"Evening, Red," says the blonde man at the bar.
Hellboy takes his time browsing through the jukebox menu by the door as everyone else files out. He finds some coins in the pocket of his overcoat. In a moment, Bowie gives way to Nick Cave. There is a blue pentagram on the concrete floor. Billiard chalk?
No one is left to take Hellboy's order, so he grabs a fistful of peanuts from the basket on the bar, rattling them in his hand like dice as he fishes around for the ginger ale hose. John Constantine merely nurses on his cigarette.
Hellboy finds a spent tumbler and pours himself a few mouthfuls.
"King of all England, yeah?" says Constantine, rising. He stabs at his ashtray.
Hellboy shakes his head. News travels fast these days.
"Little birdie told me." says Constantine. "Finish your drink."
Hellboy does as he's told. He rests his empty glass on the counter just as John's chair explodes against his back.
Hellboy Vs. Hellblazer
Who wins?
(Show your work.)
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Sorry, as much as I love Constintine, he doesn’t stand a chance against Hellboy, pool chalk pentagram or not.
Hellboy is tough and smarter than you would expect but John isn’t a pushover either. I give this one to John. He has a bigger bag of tricks and is a quicker to come up with a plan. It won’t be an easy fight but John takes this one leaving Hellboy laying on the floor in a binding spell, sleeping through a glamour that makes him think he won the fight.
It will be a long and hard battle but John has more experience against things like Hellboy. John wins
A tough as Hellboy is, you know his strengths and weaknesses right from looking at him. Wheras with Constantine you dont know what he’s really capable of untill he does it. And although if this was a clear cut fist fight Hellboy would win hands down. But when your dealing with a cunning bastard like John Constantine the physical fight is only half the battle.
@lantern4life – Does he have more experience? Hellboy battles things like Hellboy, and he’s been around since 1944.
The chair splinters across Hellboy’s back, but Big Red just shrugs off the blow. After all, he’s supernaturally strong and gets hit harder, by bigger things, on a near-daily basis. What chance does some Scouse conman have in a bar fight with him?
"Ow," grunts the big brute, "Didn’t have to do that, did you?"
He turns to face Constantine, only to find himself facing a yellow-orange demon that could be his brother. His jaw drops, a moment before it is struck with incredible force by a amber-colored stone left hook.
"What the–?!" he mumbles through a broken jaw.
"Stay down, little brother. You don’t know what you’ve gotten into this time. You don’t even know, after all these years, who you really are. Let me explain…"
"P-Tui!" Expelling gob of spit, teeth, and blood, Hellboy makes to stand up and face his opponent… and find himself stuck.
"Alright, mate, you got me. I lied."
"Huh?"
"I’m not your big yellow demon brother, mate. You don’t have a big yellow demon brother. I needed an image that would get you off guard. Just a little trick I picked up. Take an idea, make it seem real, and back it up with something more SOLID…"
Constantine, now looking like himself again, waves a rusty old tire iron, with what appear to be norse runes etched into its surface.
Once again, Hellboy makes to get to his feet, but finds himself inexplicably pinned. "Why am I stuck?"
"It’s the beer they serve here. Absolute swill."
"Huh–?!"
"…and used to inscribe a mystic circle on the floor beneath you. Once you added your own blood to it a moment ago, you made it unbreakable. Thanks for that. Now shut up and listen, we don’t have all day. The whole blood world could end by last bell if we don’t go see a bishop about his gambling habit. Yer Highness."
"…Uh."
–
What it comes down to is that Hellboy is pretty clever, and experienced, but Constantine is a consummate con-artist, with years of mystical experience, and far more than his fair share of luck. He always has a plan, and a backup plan, and isn’t afraid to sacrifice himself, or anyone else, to get the necessary job done.
The problem for Constantine is that he usually tricks guys that think they are tricky. Hellboy is most certainly not that. So Constantine’s normal strategy involving his cunning don’t really matter as much because Hellboy’s plans are a)not terribly complex b)thought up on the fly.
In movie terms:
Ron Perlman vs. Keanu Reaves.
Perlman takes it.
@Spoons – Yes, but Constantine doesn’t go into a situation (if he can help it) without sizing up his opponent first, so he would surely know things like that. Being tough and brave works for Hellboy most of the time, but brains wins over braun most of the time and Constantine is both smart and lucky.
@ActualButt – I’ll give it to you that Hellboy was a better movie, but I don’t think that reflects on the characters. This is, after all, a comic book site, not a movie site.
I also think it’s important that Constantine doesn’t mine losing a fight (and getting beaten to a pulp) in service of getting the outcome he needs. For Hellboy this would be a barfight, but for John it would be part of something bigger.
Glad to see everyone siding with Conjob. He would definitely find a way out of this one.
I see these two sitting down and sharing a nice quite smoke and a drink. I don’t think they would need to speak and I’m not even sure they would make eye contact. They would just smoke, drink, and think. (And I would buy that comic.)
@stuchlach – I had that thought as well. However, as everyone knows, ever classic Comics Team-Up has to start with a fight before the heroes bond. 😉
@stulach I would buy the hell out of that comic as well
I can actually see that working really well as a framing sequence for a story told via their memories of a story. Maybe even memories of how they each deal with the same opponent, but at different times.
After the ensuing demon-summoning-followed-by-demon-repelling had gone about five rounds Jon waves what could have been a white "flag" from behind the charded pool table.
