am again, back for one last ride on the merry-go-round. Except this time, I'm the one who's in control. And that's what it's all about, ennit? Control. Last time I slept here, I had none. Not even bladder control. But things change. People think magic's a way of transforming reality-- but in the end, you find that all that you've really changed is yourself. Which probably explains why every magician I've ever met's a self-absorbed arsehole. Still, first rule of magic: perception is reality. You gotta look the part. Button-down collar. Pinstripe suit. Ben Sherman. Good British label. Cuff links and cologne; it's been a while. There... nice and sharp.

John: I don't watch the ball. I watch them. Like I said-- You make your own luck. Perception is reality. And it doesn't matter a tuppeny toss where the ball actually lands... Just as long as they see what I want them to see.

Issue 235, Joyride, Part 2 of 3 by Andy Diggle

John: So, I carry the lodestone back to my flat in Brixton in a second-hand ASDA bag. The romance of the mystic arts, eh?

Issue 238, The Smoke by Andy Diggle

John: Effra's a Naiad, or a Nixie. Or possibly an Undine. I dunno, I'm a little fuzzy on Celtic Water Spirits. Whatever, she's the guardian of a minor river that used to flow from what's now Crystal Palace, heading north through Brixton to the Thames. But that was a long time ago -- and as the city built up around her, river Effra gradually got built over. A hundred and fifty years ago it disappeared altogether, becoming another of London's fabled Lost Rivers, channeled through underground culverts and storm drains... and Effra's been down there ever since, guarding her namesake with no one but the sewer rats to worship her. Not that you'd know to look at her that she's been down on her luck. She's every man's wet dream -- almost literally. Beautiful, fun-loving, and drinks like a fish... Unfortunately, she also fucks like a fish, but that's water spirits for you

All His Engines, graphic novel by Mike Carey

Chas: You'll still need a driver. And there's me martial arts training-- that'll come in handy.

John: Tai Kwon Wheel Wrench? Shut up now, okay?

Melosa: He wants to know if you're-- devout. If you believe.

John: Devout? No. But there's not a lot I don't believe in.

Mictlantecuhtli: You forget yourself. I am no upstart demon, scrabbling in the dirt of the human soul. I am Mictlantecuhtli. I am a god.

John: Great stuff. I'm John-- and I'm a bastard.

John: Happy Families. What's that all about, eh? A bloody busted flush is what it is. You surround yourself with other people so the night doesn't seem quite so dark. Shout down the sound of the wind with arguments about whose turn it is to wash the dishes. Best not to kid yourself. Best not to give any hostages to fortune. You're on your own in the end. Always. Where else would you want to be?

The Knowledge, graphic novel by Simon Oliver

John: [On the phone to Chas] Chas, no pressure or nothing, but if and when I ever get back to London, I'm expecting to find the same shit-hole that was there when I left -- and not a pile of smoldering ruins, okay?

Sandman Presents: Love Street, mini-series by Peter Hogan

Estella: I think we should drink to love. That's what Pammie would have wanted.

John: I generally drink because of it, darlin'.

Oliver: To ideals, then?

John: Yeah.... All right. I think I've got a couple left.

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