Hellblazer has been the home to many of comics' most interesting and daring writers, in many cases serving as the proving ground for up-and-coming (often British) creators. One writer who didn't get to spend nearly as much time with John Constantine as he should've was Warren Ellis, who has since gone on to become something of a comics industry maverick, dropping into mainstream titles like Secret Avengers and Moon Knight for a few issues before going back to whatever transhumanist horror show he's got going as a creator-owned series. For a while he looked to be settling into a long run on Hellblazer, though, his blacker-than-black humour and magical realist tendencies gelling well with the book. That is, until he wrote Shoot. Hellblazer had long been used as a mouthpiece to explore contemporary political and cultural topics, with Jamie Delano's original run on the book being especially explicit with its attack on Thatcher's Britain. With the single issue story Shoot Ellis hoped to talk about the gun culture in America, and specifically the spate of school shootings which had plagued the country for decades, with Constantine surmising that it's nothing demonic it's just kids being let down by their culture. Except then Columbine happened, and DC got less excited about publishing a comic about school shootings, and it remained unpublished until 2010. A black-and-white version leaked online, but Ellis had already quit by then.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
