So you were supposed to read Giles from Buffy as like, the one of John Constantine’s mates who got out of Britain alive, right?

Wearing a trench coat, and realizing I’m now both cynical and bisexual enough to use it as an emergency John Constantine costume. Now I just have to get all my friends killed!

Thinking about Hellblazer and other 80s Vertigo stuff – what exactly was it about “overconfidence leading you down a path that you ended up having to consciously sacrifice the lives of friendly innocents to escape” that was so meaningful to New Wave-era British hipsters? It wasn’t ‘Nam, and they consciously treated AIDS in-universe. Fall of the Empire stuff? Survivor’s guilt over being one of the ones who experienced Thatcherism as an ascent from the dirty postwar working class to Cool Brittania?