159 The Hellblazer Vol 2: The Smokeless Fire

I have always loved John Constantine.  The Vertigo series is top notch (though if you read a few posts back, I didn't love ALL of it) and I've been enjoying reading through it again.  A few years back DC decided to end John's Vertigo life and replanted him firmly in the proper DC Universe.  In effect, they took everything awesome about the Hellblazer series and cut it off at the balls.  It's been a few years now and they seem to finally be ready to give John his balls back again, or at least one of them.

This book was kinda, sorta great.  It's still not quite where John should be, but it's the closest we've seen from the proper John Constantine in years.  He sounds like John again, he acts like John again, he's a bastard again.  I like.  My only real quibble with this book is the art.  The art is just not right.  It looks like a lighter, more kid friendly style that doesn't jibe with the happenings in the book.  To me, at least.  The art is lovely, but it just doesn't fit.  I want Simon Oliver to stay with this book for a good long time.  DC finally has found a decent writer for this series.

The Hellblazer Vol 2: The Smokeless Fire

Writer: Simon Oliver

Artist: Davide Fabbri, Philip Tan, Jose Marzan Jr, Karl Kesel

DC Comics

067 The Hellblazer Vol 1: The Poison Truth

First the good news.  This volume reprints the Rebirth issue that was also published at the end of the previous volume.  When I first read that, I kind of breathed a sigh of relief.  DC has cut the balls off of John Constantine, realized that they did a bad thing, and have been working on trying to reattach them.  The Rebirth issue showed a lot of promise.  This volume starts with that issue, and I'm afraid it might be the best issue reprinted here.  

This is John Constantine's third relaunch since cancelling his Vertigo book.  The New 52 launch was awful.  They completely neutered him.  Alfred Pennyworth had more of a sharp edge to him than John Constantine did.  They really tried to integrate him HARD into the regular DCU.  Guess what?  I didn't work.  That book was eventually cancelled (along with Justice League Dark, which went from being a great book to absolute unreadable garbage in a short span of time) and replaced with a second go round.  That book was better, but it still wasn't quite John Constantine.  He was still a little too kind, a little too gentle, but heading in the right direction.  Maybe the phrase I'm looking for is "user friendly."  He was a little too user friendly.  He's not supposed to be likable.  He's supposed to be a bastard who happens to do good along the way.  His heart would be in the right place if he had one.  This John had too much heart still.  And now we have our third launch.  Maybe it's going in the right direction, I don't know.  Why?  Because this is almost more of a Swamp Thing (and don't get me started on what a walking disaster that is) story than a Hellblazer story.  Aaaannnnnndddddd, it's only the first half of the story.

I love John Constantine.  I'm eating up the remastered series of Vertigo Hellblazer trades.  The last three runs, though, not as much.  DC, you can do better.  You really can.  I don't know why you won't.

The Hellblazer Vol 1: The Poison Truth

Writer: Simon Oliver

Artist: Moritat, Pia Guerra, Jose Marzan Jr

DC Comics

012 John Constantine Hellblazer Vol 8: Rake At The Gates Of Hell

I used to love Hellblazer back in the day.  I read the series when it first came out and stuck with it for a number of years before ultimately dropping the title.  There was a time when my choice was between reading everything I wanted to or buying groceries.  I was fat.  Groceries won.  By the time the stories in this volume were originally published, I was no longer reading the book.  And that's a shame.  Over vacation at the beginning of December I read the previous volume of this, collecting the first half of the Ennis/Dillon run.  It was wonderful.  This book finishes up their amazing run.  To date, it's been my favorite run.  Garth Ennis did such an amazing job building up (and ripping apart) the supporting cast.  He put John through the fucking ringer and it was so much fun to watch John fall, pick up the pieces and rise again, sticking it to the fucking devil.

DC/Vertigo has done something pretty wonderful with this series.  They've gone back and are in the process of "remastering" the run.  Most every issue has been collected in trade before, but what they're doing with this run is more of a chronological reprinting of the entire series.  Some of the stories presented in the earlier volumes haven't been collected before because they didn't fit the trade paperback format.  I think volume 14 is the most recent one out, so I'm a bit behind, but I'm catching up!

I enjoyed this run so much I ordered the first Preacher trade.  I need to get to that soon.

Writer: Garth Ennis
Artist: Steve Dillon, William Simpson, Peter Snejbjerg
Vertigo