The true John Constantine disappeared for a while as a superhero-friendly version of the character entered the main DC Universe. While that iteration still exists in books like Justice League Dark, the original Constantine has returned in all his messy glory in the new John Constantine: Hellblazer series. Written by The Dreaming’s Simon Spurrier—check out last week’s Big Issues for more on his phenomenal work on that title—this new Hellblazer title is an exceptional return to form featuring stunning artwork from artists Aaron Campbell, Matías Bergara, colorist Jordie Bellaire, and letterer Aditya Bidikar.
The series is full of the clever ideas, socio-political commentary, and snappy dialogue that have come to define Spurrier’s work, and he has a deep understanding of John Constantine’s character and the seedy urban world he thrives in. Spurrier always has a sense of humor in his writing, and the current John Constantine: Hellblazer two-parter leans into comedy even more aggressively as Constantine meets the hipster sorcerer who replaced him as the “Magelord of England.” This exclusive preview of John Constantine: Hellblazer #5 highlights the fun this creative team has with this odd couple dynamic, and Bergara and Bellaire immediately distinguish Tommy Willowtree from Constantine by presenting him as a beacon of bright enthusiasm and cheer.
Spurrier and Bergara created one of the best fantasy series in recent memory with their work on Boom! Studios’ Coda, and Hellblazer takes them into a more grounded environment while still providing opportunities for mystical spectacle. Bellaire’s colors enhance the expressive qualities of Bergara’s linework and layouts, like the rush of warm light that bathes Tommy in the morning and the ethereal mix of blue and green paint when Tommy is approached by the Guardians of the Merlintrove. Bergara’s character work is full of animated personality, and his coming timing is completely in sync with Spurrier’s script, which gains some extra punch from Bidikar’s use of bold, italic, and lowercase vs. uppercase letters. This book is designed to be new reader friendly with shorter arcs that stand on their own, so it’s easy to hop on to John Constantine: Hellblazer and catch up with DC’s #1 scumbag magician.
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So how’s it work? The real JC goes straight from #300 to this work? Do I need to read any in between appearances? Any other DC comics essential to knowing what went on in the middle 7 years?
Am i missing the preview?
I haven’t read any of the new series. How did they bring Constantine back to life after he died at the end of the original series?
1) Gemma didn’t hit him with the dart, so he’s probably not dead in the original series.
2) The final arc of the series was about him having a young pretender who looked just like him showing up.
From a meta-textural standpoint, I think the message for the previous series is pretty clear: This is John’s relative pretending to be him, which explains all of the bullshit magic lasers coming out of New 52 “John Constantine’s” hands.
This arc does sound good, but I’m still pretty bitter about them cancelling “Hellblazer” in favor of the New 52 dipshit version of the character.
Yeah, what made John Constantine such a compelling character was NOT that he was a Doctor Strange-style, “pew pew” trippy-magic sorcerer… but that he was just a really, really, REALLY good con-man (with a few tricks up his sleeve).
If you want that snarky version of Strange-meets-Constantine, then you’re looking for Harry Dresden, not the Hellblazer himself.
It’s a bit more complicated than that. This John is the Constantine from an alternate future first seen in the original Books of Magic miniseries.The Constantine from the end of the original series is actually the villain.
I’m not sure this is that Constantine. They’ve reset Constantine as a new, younger blank slate at least twice now.
I’m confused, where exactly is the exclusive preview?
Well, it’s very exclusive…
Like Jack Carter (a character who definitely wasn’t John Constantine) said when he turned into a character who definitely wasn’t Spider Jerusalem… “The Eighties are long over. Time to move on. Time to be someone else.”Planetary was so good.
As a fan of Warren Ellis, Transmetropolitan and Constantine, I most definitely didn’t squee the first time I read that issue of Planetary. And I agree…that was such a fantastic series.
Crap, I read Planetary practically on top of Transmetropolitan (long after they both came out) and never noticed that.
Ellis’ shamelessness is matched only by his skill. Planetary was the pinnacle of meta-textual comic books and we have not seen its like since. His work at Wildstorm established him as a literary god. This, Stormwatch>The Authority, Global Frequency, and Desolation Jones are some of the best things ever put on paper.
That may have been the point (or one of them) that I started to get disillusioned with Warren Ellis. Spider had his moments, but he never really went beyond Hunter S. Thompson 2099 (and that’s not even saying that Transmetropolitan was ever close to being as good as HST was at his best), and the series ended weak, with Ellis clearly wanting just to wrap it up and move on. But Ellis prematurely declared in this story that Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman et al. were old and busted and that he was the new hotness, and it was just embarrassing.
