Suppose John Constantine (rhymes with wine) decides to visit Chicago. His usual luck catches up to him, and general Bad Things[sup]TM[/sup] happen with him in the middle. The White Counsel of wizards sends their resident warden, Harry Dresden, to investigate.
Harry notices a rogue wizard smack in the middle of some bad shit. He naturally figures Constantine must be the cause. He figures he has to take Constantine on. Constantine realizes that there’s a powerful wizard gunning for him, and retaliates, or at least must protect himself.
We all know that at the end of the (comic)book, they both will end up as allies. But how does the first (several) conflicts go down?
The book series is still running, and it’s damned good.
Regarding the hypothetical, Dresden will get his ass handed to him pretty consistently right up until all the clues line up for him, at which time he and Constantine will kick some serious ass together.
The movie was five years ago, but a lot of people said it was a pretty poor adaptation. So was the show based on the Dresden Files; not only was it a sorry attempt to adapt the books, and not only did they hack the pilot down from 125 minutes to 45, of the 12 episodes only the last two were shown in production order so it hardly made sense continuity-wise. The fact that it was canceled is not a shocker. I’d love for HBO or Showtime to reboot DF and make it a lot more faithful to the books than Syfy’s attempt.
I’ve only seen the movie, so I don’t have a good grasp on how Constantine would interact with Harry. I guess it could sort of go like Proven Guilty, with Harry slowly realizing that he wasn’t looking for the bad guy he thought he was. Sue needs to be involved, though. Has to be.
The Syfy version of *Dresden *had a pretty solid actor playing Harry, they did a great job with interpreting Bob(and had a good actor playing him), and that’s about it. Nothing else about the series was appealing to me. I first saw an episode before I’d read the books, and I saw a couple episodes on Hulu or something after I’d read them all. Just utterly forgettable.
I like what I’m hearing about a Harry-John showdown so far. Harry would dominate in the first battle with John barely making an escape, John would pull out a surprise on their second meeting, then in the end, Harry will end up working towards John’s goals. Or maybe they’ll meet without magic flying, and they’ll form a grudging alliance, working towards the same goals, but arguing how to go about it.
How would John fair from a ‘obey the laws of magic’ standpoint?
Not very well. According to Ennis’ interpretation, JC puts “the fix” on people on a regular basis. Using the Jedi Mind Trick is a big No No according to The White Counsel.
Does the 4th law of magic, the no mind control one, only apply to people, or would it apply to demons, too? If it’s the latter, it’d make exorcism hard.
Most of the Laws seem to extend only to humans, but judging by Storm Front the Fourth Law is one that extends to creatures of the Nevernever as well. Seems a little inconsistent to me, but.
Anyway, exorcisms don’t seem to be covered. Dresden’s mentioned in later books that he used to do them on occasion. The Fourth Law allows compulsion through prior arrangements, or acting to exploit the rules a magical creature must abide by. This is why Dresden can force a fae to answer him truly three times without falling afoul of the Law, or coerce a spirit. It’s only direct seizing of the mind that’s unLawful.
It only applies to humans as far as I can tell.
My dear bride and I are enjoying the book series now.
We are reading ‘Proven Guilty’.
The books get better as the series progresses which says a lot about the author’s skills.
This is a tough one because I love both series. I have to give the battle to Dresden. He becomes a seriously heavy hitter in the power and battle magic arena and that isn’t really Johns style (John isn’t weak, but usually doesn’t do the whole massive field effect “oops I just turned a building to ashes” thing magic).
John could call down a demon and split, but low level demons aren’t really that big of a deal toward the later books to Dresden, so it would have to be a hoss.
John could call zombies…Dresden has a good handle on zombies.
Also, Dresden wouldn’t kill him (with magic) without a damn good reason with the 1st Law in play. He usually thinks before putting a bullet through some one as well.
John is the far better con man though and him getting his ass kicked between the ears will surely play out to his benefit. Harry has screwed over some rather witty characters as well. John is certainly the more cunning of the two.
You’ll notice that the thread in which you’re posting has been lying dormant the last couple of years, so in the lingo of the boards, you’ve “resurrected a zombie thread”. The fact that you’ve resurrected it with a post about zombies with a voodoo-esque name like Papa Midnight is excellent.
Poke around for a while and check it out. Based on your single post to date, you may like it here.
(and I really liked the Dresden TV show. In a world where it seems impossible to make a urban-fantasy TV show so crappy that it doesn’t get renewed for at least six seasons, I was kind of bitter the axed it so fast).
I think that different laws exist for different reasons. The ones against time travel and “opening the Outer Gates” are based on the principle that breaking the timeline or dooming civilization is a Bad Thing. The law against killing humans is based on the problem that magically killing humans corrupts the wizard to do so by some kind of backlash; which is why it only applies to humans (and the function of the Blackstaff is that it negates the backlash, which is why McCoy can kill humans as needed without going psycho). The law against mind control also appears to be based on what it does to the caster, and because it apparently is innately harmful to the target. The law against coercion on the other hand appears to be ethical in nature as far as I can tell.