"Is that a Clash t-shirt?" Red asked from the safety of the bathroom stall (the wall seperating the bar from the disgusting toilet had been bulldozered by a fast moving Hellboy five minutes earlier.
"It was." Jon said, looking at the original band merchandice. "Made the mistake of wearing it to another show in the 80s’ and the pillock Johnny Rotten vomitted all over the back of it when I wasn’t looking."
"Man I hated that guy!" Red was dabbing the Hellhound bite on his forehead. "Was he a demon or just a jerk?"
"Just a jerk. I thought maybe he was some kind of Punk Rock male-siren thing, ’cause that little twerp could rock! but nah, he was just your run of the mile talented, narcisistic arsehole. Oh shite," Jon had just realized that a piece of his hair was burning toward his ear.
"You okay, Limey?" Red came out from behind the Hellboy-shaped hole in the wall.
"Yeah, I"m okay demon. Just alittle hair fire to deal with, nothin’ tha’ll keep us from finishing this little tussle in a minute."
Hellboy, who wasn’t entirely certain why they were "tusslin’" in the first place (there had been some words between mutual demon contacts, but honestly demons live to cause trouble), promptly went to the cardonated water hose (last attached hose in the whole bar) and doused the blonde Brit’s head, putting out the quickly mulitplying flames.
Jon now looked like a pissed off, half drowned cat. "Thanks, demon. Nothin’ worse smelling than hair on fire."
Hellboy smirked, then grimaced then laughed loud and long. In between the guffaws Jon could hear the words "flaming" "Brit" and "hilarious". "Yeah yeah," Jon growled getting up. "Yuck it up, ya jerk. Let’s finish this thing."
"Hellboy," the big red demon said, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. "But hey, man you can call me Red. This has been a great fight. Wanna go get some food?"
Jon thought about it, while retrieving his smokes, which were completely dripping wet. "You got a smoke?" Hellboy-Red- gave his a huge cigar. "Cheers mate. Curry?"
"I was thinkin’ iHop, but curry’ll work. I’ll pay for the bar, if you pay for food?"
"Deal."
Red and Jon Constantine picked themselves up, Red left a bag of rare Roman coins that might cover the magnificent damage they wrought on it. Jon was smug about how much the big red demon was shelling out. Clearly he had no idea how much curry his new friend could eat.
Hellblazer, easily.
John will win this battle, but accidently makes Hellboy succumbs to his true self. After the fight, Hellboy takes his place as the bringer of Doom. He wins the war when earth is run over by Satan’s minions.
If John’s first hit is with a chair, he’s already lost. Hellboy punches him once, he goes unconscious, Hellboy props him up against the bar and pours two more drinks. John wakes up and Hellboy says "I just want a beer, smoke?" and offers him a cigar and the poured beer. They drink.
I want Hellboy to win……But I agree John will most likely pull an ace out of his sleeve at the very last second. Since technically Hellboy is a demon of Hell, John would most likely have experience to deal with him.
Just when Hellboy thinks he’s won, John flips him the bird, tricks him into killing himself and then John takes a piss on hellboy’s lifeless body. roll credits.
@stuclach: I agree. I see them sitting around and getting drunk at the bar. Red gets John to try one of his stogies.
Hellboy has a way of ignoring all that magic mumbo jumbo and punching people right in the face with his indestructable hand. Many a clever user of magic has set traps and tricks only to find them inexplicably shredded by Hellboy’s straight ahead, punch-in-the-mouth approach. If John plans for this he has a chance. If he expects a typical sort of demon-y taunt and dance, he will wake up on a gurney somewhere.
I would imagine these guys as jolly good friends…
@Paul – I don’t think Hellboy has a lot of experience against things like Constantine. I could be wrong.
Constantine wins after a long, hard struggle… he had to sacrifice 7 friends to win.
These two would not fight. They would sit and smoke and reminisce about all the shit life’s dumped on them and likely walk out of the bar, arm in tremendous-death-stone-key-thing, singing English drinking songs and being generally jovial, John smoking one of Big Red’s fatty cigars.
I think this plays out as a combination of MrGlass and Anson17’s ideas, with a twist: John wins at the last second by tricking Red into punching himself in the sack, but along the way just about everyone he knows is killed (except Chas), his flat is demolished, his favorite pub is wrecked, he runs out of smokes, he sleeps with Liz Sherman and while she’s sleeping it off he tricks Abe into helping him steal an artifact from the BRPD library, which he then uses to save the world (possibly involving a ritual that can only be performed using the fire he collects from Red’s corpse and the fire he steals from Liz while he’s shagging her).
Quinn, you win the thread.
Im sorry but no competition in the end, John Constantine would win because he would kill his grandmother to stop a demon getting one over him!!
I don’t read much of either, but Hellboy always seemed to get out of messes because of a fairy or a little pig beast or something telling him the back story of his enemy. Let’s face it, nobody likes Constantine enough to tell him anything that might make him live longer, and he never fights fair. Also, Hellboy is brute force with a back up crew in the BPRD, although he rarely uses them, and, against Constantine’s magic and supernatural ties and influence, I think Hellboy would fall.
However, back when both characters were fresh, Hellboy could have taken the inexperienced Constantine.
Gotta say, nice choice to give Hellboy no dialogue in this. He’s usually so chatty but here he’s just real quiet, like he’s really preparing for this mentally.
I vote Constantine in this. He’s a tricky son of a bitch that’ll do anything to win a fight.