It might have seemed premature at the time. Now? It kind of seems like he wasn’t wrong. I mean, maybe he wasn’t personally the new hotness, but Gaiman and Moore were old and busted by then. I know people still love Gaiman but c’mon. I’m 42 and he seems a bit retro to me.
But that was really neither true then nor now. Between 1999 and 2002, Gaiman published Stardust (the novel version), American Gods, and Coraline; Moore was doing America’s Best Comics, including Promethea, quite possibly the best thing that he’s ever done. Plus, of course, The Sandman was (and is) still very popular, and Watchmen has never gone out of print. The recent TV adaptations of Good Omens and Watchmen were big hits; so was American Gods, for a while, until it got caught up in a sad game of Musical Showrunners, and we should get an adaptation of The Sandman one of these days. Moore, personally, seems to have shed himself of direct participation in popular culture, between distancing himself from his most popular works (including Watchmen) and quitting comics, but Gaiman was directly involved in Good Omens and many of the other adaptations (he’s exec-producing Sandman).And Ellis? Never quite as big a deal as either one. I mean, RED got made into a big Bruce Willis movie, but only after heavy rewriting, and the sequel was a bust. He’s doing Castlevania, which people like, I guess. I’ll admit that I’m a little biased against him due to being a former member of the old Warren Ellis Forum on Delphi, which came to a not-great end. Part of that was his alienating a big chunk of the forum’s readership by trashing genre work, because he was this big genius, see, who would transcend mere genre with bleeding-edge speculative fiction. That didn’t really work out for him.
I think you’re missing my point, possibly, as you say, because of your personal dislike of Ellis (I don’t give a shit either way about him, personally).As I said, he himself was indeed not “the new hotness”, but nothing Gaiman has done after that comic was written has been particularly exciting. Your examples, for me, support my point very clearly. American Gods as a mediocre book, that people seemed to like because it was conceptually novel to them, rather than being particularly good (and people frequently like far less on re-readings, I note – the extremely weak central character becomes more obvious). The TV show was weak from the outset, and despite some strong visuals seemed outdated/outmoded in a similar way to, for example, Carnival Row. Stardust is trite nonsense that was made into a forgettable and frequently forgotten film. Neither they nor Coraline had anything to say, and I don’t think any of them have been particularly influential. Gaiman has been a spent force, creatively, for a long time. People don’t like to think it, but that’s certainly how it seems to me. I say this as someone who in the 1990s, was tremendously impressed with Gaiman’s work in general. Good Omens is from 1990, so back when Gaiman was exciting and had something to say. The TV series, unfortunately, despite casting the best possible leads (they are both perfect as is their chemistry, arguably better than the book!), rather staid and unimpressive – it actually hews too close to the book, which, being from 1990, doesn’t really have much punch now (they should have vastly re-worked the plot, frankly).Moore seems similar but to have disengaged entirely. Promethea is great in a very academic and theoretical sort of way, but again, influential in the way his earlier works were? No evidence of it so far. Watchman had staggering influence, as did a lot of his works from before when Ellis wrote this. But after? The recent Watchman show was almost better than the original comic (obviously as an artistic response it could not exist without it, but what a response! I would never have believed it).That’s my point, if it’s still unclear. Ellis clearly noted a point where Gaiman and Moore were no longer in tune with the spirit of the age, were no longer hot in the way they once were. He may have been an idiot to assume he was the guy who got it, but it wasn’t wrong to point out that they no longer did.Hellblazer is likewise coming across rather fogey-ish here. Constantine himself was absolutely the ‘80s equivalent of a hipster, with his trenchcoat and louche demeanour/choice of language and so on, so him sneering at a hipster now seems both like something he would totally do, but also like something which is clearly lacking in self-awareness and a bit hypocritical. This is also part of the problem when you have these sort of “always the same age” comic book characters, but some element of them, or multiple elements, is tied quite tightly to a specific era.
Did someone say “Jack Carter”?
When I read it at the time, I thought he was becoming King Mob (it would fit, right?) but you’re right, this is Spider Jerusalem.
“This exclusive preview of John Constantine: Hellblazer #5″
just the cover? or is the gallery part of the page not loading for me..
Just read issue #1 of this recently, I was hooked the moment I saw John mention that being a super-hero just wasn’t his scene. And Justice League Dark was fine, but it’s nice to go back to a Constantine that’s more of a con-man and moving in the shadows.
I can’t overstate this. This comic is SO. GOOD.
This might be a Constantine who swears his head off and is often an absolute c***, but given that he’s not in his sixties I wouldn’t say this is “The true John Constantine”, as he’s still stuck in the Long Journey’s End.
I mean who doesn’t hate hipsters? Probably half of the hipsters even hate hipsters.If the Nazis were anti-hipster instead of anti-Semite they would probably still in be power today.