Dark Entries

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After giving it a moment of reflection here’s my final two cents: Dark Entries is a John Constantine story for fans of John Constantine. If you’re in the fan club, I’m sure you’ll dig it. If you’re not in the club, you’ll probably be bored just like I was. Dark Entries tries to bill itself as an old school John Constantine story. It doesn't quite measure up. That is not to say it is not interesting and it does display a small shadow of the angst driven "real" JC stories (such as Hellblazer vol 1 and on). And then there's the overarching issue, which isn't Rankin's fault. This is just the whole "how do the western underpinnings of Constantine's metaphysics reconcile themselves with non-western metaphysics." I really feel for the Japanese character, for example: not just because she was molested by salarymen on trains, and not just because the comic's editor let the artist let the reader ogle her (talk about adding insult to injury -- though I guess here it works, a little, because the panels mimic the reality-TV viewer's perspective), but mostly because she was raised in a non-western country yet finds herself, after dying, left to deal with an overlord who is, for all intents and purposes, the western conception of the devil. I mean, you can read as much Joseph Campbell as you want and assume all myths are just masks painted on the faces of shared myths, but for a self-consciously cynical comic, Hellblazer really is beholden to powers it is smart enough to, but too lazy to, wrestle with. (Again, this is an ongoing failure of Hellblazer, not just of Rankin's entry, though he does fail to even remotely explore it.)

I really loved Ringing the Changes, The View and Bind Your Hair with The Waiting Room being the weakest. The first in the series, “Dark Entries”, was written by Ian Rankin, a popular British mystery writer best known for a series of novels featuring his detective John Rebus. Yeah, spoilers. Boilerplate, polite version: I promise I don't "spoil" anything about this book that would have bothered me had I known about it in advance of reading this book. That said, I cannot think of anything I have read in my life that would have been spoiled had I known the plot-advancing facts. And this is not, I promise, a mini–Cliffs Notes–style detailed summary of the story. Perhaps the only real way to "spoil" a book is to detail any serious flaws in logic, to the extent that you then can't get them out of your head as you read the book. I can't promise that I don't to that -- but neither can anyone else.]Slowly but unmistakably the tension of community and sodality waxed among them, as if a loose mesh of threads weaving about between the different individuals was being drawn tighter and closer, further isolating them from the rest of the world, and from Pendlebury: the party was advancing into a communal phantasmagoria, as parties should, but in Pendlebury's experience seldom did; a sombre chinoise of affectionate ease and intensified inner life." A contributor to BBC2's Newsnight Review, he also presented his own TV series, Ian Rankin's Evil Thoughts, on Channel 4 in 2002. He recently received the OBE for services to literature, and opted to receive the prize in his home city of Edinburgh, where he lives with his partner and two sons.

If Hell's residents can tunnel so easily into Limbo, well, that's kind of a major mess of story that makes the plight of these few 20somethings seem kinda slight by comparison. And again, it's just left dangling. I like the art sometimes, but there are also times where I couldn't tell who was who. Several times I thought someone else was talking only to realize it was Constantine, but he was drawn in such a way that he looked like one of the other characters. This is a classic example for novels of horror, ghost, exorcism, monster, spooky genre! Ian Rankin starts the story as if the plot is small and easy and just another Haunted-house story. But with one after another surprisingly enjoyable twists it becomes so huge and so epic (from Heaven to Hell all the way) that it is beyond explanation! John Constantine, να συμμετάσχει στο παιχνίδι και να ανακαλύψει τι γίνεται. Όμως τα πράγματα δεν είναι καθόλου όπως φαίνονται...As for the characters, they are quite varied, which is definetly an advantage over countless other weird tales writers, who usually have very similiar "types" in their stories. However, I actually feel they are not nearly as developed and psychologically rich as some reviewers often suggest - they may be fairly complex within the range of weird fiction, but not so when compared to non-genre fiction of the 20 th century. Ian Rankin’s dialogue is good; he pretty much nails Constantine’s scouse nihilism, but the story, which starts with great promise, falls flat at the end. Hell comes across as an inconvenience rather than torturous eternity. This is partly due to the artwork and writing. For the majority of the contestants to escape at the end seemed too bright for a Constantine story. Choice Of Weapons: A man falls in love with a strange, seductive girl who lives in an eerie old house. She is lost in a dream of love, and so is he. Dreamy and startling. I picture Eva Green as the girl.