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When people talk about saving John Constantine, usually it’s a hopeless task, as the scouser magician’s soul has long been consigned to hell for his many sins on earth. But another campaign to save Constantine is under way—and this time it’s fans attempting to keep his TV show going past a 13 episode commitment despite middling ratings.

Arrested Development has plans for a fifth season on Netflix, Twin Peaks will see you on Showtime twenty-five years from the 1991 series finale, and Yahoo Screen will bring Community closer to its promise of #sixseasonsandamovie, airing new episodes this spring. It’s a golden age of fan campaigns with the ability to resurrect dead and mostly-dead shows with measurably vocal fan bases. It’s a golden age fans of NBC’s Constantine are counting on, as the last of the series’ 13 episode initial run airs this Friday, February 13 at 10pm. The network has halted any further production on the show, prompting fans to organize on Twitter and Facebook under the hashtag #saveconstantine in support of its renewal — whether on NBC or another network entirely.

Fan campaigns to save television shows are nothing new, with the late sixties fan campaign to save the Star Trek original series largely credited as the first of its kind. Still, there does seem to be a trend in the growing power of fan campaigns to have an impact on programming, even those who represent much smaller audience shares than the high-profile efforts of yesteryear, prompting fledgling networks to pick up where network and even cable channels have left off.

So what does all this mean for fans of Constantine, starring Matt Ryan as trench-coated demon hunter John Constantine? Do they feel a campaign to save the show, based on the long-running DC/Vertigo series Hellblazer, has a better chance of being saved now than it would have 10 years ago? “They definitely are more successful — especially with social networking being the way it is,” said Breanna Conklin, who has been active in the campaign to #saveconstatine since NBC confirmed in late November they would stop production on the series. “I am in a few nerd groups on facebook. You’re able to spread the word to like minded folks and your friends within a few seconds. Social media gives awareness that wasn’t available to us ten years ago.”

The #saveconstantine effort began to gain momentum when a slick-looking website, saveconstantine.com, went up in December. In addition to links to the petition and fan communities, saveconstantine.com offers a detailed description of the importance of the recently introduced Twitter TV ratings model from newly-formed group, Nielsen Social. An off-shoot of the more traditional Nielsen ratings, Nielsen Social “identifies, captures and analyzes conversation on Twitter in real time for every program aired across over 250 of the most popular U.S. television networks, including Spanish language networks, as well as over 1,500 brands” according to the company website.

The challenge for Constantine fans is to ensure that their awareness of the need to campaign for the continued life of the series is leveraged in a way that speaks both to NBC and their advertisers. It’s not enough to simply prove there’s interest in Constantine from the hallowed 18-49 age demographic; advertisers need to ensure that ad placements can actually have an impact on that demographic. As television consumption proliferates on an increasingly diverse group of content platforms, strong same-day viewing ratings don’t necessarily show advertisers that their ads will be seen instead of fast-forwarded on a DVR viewing post-broadcast.

It’s a challenge the organizers of the #saveconstantine effort hope to meet by being better educated on the increasingly complex world of network tv ad buys. “It’s a big group effort,” said Allison Gennaro, one of the campaigns many organizers. A fan of the Hellblazer comics, Gennaro became involved in the campaign upon hearing “NBC had capped the airing to just 13 [episodes],” which she took to mean the show was “in trouble” but also that the “ratings might not be meeting the NBC demo of choice.” Hoping to convince NBC not to cancel the series, the #saveconstantine organizers publicized a petition for the show to get a second season across social media platforms in late November. The petition cites a “38% bump in the ratings and an 87% viewer retention rating (after Grimm) with the introduction of The Spectre” as evidence of the viability of the series which currently boasts over 20,000 signatures.

The description on saveconstantine.com explains the impact live tweeting Constantine episodes can have on the Twitter TV ratings. The site believes the live tweets “denote that a show has a consistent and loyal audience,” and may show advertisers they “are being rewarded for their investment in the network…so if you want to save Constantine, please watch, tell your friends, and tweet.” Gennaro cultivated a group of Constantine fans through a mailing list to help push the #saveconstantine hashtag and live tweet campaign. “We even threw Friday night twitter parties before the show to trend and gain attention,” she said.

