" A FEAST OF FRIENDS "
After having been forced to run from the demon Mnemoth,
because he is not a strong enough demon to handle it alone, John
Constantine returns to the Midnight Club to beg Papa Midnite for help.
He searches through the club's rooms filled with debauchery, down to the
basement, where the arena is. Midnite justifies the violence of his
arena show by having the contestants be mere zombies, but John is still
put out - particularly by the spatter of blood on his face.
In
the meantime, Papa Midnite has put Gary Lester into his holding pens,
thinking him nothing more than bait for the demon. John finds that the
more Gaz pleads for a drug fix, the easier it is to lie to him and
detach. Gary is naturally unhappy with the arrangement to come, and
worries that the demon will destroy him. John tries to ignore his
pathetic old friend as Papa Midnite guides him away, warning that they
will begin fighting the demon in the morning.
That night,
after peeling off his stale clothes, John is haunted by images of his
friends, killed during his attempts to fight the Brujeria and their
Invunche. He tries to fight his feelings of fear by getting angry, and
he turns to the ghost of Emma, demanding to know the meaning of the
haunting. Frustrated, he tries apologizing for the fact that they were
all killed on his watch, but his thoughts turn to Gary, and he supposes
that they intend to make him feel guilty for what's to happen to him.
Grumpily, John crawls into bed and shouts that if there is any guilt, it
is his, and he will deal with it. Then, he tells the ghosts to sod off.
They vanish, but as he is falling asleep, John hears Emma's voice
wishing him goodnight, and he bursts into tears.
Meanwhile,
Mnemoth's plague of hunger continues to infect the citizens of New York
City. One victim begins devouring a pile of comic books, while another
man satisfies his undying hunger by chewing off his own arm. Another man
breaks into a jewelry store and begins voraciously shoving gemstones
into his mouth. The city is in chaos. The demon continues, and is
suddenly drawn to the pain inside Gary Lester - the hunger already
inside him, and his craving for junk.
The following
morning, John is roused from bed by one of Midnite's zombies. Up on the
top floor of the Midnight Club, Papa Midnite is unimpressed by John's
attempts at facile humour, and urges him to get down to business. John,
however, is quite impressed by the electric chair that Papa Midnite
acquired at acution from Sing Sing. 300 lives have gone to their ends at
that chair, and that has imbued it with a powerful magic that they can
use. Before beginning, John attempts to calm his old friend. It has
little effect, so John bribes Gaz with a syringe of heroine.
As
Midnite begins preparing for the binding, Gaz spies the cloud of
insects on the horizon. Midnite kills a chicken and pours the blood out
in a circle around Gary, who frantically warns John that he will never
be able to trap the demon in a bottle, as its too big. John says
nothing, and it doesn't take long before Gaz realizes that they don't have a bottle. He
is to be the vessel in which the demon is bound. The only place they
can catch the demon is in a place it wants to go - and that is Gary
Lester.
John watches as his old friend is enveloped in
the demon's cloud of insects, and they all pour into his every orifice.
Quickly, John struggles to tattoo the binding symbols onto Gaz' skin
before the demon escapes again. Suddenly, Gary wakes and rips free of
the chair. he begins attempting to strangle John, but the Englishman
manages to talk him out of it. He and Midnite wrap Gaz in a
strait-jacket, knowing that in order to destroy the demon, Gaz and
Mnemoth must devour eachother. Mercifully, John gives his friend the
heroine fix he craved, attempting to be comforting in some respect.
Kissing Gaz on the forehead, John calls for whisky and cigarettes, and
heads downstairs as the demon begins to feed.
John drinks
and smokes himself into a stupor, listening to Gaz' screams reverberate
through the Midnight Club. Before passing out, he catches a glimpse of
the ghosts that haunt him tending to the Gaz' corpse. John is not
welcome. With Gaz dead at last, Midnite orders the holding pen bricked
up.
As Constantine leaves the club, he sees Gary Lester's spirit join with those of his former comrades.
TITULO: Hellblazer
PORTADA: Dave McKean
GUION: Jamie Delano
DIBUJO: John Ridgway
TINTA: John Ridgway
COLOR: Lovern Kindzierski
EDITORIAL: Vertigo
FECHA: Febrero / 1988
GENERO: Fantasia, Sobrenatural, Horror, Suspenso
PERSONAJES:
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
Villains:
IDIOMA: Español
Escaneos: Batty (001-018), Guardian Ciego (019), Meisenhauser (024, 036-038), HyH (025-026), TheRockJR (027)
Tradumaquetaciones: ProjeKct_6 y gonza2fenix (020-022), Buda.pest
(023, 031-035), Skullpirtates y zenobit (028-030), Elfindetodo (032),
CMV (039-040)
