In the current story arc of the Vertigo comic book Hellblazer, John Constantine, who was originally modeled by Alan Moore after the young Sting, travels back to the 1970’s to rescue his fiancee and winds up meeting his earlier self. Each of them is repulsed by what he sees. Constantine the younger is a punk, with a mohawk and piercings and attitude to match; the current Constantine is a fattened fifty-something with not much to show for himself. The results of this bad team-up are hilarious, especially when the twentyish fiancee winds up sleeping with the younger Constantine, but returning to present-day life with the version who is more than twice her age. Each Constantine feels like a cuckold — to himself.

I thought of this today when I read this piece about Johnny Rotten, who has a penchant for doing home repair, and who is peddling a new book of his sketches — for $750.  I don’t begrudge Mr. Rotten, born John Lydon, his success. I’m glad he’s still with us, and I look forward to that eventual new PiL album and tour. But I would enjoy seeing an encounter between Johnny Rotten circa 1977 and John Lydon in 2011 purchasing plumbing supplies in the local hardware store.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 30th, 2011 at 7:35 pm and is filed under Comics, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.