#what is different about Noah Ikumelo

[kookygobbledygook]

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[hbosscreations]

Fixing Hellblazer: Dead in America

Apparently I'm not doing being negative today, so I'm going to channel my bullshit into fixing things.

Let me tell you a bit about me. I love bad horror movies. I LOVE horror movies that aren't great, but you can see how they COULD be great under different circumstances. My favorite thing to do for years was take a movie that wasn't good and think about what needed to be done to fix it.

Dead in America actually has a pretty simple fix that would help with the rewrite. You'd have to rewrite the whole thing, this draft isn't salvagable, but if you really want to tell the story about American Racism, it's such an easy fix, I don't know why they didn't do it in the first place.

Make Noah Ikumelo the main character.

Seriously. That's the big change.

Maybe he's not the focal character for the entire 11 issue run, but have him be the perspective of at least one issue instead of the random racists that keep getting their stories told like we're supposed to care about them.

Issue 1: Flee

Tommy is dead, K-Mag is dead, they're on the run, and John says 'well, I've got friends in America who could help us out'.

Noah's scared, Nat's scared, John seems to have a plan. So, they're off to America with no money, no papers, nothing but the clothes on their backs.

It's okay at first, John's magic lets him manipulate people a bit, gets them through security checks and keeps them fed, but it's definitely not enough to keep them safe forever.

Noah has a bunch of exposition he gives about being black in the UK, about being disabled, about his feelings about his mother (being a cop, being in a coma, being weird about magic).

How he has always felt unheard until John came into the picture and saw him.

They're traveling, the fear starts to wear off, Noah realizes they've fled the country and his mother is alone.

Where's his gran? This is a point to show flashbacks. Maybe she's not mentally all there? Maybe Noah has been sleeping on John's couch. Maybe he's been learning magic during the months we don't see in the original run. Not a lot, John tells him that he likes that Noah's not really involved in this shit.

Until the murder dreams, when Noah starts getting a crash course in magic and hasn't had a chance to think about anything except John and his stupid plans.

The issue ends with them on the freight ship they stowed away on approaching the docks. They've arrived in port, and it's time to leave. John puts his hand on the double decker bus and reassures them both that he's got this. He's got a plan, and things are going to be okay.

He looks fondly at Noah, and Noah wonders if he can trust that face. Can he believe John?

He doesn't really have a choice, does he?

Issue 2: Where is everyone?

This issue is mostly from John's perspective and his narrating voice takes control again.

John reaches out to old contacts. They're gone. Dead or never existed in the first place. No capes and cowls in this universe. Just magic, divinity, and damnation.

They're fucked.

Meanwhile, Noah and Nat both realize that they're being treated differently than John is. Both have experienced different types of prejudice based on race, gender, disability, and now there's an extra layer of it. The American layer that the story really wants to talk about.

John gets a little, but it's pretty clear that people are generally cooler with a blond haired, blue eyed, white man with an accent than they are with Noah's lack of speaking and Nat's heavy Glaswegian accent.

There's a level of cruelty that makes being trapped in another country, unable to call anyone and tell them that you're alive, unable to know if your family is safe, unable to know if you were even a suspect in the crimes committed, extra fucky.

John's contacts he'd normally call are all of touch the easy way.

So, fine. If he can't call them, he'll go to their usual haunts and track them that way.

Hence, road trip.

This leads into the actual comic scene where John is in St. Augustine, Florida and talking to the statue.

You can still have the Girl Scout come and be cryptic and cruel, have John losing his shit over the fact that he's damned Noah to hell.

(Or we can include my favorite headcanon that Noah was supposed to be a tulpa designed to distract John. I don't know if it would work here, but a story about a kid literally designed to be a sponge for prejudice and cruelty might be a mirror this story about racism could play with. It would need a MUCH more competent writer than me and at least two sensitivity readers.)