Fan campaigns of the past relied on letter writing, placing ads in trade magazines like Variety, even buying billboards to plead for their respective shows. While Constantine fans have also employed letter writing and email to NBC executives in this campaign, their informed approach in targeting advertisers and leveraging their consumer power is in step with more recently successful ‘save our show’ campaigns. In 2009, Wendy Farrington began a campaign to save another NBC series with supernatural overtones: Chuck. Her game-changing approach acknowledged the fact that the show enjoyed better ratings on off-network viewing platforms and galvanized fans of the series to support a major advertiser of the show, Subway.

According to a 2014 article by Christina Savage for Transformative Works and Cultures, which examined fan-run ‘save our show’ campaigns, on the day of Chuck’s season finale hundreds of fans went to their local Subway and bought a $5 foot-long sandwich featured on the series via product placement. They then left behind comment cards explaining their purchase was in support of Chuck. Savage explained that by “focusing on Chuck as a business transaction, fans used their knowledge of the industry” to support their effort. Shortly thereafter, NBC ordered 13 more episodes of the series. Savage wrote: “co-chairman of NBC Ben Silverman said that this campaign was one of the most creative he had seen, and as a result, Subway would increase its presence within the show.”

John Constantine may not eat at Subway, but fans of the demon exorcist are invoking similar brand marketing powers with their #saveconstantine efforts. Only this time, the fans themselves are the product. By targeting Nielsen’s Twitter TV ratings specifically, Constantine fans “become valuable social ambassadors for programmers and advertisers alike as they amplify content and messaging through their social spheres,” Nielsen Social wrote in a an article posted in September. But will it be enough to push NBC to order another season of Constantine? Could it make the show attractive enough to warrant a rumored move to sister-network Syfy, which has released several high-profile interviews with network executives seeking to return the channel to it’s Sci-fi/fantasy genre roots? NBC president Jennifer Salke told IGN in January that “we wish the show [Constantine] had done better live. It has a big viewership after [it airs] in all kinds of ways and it has a younger audience, but the live number is challenging.”

We spoke with Dr. Balaka Basu, a professor specializing in pop culture and fan studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte about the viability of the type of campaign #saveconstantine is waging. “Campaigns helped to save Chuck and Roswell, and gave Firefly fans closure in the less-than-successful Serenity,” she said. “ I think the key was demonstrating an understanding of how television economy works. With Chuck, for instance, fans literally gave their monetary support to the chain sandwich shop Subway…this demonstrates a comprehension of the relationship between advertisers and television producers.”

Fans like Miguel Gonzalez Cabañas, who lives in Madrid, show the global reach of the #saveconstantine fan efforts. He calls Constantine “the best series with a paranormal plot” on television. He, along with Allison, Breanna and the thousands of other fans who make up the campaign to #saveconstantine will be redoubling their efforts tonight: tweeting their support for the show before, during and after the season finale. But beyond the comic book fanbase, beyond charismatic lead Matt Ryan or the show’s arcane mythology: what is it about Constantine, or any other fan-campaigned series, that produces this kind of fan advocacy? “Whether it’s a show like Constantine, where many fans came into the show already in love with the character,” says Dr. Basu, “or shows like Buffy and Angel, where they were allowed to fall in love over the duration of the show, it’s really when the characters feel like real people that you don’t want your relationship with them to end, ever. And that’s been true since the days of Star Trek.”

Yes, tonight is the night—the third of DC’s fall TV shows debuts on NBC at 10 pm EDT, Constantine starring Matt Ryan as the man, Harold Perrineau as Manny the angel, Charles Halford as best bud Chas, and in the pilot, Lucy Griffiths as the companion, Liv. This role is changed in future episodes to Angelica Celaya as Zed. (In a few stills, Liv bears a striking resemblance to Liz from Garth Marenghi, so perhaps this was for the best.) Also on board eventually, Jeremy Davies, Joey Phillips as Nergal, Miles Anderson as Dr. Roger Huntoon, Michael James Shaw as Papa Midnite. and Emmett Scanlan as Detective Jim Corrigan, who may become the Spectre if pasty white legs become a thing.

The show is brought to you by DC expert David S. Goyer and Daniel Cerone whose credits include Charmed, The Mentalist and the first few (good) seasons of Dexter. Cerone is a DC fan and claims that there will be something of the feel of Dexter, which would be okay if it’s the GOOD Dexter.

