Jason Aaron and Sean Murphy explore John Constantine’s punk past in “Newcastle Calling”
In the two-issue story arc “Newcastle Calling,” writer Jason Aaron and artist Sean Murphy present John Constantine, the protagonist of the DC Comics series Hellblazer, returning to the British city of Newcastle; there, decades earlier, Constantine and his friends attempted to stop a horrific creature, with disastrous results. “Newcastle Calling” examines this supernatural tragedy via the context of Constantine’s unrealized punk music career.
“Newcastle Calling” (Hellblazer issues 245 and 246) opens in modern times, with a five-person documentary film crew visiting the ruins of the Casanova Club; in 1977, Constantine’s punk band Mucous Membrane debuted at this venue. The crew’s footage recounts the band’s origins; Constantine served as vocalist and his friend Gary Lester played guitar, with other musicians providing bass and drums. The footage also provides commentary from fans regarding the band’s talent.
The filmmakers are also keen to note the band’s involvement in the mysterious murders that occurred at the club in 1978; six dismembered corpses were found in the basement, along with the arm of a little girl. The rest of the girl’s body was never found.
Longtime Hellblazer readers are familiar with the events behind this tragedy. In Hellblazer #11 (published November 1988, entitled “Newcastle: A Taste of Things to Come,” written by Jamie Delano and rendered by artists Richard Piers Rayner and Mark Buckingham), Constantine and Lester, along with five other friends, investigate their suspicion that the club might be the cause of weird occurrences in the Newcastle area. The club’s owner is an occultist, and Constantine’s crew discover the eviscerated owner and his fellow cult members, along with the owner’s surviving daughter, Astra.
Learning that a supernatural “terror elemental” is responsible, Constantine conjures a demon to destroy this creature. But Constantine soon realizes that he has made an error: he cannot control the demon, and Astra consequently suffers a dreadful fate.
Constantine’s failure in Newcastle has a significant impact on his life: he spends several years in a mental institution; his music career effectively ends; his friends suffer emotional and physical trauma that haunts them for the rest of their lives; and he becomes a more cynical occult practitioner. He also encounters the Newcastle demon and Astra again in future adventures.
The film crew is unaware of the supernatural cause of the Newcastle tragedy, and they are unprepared for the coming terrors that their visit has triggered.
Although “Newcastle Calling” and “Newcastle: A Taste of Things to Come” both explore Constantine’s regret of past mistakes, the two tales utilize different techniques to generate horror. Whereas Delano and his artists present visceral demonic horror tropes at a rapid pace in a single issue, Aaron and Murphy use two issues to build a steady mood of dread; the crew experience hallucinations that creep in slowly, and some horror happens off-panel, leaving readers to imagine what terrible incidents have occurred.
Murphy (aided by Lee Loughridge’s dark color palette) creates an atmospheric gloom that is perfect for the story. Each character is distinctive and well-rendered; readers empathize with their despair and regret. The isolated setting is a visually interesting wasteland, and the eye-catching gore, while sparingly used, is unsettling.
Constantine is mostly absent from the first installment of “Newcastle Calling”; aware of the danger unleashed by the crew’s presence, he returns to Newcastle at the story’s end. The second installment begins with a narrative parade of horrible events, as Constantine details the grim psychic effects that are now being experienced by Newcastle’s residents. As Constantine deals with the occult menace, readers learn that the events depicted in Delano’s story were not fully resolved, and that Constantine bears some culpability for the recent supernatural threats.
Aaron and Murphy examine Newcastle’s impact on Constantine’s life from the perspective of an unrealized music career. The Constantine mythos offers ample examples of Mucous Membrane’s potential, such as a 1978 hit single, “Venus of the Hardsell” (Hellblazer Annual #1) and a NME magazine interview with the band (Hellblazer #62); yet, until “Newcastle Calling,” the emotional impact of Constantine’s lost music career had not been explored in such a poignant fashion.
In his forward to Punk Rock: An Oral History, novelist Michael Bracewell notes the significance of punk to its fans:
Naturally, punk sought to booby trap its own history by making a rhetorical fetish of the slogan “No Future.” And, equally naturally, many of punk’s founding participants are deeply uneasy of enshrining punk’s core years (between 1976 and 1978) in any form of sentimental nostalgia for a somehow better time. What is remarkable therefore is the way in which, despite such denials, punk is still revealed to have had a deep, irreversible effect on many of the people whom it touched.
“Newcastle Calling” is a celebration of punk music; the film crew discuss their favorite punk songs, the narrative presents Mucous Membrane’s rowdy performances via Constantine’s regretful recollections, and the story’s title is a reference to the acclaimed Clash album London Calling. While Constantine is modest in describing Mucous Membrane’s brief success to one of the film crew (“We were shite, kid. We were bloody awful. But then again, no worse than a lot of others back then.”), the narrative makes it clear that he is wistful for his vanished punk past.
NOTES AND FURTHER READING:
DISCLOSURE: As works published by DC Comics are referenced in the above article, it should be disclosed that the article’s author is a former DC Comics contributor. There are no current financial arrangements between the author and DC Comics.
Hellblazer #245 (Jason Aaron [writer], Sean Murphy [artist], Lee Loughridge [colors], Jared K. Fletcher [letters]; DC Comics, August 2008)
Hellblazer #246 (Jason Aaron [writer], Sean Murphy [artist], Lee Loughridge [colors], Jared K. Fletcher [letters]; DC Comics, September 2008)
John Constantine, Hellblazer: The Devil You Know (Jamie Delano , et al.; DC Comics, 2007) [This collection includes Hellblazer #11 (“Newcastle: A Taste of Things to Come”) from Jamie Delano (writer), Richard Piers Rayner and Mark Buckingham (art), Lovern Kindzierski (coloring), and Todd Klein (lettering).]
John Constantine, Hellblazer: 30th Anniversary Celebration (Various; DC Comics, 2018) [This volume includes a chronological timeline of John Constantine’s adventures, provided by author Rich Handley.]
Punk Rock: An Oral History (John Robb; PM Press, 2012)
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