Noah wants to pull over for a hitchhiker, they've got the space and he's kind, but John cautions him that America is VERY different from London. We learn that Noah has not traveled much outside of his home city if at all because of his mother's profession and then her coma, leaving him in the care of his gran, who lived on the estate and therefore didn't really have much in the ability or desire to go far.

The dream with Dream still happens, which gives us a nice connection to the previous story as well as John's whole...being dead thing. They're looking for the sand, they're looking for friendly faces, they're looking for magic in a world that John quickly realizes is GASPING and DYING.

Because the multiverse still got punched in the dick by Tim Hunter, and while this world hasn't been hit by him specifically, it's feeling some of the multiversal repercussions of an apocalypse that massive.

And John doesn't have the power to get them out of this while he's a corpse. The longer he rots, the weaker he gets.

Dream gives his orders. John agrees.

They wake up, Noah is being threatened by the cop because he's black and driving a bus. We don't make it about the cop being too stupid to know what a bus is this time, instead, we make it because the bus looks strange and 'why is a black boy driving a bus unless he stole it? obviously he's a thief and he's refusing to speak out of disrespect'.

That fucking sucks, but it also works more to the actual threat of racism in the US. The OTHERING. They're dangerous because they're OTHER. They're lesser because they're OTHER.

Nat keeps the cop's gun after he's frozen. She's freaked. Noah's freaked.

John calmly tells them the spell won't last forever and they need to drive. Nat goes to the wheel and we watch Noah sneak up to the upper level and cry.

John watches from the stairs until he's sure Noah is asleep. He doesn't know how to offer this particular kid comfort, how to offer to hold him without revealing his death or just being too attached.

We see him put his coat over the boy as a symbol of protection. He brushes a hand over Noah's head and asks Dream to look out for the kid.

"I know you're pissed at me and I don't really have the right to ask, but hasn't he had enough nightmares for now?"

Noah's dream about all the horrible things he's processing from the previous issue, the previous run, and that night melt into something more pleasant. Maybe the groundwork for him learning John is his father.

John is back with Nat as she's driving. She's angry. The conversation from the original issue can stay and be expanded on. John tries to comfort her, tries to ease the tension, and it eventually works.

She gets what he's doing, even if he's not doing a good job.

This is a Classic John Constantine who cares about other people but isn't necessarily good at showing it.

The sun starts to rise.

"Where the fuck are we going now? We're a target in this thing, John, and that cop's gonna call us in."

John reassures that they're fine and he's got a new plan.

Most of the hero types don't exist now, but that's fine. He's started to tap into the multiversal memories that he'd repressed in the 2019 issue, and he's pretty sure that he's got a friend who will exist in this universe, even if people like Zatanna and Superman don't.

After all, the Green is a multiversal constant.

This leads into the ending of the original issue 1, with the swamp being filled in and turned into a golf course.

And that ends issue 2.

I don't know if I want to invest energy into re-imagining the entire run, and I suspect that would require the run to be finished before I can properly fix anything except the opening. If you actually read this...sorry about the way it's written, this was all just thought to typing, so it has 0 polish.

I think this is a series that could have worked under different circumstances. I think there are elements here that are good, but this was clearly not written with any real oversight or a coherent story beforehand.

I would have loved for them to learn magic on the bus. Scenes of Nat and Noah picking up spells, Nat teaching Noah the proper way to throw a punch that won't fuck up his hands. Noah being REALLY good at making sure they all manage to eat properly (I am deeply invested in this child shoving oranges into people's hands because 'do you want scurvy?').

A scene of John teaching Nat sign language while Noah slept because he's already so isolated and they all need to take care of each other. Nat forcing John to drive, only for him to hit a car and immediately switch back to her driving. Nat reading a novel aloud to keep Noah awake while they drive at night.

Basically, we need to make them seem like they're actual people who actually spend all of their time trapped together.

Also, does John eat? How have they noticed that he doesn't eat? Does he sweat? If he showers, does that damage his skin and hair, since he's apparently molding at the start of the series?