Good morning and welcome to Blogathon 2010. I am your host and primary source of entertainment, Chad Nevett. For the next 24 hours, I will be posting a new blog post every half hour on the half hour. Why would I do such a stupid thing? For charity, of course! This is a blogathon after all, a method of raising money for a charity of one's choosing. This year, like last year, I have chosen the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund as my charity of choice. It's a charity that devotes its time and money to fighting for free speech by doing things like helping with legal costs for retailers/creators/publishers when they're being charged or persecuted for simply trying to sell/create/publish comics that don't necessarily conform to the standard idea of what 'kids's entertainment' should be. Which brings me to what I'll be filling these 24 hours with...
Hellblazer. This year is my third blogathon. In 2007, I wrote about Joe Casey and, last year, I wrote about Brian Michael Bendis's Avengers work. I like the idea of a large, unifying topic and I'm a big fan of Hellblazer. In fact, I own more Hellblazer comics (primarily in collections) than any other series. Not nearly the whole series, but over 150 issues, which, for me, is a lot of one book. It's a somewhat appropriate choice for a blogathon where I'm raising money for the CBLDF since this comic is not for kids. It's full of swearing, nudity, graphic violence, and all of those other things that people tend to not want kids exposed to. And it's really fucking good. Some of the best writers in comics have worked on the title.
It stars, for those unaware, John Constantine, an English magician and a right bastard. He's selfish and delusional, always conning others or himself for some reason. Throughout these issues, he'll be responsible for the deaths of friends and family, and ruining the lives of countless people. But, he's also funny and snarky and entertaining. You can find a list of the comics I'll be discussing here.
And before I wrap things up, here are a few things you should know:
1. I read all of the comics in advance, but have not written any of the posts. I didn't even take notes. I probably should have, though.
2. I may try and work ahead a little bit to give me time to go get a slushy from 7-11 or make food/eat, but I will ALWAYS work on a post during its half-hour period. The last two times, in a couple of cases, I did 3/4s of a post before leaving and finished it when I got back. I take the whole 'post every 30 minutes' thing seriously. This is meant to be a pretty constant thing I'm doing here.
3. I won't be using images in my posts, because I don't feel like searching for so many damn covers. Also, the images would just be covers at the beginning of the post and... who cares? If people do care, let me know and I'll possibly change my policy there.
4. Not every post is going to be a winner. In fact, a lot of them won't be. Nor will I get to say everything I want to or would if I were writing about these works the way I normally do.
5. Posts are being set for the hour/half-hour for simplicity. That means they ARE being scheduled technically, but by only a few minutes... better to be early than late.
6. I was crazy and stupid to do this, but it's too late to back out now. And, honestly, it's always fun.
So, enjoy, thanks for checking this out, please contribute to the CBLDF through the link in this post or by clicking on the image at the top of the page. In 30 minutes, I'll kick things off with one of the most important issues of Hellblazer, #11 "Newcastle: A Taste of Things to Come."
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