I’ve had the rough cut of the pilot kicking around for a while but haven’t wached it…I’m told what airs is quite a bit different so I’m happy seeing it with those of you who stay home on Friday night.

If you want to know more about Constantine and his comics history—and I do mean more— Abraham Reisman has written a near definitive guide, with quotes from Karen Berger, Peter Milligan, and even the guy who made Constantine Hellblazer, Jamie Delano, who wrote the first 44 issues of wha would become the Vertigo flagship.

Readers were enchanted. “There was a great buzz about Constantine,” Berger said, recalling the letters she’d receive from fans. “Alan very deftly planned him as this character who kind of drifted in and drifted out, leaving clues for something ominous and impending.” Which is, of course, the core of what keeps readers of superhero comics coming back to any given series.

Nearly all the subsequent Constantine writers I spoke to remembered how those Swamp Thing issues gripped them — especially because he gave so little away about his origins or what he knew. “You know that quotation from Moby-Dick, ‘It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him’?” writer Mike Carey said. “That’s how Constantine was in Swamp Thing.”

Flavorwire offers five Hellblazer stories to read before the show, and they’re the ones you’d expect—Delano, Gaiman, Ennis, Azzaello, but a nice shout out to the Mike Carey standalone graphic novel.

Hellblazer ran for 300 issues and it’s definitely one of the great horror comics, even given the uneven nature of the various runs. Whiel the TV show is poised to put it more into the popular culture, or sink into oblivion, nothing will change my view of the comics, yadda yadda. I’m trepidatious over how “network” TV will treat this subversive character but is there even such a thing as network TV any more? And comcis have held their own as a culural force now. Let’s face it, you could NEVER EVER get away with casting Keanu Reeves as Constantine any more, and I guess that’s progress of a sort. Reviews have been middling, but it’s only the first episode.

I’ve rounded up some stills from the show, but before we get into that…here’s a few of the classic comic images, four by Glenn Fabry’s whose cover run was phenomenal and one by Leonardo Manco.

And the new version:

liv goes liz

TweetOpening remarks are a prerequisite to talking about the final Vertigo issue of the imprint’s longest running series, the only from Vertigo’s original armada to last nearly so long, and a series which, totaling its original DC imprint and Vertigo lifespan, has lasted for 25 years. The series’ past and future are apt to be [...]

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This week saw a number of big comic releases from Marvel and DC, but who cares when this was the week My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic #1 came out? PONIES, you guys! Ponies all over the place.

This week I’ll be reviewing My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic #1, Hellblazer #297, Gambit #6 and Masks #1

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is the unexpected mass-market hit cartoon series which came out of nowhere to hit every demographic. The series grew such a strong fanbase, in fact, that pre-orders for this spin-off comic series went ballistic, and Katie Cook and Andy Price were left with a smash hit before anybody read a word or saw a single hoof. Issue #1 of IDW’s series doesn’t pay much lip service to new fans, instead asking them to immediately catch up on a fast-paced opening story which races around a large cast of diverse and well-characterised ponies at breakneck speed. Jokes and puns and visual gags fly out from all angles, with almost every one landing. And amazingly, the creative team manage to make the book accessible without pausing to explain anything about the world the characters live in.

Cook is primarily a great humorist, and her voice for the book is immediately charming and entertaining. Whilst it’s hard for this “no-ny” (I knew nothing of the series before reading this book) to know how well she matches or moves away from the voice of the cartoon, I was pretty struck by Cook’s ability to string along an endless succession of gags whilst retaining exposition and story. She’s matched by lovely art from Andy Price, who refuses to draw stock figures from the cartoon and instead invests his own sense of life into the various galloping protagonists. His use of layout is rather spectacular, with thought given to how the panels stand alongside each other and progress the story. This isn’t spectacle for the sake of spectacle, but rather an intelligent use of page space and structure.

A lot of people were very very upset when DC recently announced the cancellation of Hellblazer, but let’s celebrate what we have left – three more issues – rather than mourn a book we might not actually read. Hellblazer has been in the hands of creative team Peter Milligan, Giuseppi Camuncoli and Brian Buccellato for a while now, although this issue is finished by Stefano Landini. The most recent issue concludes the ‘Curse of the Constantines’ storyline, which seems to finish off a number of Milligan’s dangling plot threads regarding Constantine’s family, especially his sister. Being from Liverpool himself, Milligan has proven to be one of the best Constantine writers since also-Scouse Mike Carey, with both being able to effortlessly write lines for the character which are both authentic and very, very funny.

