NBC might have canceled his television series, but John Constantine is like a bad penny: he always turns up, usually in a nasty place that involves blood, demons and ghosts.
And John has turned up once again in one of DC Comics new titles, Constantine: The Hellblazer, which promises to bring the character back to his horrifying roots, with our favorite demon hunter, exorcist and magician doing what he does best: falling into the worst situations, making bad decisions and paying the price for it.
Constantine: The Hellblazer #1 starts off with that promise, the first panel showing us John naked and covered in blood, standing in front of a shop girl. We have no idea what's happened before this, but we've seen John in such precarious situations before that it doesn't even faze the reader to see him like this again.
John does what he does best and convinces the girl she saw nothing and then heads off for a meal and a drink. Of course, he's haunted - literally - by the ghosts of his past, which keep trying to tell him something important, but John being John, doesn't want to hear it. Instead, he gets intimately reacquainted with Blythe, a demon he used to know, that plops him right into a typical Constantine-type situation.
This new title is a return to glory of John's Hellblazer days and right from the start, it sets the tone well. Constantine: The Hellblazer #1 is not quite as poetic as the original comic, but it pegs John's voice, and the tone of his life, perfectly. The script, by Ming Doyle and James Tynion IV, actually sounds like John, as opposed to the previous New 52 attempt.
In John's new world, superheroes exist and he's aware of them and mentions them, but this doesn't take away from the dark mood that makes up his world. This is a delicate balance Doyle and Tynion played and it's almost a sidenote: yeah, superheroes exist, but they don't really do anything to keep the darkness of the world at bay. Which is, obviously, why we need guys like John Constantine.
The artwork by Riley Rossmo is also a throwback to the first issues of Vertigo's Hellblazer, with stark lines, hard edges and dotted shadows. It almost feels like 1987 again, when John was first introduced to the world in The Saga of the Swamp Thing #37. Even John's apparel in this issue feels like the old Hellblazer: John is a man who is fashionable without even caring about fashion.
Constantine: The Hellblazer is a great reintroduction to a character that's been around for 20 years and it's nice to see him back at it, especially after NBC cancelled the Constantine television series. This is Constantine at his best, the way we remember him, and we can't wait to see where this new title takes him.
Story
★★★★☆
Art
★★★★ ★
Overall
★★★★☆
Photo Credit: DC Comics
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