Review by Frank Plowright
Freezes Over begins with the short sharp shock of a single act play featuring five characters confined in a bar. There’s the welcome sight of Hellblazer great Steve Dillon drawing surroundings he knows all too well, while Brian Azzarello tells us all we need to know about Constantine as an appetiser to the title story.
For that the location shifts a few hundred miles to a different bar where there’s one almighty storm coming, and the folk gathered there know they’re not leaving anytime soon. You’re going to fear for the family who stop by, as the remainder of the party don’t seem refined types.
As he did in Good Intentions, Marcelo Frusin supplies astonishing atmosphere. The shadows, the scowling people, the excessive hunting trophy surroundings… everything screams this isn’t a bar you’d visit from choice. However, as usual, the biggest bastard in the place is Constantine. It’s not long before the suspicion of murder falls upon him, in the reader’s mind if not the remainder trapped, whose inclinations turn to the local legend of the Iceman. Rumours of him have spread over a century, leaving plenty of room for a few moody interludes in the past, equally well drawn by Frusin. And all that’s before the gangsters turn up.
The simmering undercurrent generated by violent and superstitious people eventually bursts forth, yet what’s remarkable is Constantine’s way, with a comment here, a whisper there and a hand around the shoulder. Trapped people take desperate measures, and the results might be predictable, but it’s who survives that counts. The only real complaint is the general tone having more in common with Azzarello’s crime stories elsewhere, rather than focussing on Constantine.
There’s a very different mood to the final two part inclusion, separated by virtue of Guy Davis art and occurring in the past. Azzarello has already briefly visited Constantine’s days in a punk band, and that period is the focus for some thieving, some skullduggery and a glimpse into the future. It’s serviceable for what it is, which is an eccentric crime story, but lacks the gravitas of what Constantine would become, although a fair bit of it sets up the following Highwater in the present day. Davis’s form of scruffy detail serves the story, but overall it’s the least memorable of Azzarello’s run.
Freezes Over is very much an assortment box, and as such is readable while lacking the cohesion of both the best Hellblazer stories and the best Azzarello stories. When the Hellblazer material was re-organised into bulkier volumes this was absorbed into a new Highwater collection.