With this being the last of a five-issue storyline, Camuncoli’s art is flagging a little here. Although he takes care to distinctively shape the big moments and standout sequences, some of the pages feature scratchier art which Buccellato can’t do much with. The story here does feature a little bit of a Milligan anticlimax, something the writer sometimes falls prey to. Whilst Constantine’s plan to save the day is funny, it is very slight indeed, and requires a leap of characterisation for the Eva Brady character. Regardless, the grasp on dialogue is spot-on and more than enough to carry the day here, setting Constantine up for a final storyline which gives him a fresh break from the past, and leaves the future unpredictable and exciting for the character.

James Asmus‘ Gambit series has been growing in confidence after a strong opening issue turned into a slightly wobbly first storyline. Each issue of the book has featured some kind of heist, and it’s to Asmus’ credit that heist 6 feels just as unpredictable as heist 1. We’re now in the middle of a storyline where the thief finds himself forced to steal from Pete Wisdom and the British MI13 team (although only Faiza Hussain also appears in the storyline so far). Asmus does light-hearted thrills nicely, although the artwork here seems to be a classic case of a Marvel title getting rushed by scheduling. Diogenes Neves is capable of better work when he isn’t under the pressure he seems to be under here, and indeed he shares art duties here with Al Barrionuevo after only one issue by himself.

It’s a shame that Marvel have recently taken to battering their artists with tighter and tighter deadlines, as it’s led to a rise of fill-ins and rushed pages. There’s a splash page here where we see the insides of MI13′s armoury, a page which was clearly intended to be filled with detail and exciting. However, it looks bare, with a few guns and bits of scrap metal lying around. Give Neves time to draw this page, I bet he’d have made it something exciting to look at. Without that time, his page does a disservice to Asmus’ story.

However, Asmus does seem to be rapidly building his world for the book, with a rising cast and some nice character moments for the main character. He doesn’t write anyone as an idiot in order to make somebody else look good – Pete Wisdom, Faiza Hussain, Gambit and Cich are all juggled nicely between each other here. The Gambit character has also benefited hugely from the retooling Asmus has given him, with a better direction, personality and motivation than he’s had in a decade. The best sequences in the issue are the ones with Gambit in them, as the focus, and that’s because Asmus has done such a great job of making the character exciting to be with again.

It appears that the pre-sales for Dynamite’s team-up book Masks have been stonking, and a massive success for the company. Written by Chris Roberson and with this first issue painted by Alex Ross, the series teams up Zorro, The Spider, The Shadow and The Green Hornet for a pulp nostalgia trip. Being somewhat unfamiliar with all the characters, this first issue left me a little confused, but with a sense that Roberson is heading somewhere good. Green Hornet provides the perspective for readers, as we follow him interact with first The Shadow, and then the rest of the heroes. I’m not entirely certain what Zorro’s role in the book is at present – he might have appeared, but I really can’t tell if that was him or not. The introduction of The Spider is also blatantly tacked on, albeit in a hilariously camp manner that I couldn’t help but enjoy. Roberson seems to be having a lot of fun here, and Ross is clearly having a ball.

Roberson allows for the reader to view the story as a camp homage just as much as he writes a pulp narrative, here, balancing the two different styles neatly. The story is simultaneously involving and completely ridiculous nonsense, but in the most enjoyable manner possible. He also makes sure to write for Ross, whose painted pages are far less static than you might expect. The fight scene towards the end is a particularly well-done sequence from the pair, while the conversation sequences aren’t overshadowed by dead-eyed staring from everybody involved – as can be the case for painted work. Ross reminds that he’s an excellent storyteller as well as painter with this issue, and it’ll be interesting to see how the story progresses beyond here. It’s a qualified success, in that it’ll play far better to fans who already love and know the characters than it will bring in and keep new readers.

– As a final note! Let’s take a moment to praise letterer Cory Petit, who is currently working on X-Men Legacy. This is a book with a myriad things happening in the word balloons, and Petit’s ability to juggle it all is pretty incredible. It’s probably one of the most demanding comics I’ve seen, and he manages to take everything Si Spurrier throws at him — and make it work.