Love and Betrayal.
Oh, John – what have you done now, you git?
A new beginning for the mage is here from the words of Ming
Doyle and James Tyrion Jr alongside the artwork of Riley Rossomo.
And instead of going too much in-universe, John is now doing
his own thing in a corner of the DC connected universe without Batman or
Superman poking around.
SPOILERS FOLLOW………
John Constantine. Naked. Dripping in blood.
Yeah, that’s just the opening page.
Using his hypnosis spells and psychic papers, John manages to
worm his way out of a shop clerk’s gaze by making her give him some clothes in
lieu of a paper with ‘credit card’ written on it.
Even as he dresses up, a ‘ghost’ arrives – former band mate
and friend, the late Gary Lester. Attempting to tell John something, he is
forced away by an irritated John.
Walking down the road, John pinches a wallet from a
particularly rude huge fellow – with his ghostly entourage in tow. Entering a
restaurant, he strikes up a conversation with the bartender, but they are interrupted
by a demon named Blythe who’s got a history with Constantine.
Moving away from the bar and into Blythe’s club, they shag
before the demoness gets down to business – she needs someone banished.
Going from the ninth floor entrance to the first one in a
form of Dante’s Inferno, John sees every form of evil in Man and more before
being led to the main stage to face his target – Haluk, Blythe’s business
partner and ‘stabbie-in-the-back’ victim.
Blythe forces John to face an enraged Haluk, but John cleverly
stops in the middle of the banishment spell – forcing Blythe to finish it. This
establishes a connection to hell and Blythe is dragged back there, despite
having agreed to share the newly gotten power with John.
Even as the ghostly entourage returns, one of them (Gary) forcibly makes John
hear him – that one of them, Frank, is ‘dead’, his ghost ripped to shreds. And
as always, it’s John’s fault.
The main theme of this issue atleast seems to be the ‘trick’
– people believing what they want to believe. The shop clerk wanted to believe
it was just another day at office, Blythe wanted to believe John would help
her, the bartended wanted to believe he wasn’t alone….and John wants to believe
he can be alone.
It’s so fun for a Hellblazer reader to see the Newcastle crew appear
again. Makes me wonder how much of the Hellblazer mythos they will retain.
SPOILERS END………….
Ming and Tryion really seemed to have made a checklist of
how to make this book feel like Hellblazer and while they did tick most boxes,
I’m still waiting for a little more complexity of the good old days.
Rossomo’s art takes a little time to grow on you but that
Dante’s Inferno bar panel stack is awesome.
So, I give it a 8.0 out of 10.
+Some great true blue Constantine
moments
+Some of the visuals were truly wonderful
+Feels like Hellblazer but….
-Still lacking a soul
-A little formulaic
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