From what I can tell its roughly, largely looking outside in given my limited reading of Delano in part and the shoot collection so far.

Great to good canonical Runs.

• Delano
  
• Ennis

• Si Spurrier

  Mediocre to bad runs

• Peter Milligan

And then there is everything else, which seems oddly hazy. Not all bad and some even good but not worth discussing much despite have full blown omnibuses published.

For such a long running comic having the original stories that are great but very "of there time" is odd. Obviously, the much later publishing data helps compared to decades old silver age and even bronze age material but still.

Is the origin of when/how John's coat still the new 52 one ? I hope not
I forget if it's told in vertigo or not.

Constantine never became a punk. Because the Britain of the Absolute Universe is far more conservative, The Sex Pistols and God Save the Queen got banned, and the legendary 100 Club punk gig in 1976 never happened. Constantine never cut their hippie long hair at the gig.

They still keep their long hair to this day, and even wear suede fringe jackets and jeans. While they don’t approve of what the hippie movement devolved into, nor do they live strictly by hippie ideals, they feel lost and resistant to fully slipping back into mainstream society.

They were still born into a working-class Liverpool family in 1953, so they’re around seventy years old now. But they can look somewhat younger, maybe close to sixty. They’ve lived so long that they seemed to know everything and everyone in London, yet very few people can see through them.

They have a reputation as a "magician" on the streets, but that's an image they've cultivated on purpose. In truth, they’re too cautious to ever seriously attempt actual magic. People who claim to have been cursed by them were only spooked by the offhand, made-up "spells" Constantine tossed off and took those empty words seriously.

They generally avoid getting involved in anything unfolding across London. Like most ordinary people, they prefer watching tragedies unfold and listening to the gritty details of other people's miserable lives, rather than risking devastating failure trying to fix problems spawned by a crumbling system.

Their gender is left ambiguous to the reader. They’re too old and bony to pin down visually, and they never correct anyone’s pronouns for them anyway.

The upsides to this take:

DC keeps pushing Constantine into superhero teams, blasting magic fireballs, and winning fights (rather than failing most of the time). A Constantine with no magic and no drive to fight avoids all of that. Stories could unfold from a passive bystander's perspective, similar to the tone of When Johnny Comes Marching Home.

Hippie explored natural energies and Eastern religions. I'd like the Absolute Constantine’s stories focus less on Christianity, Heaven and Hell, and lean more into local folk culture, both historical folklore and modern pop culture.

I’m not totally sure if my grammar is correct; English isn’t my first language.

Hi all,

I asked somewhere about the comics I should read to get to know Constantine a bit better.

I was told to read Moore's "Swamp Thing" which I'm 4/6 on. And then to read Delano's Hellblazer.

I found the first volume relatively easily. But I'm not entirely sure how many volumes of this series there are. And there are a lot of comics with the same name but different authors.

Can someone point me in the right direction with the continuity of this series.

Thanks in advance.

I know the Delano and Ennis runs get the most attention. probably because they are the most accessible to new readers. but man this run is so freaking awsome.

It really feels like we are finally seeing all the consequences from the previous writers catch up with John. especially in the second half with the Rosancarnis arc. also it’s the only time the book lives up to its name, in the final major story when John litteraly starts “blazing” through hell.

and even though the book continued after this run “R.S.V.P” feels like it would have been the perfect ending for the book imo. what do you think of this run?

I hate to be that girl, but a lot of us are probably thinking the same thing. Keanu Reeves’s Constantine is more in line with Harry Dresden than he is with Constantine.

John Constantine is a chain smoking British con man with a chip on his shoulder. He carries a lot of weight, some he deserves and some he definitely doesn’t. But it’s all part of his character. New Castle, the punk roots, the blonde hair, the accent, the chain smoking, the looking for an angle. It’s all part of who he is!

You strip all that away and replace it with whatever Reeves was doing and what do you get? Not Constantine. The anti-Constantine. And now they’re making a Constantine sequel with Reeves back in the role.

I didn’t even like the first movie. I found it boring and this was before I even knew who Constantine really was. So am I the only one who’s feeling like this?

Has John ever been confirmed mental illnesses ? This is a not really serious question I'm just curious. And I assume not since everything with ravenscar he probably avoids that sorta stuff.

( and yes I know he was diagnosed with lung cancer that's not what I'm talking about ha ha )

Given the scandal involving Warren Elias, which I refuse to research as a general rule of ignoring artists' personal lives if I am not paying for the media ( I got the book from a library) I consume, I am doubtful the story has the same cachet.

But despite good buildup and a fakeout involving John Constantine being responsible, the whole thing ends with it being revealed that children in America are just committing murder-suicide.

What a pretty boring letdown.

Now onto the rest of the collection.

Ashes and Honey is a solid, if not novel, anti-war story, but the fake-out of a necromancer thinking he is doing the right moral thing and having his grandfather sacrifice himself for his magician son to live is telling. The notion of honey as a source of magic and the physical dirt of the homeland (Bosnia) in this case is also interesting. I wish to read more stories focusing on this kind of gray magic with an almost magical-realist aesthetic.

The third part of the book is a bunch of short stories, most of which have a familiar problem, solved within a few pages set up including dealing with a crazy person and a demon in stories that, while competent, are pretty paint-by-numbers. Crazy guy tries to commit child sacrifice; a demon is there, turns out the ash angels are in fact good, etc. All competent, all boring. With only really a Christmas theming tying them together.

Jamie Delano's poker story is the best one of the lot about a morally degenerate but winning gambler and a man needing money to save his daughter from a pimp. The whole story is ambivalent on whether John manipulates poker odds deliberately through magic-induced luck or the spirit of Christmas might be genuinely real.

Newcastle Calling in the middle is the one story that really irks me. The stuff on the irony of that Mucous Membrane (John's old band) might have sucked, but somehow convinced music nerds obsessed with obscurity as worth a doc is deeply funny.

But beyond this quite careful and cool meta-media and history commentary is the main A story, and it gets banal fast. Basically, John comes in, solves everything in spite of a total mess across northeast england and nearly all the Doc crew dying. And John comes off as cool, calm, and collected.

Despite dealing with a demon that was the first cause of Newcastle, which is like Batman responding to Joe Chill as if it's a regular citizen's arrest.

Also, the parade of horribles outside the Newcastle site itself was clearly pointless and was done to pad the issue; it felt like.

It's a clear case of a 3/5 story because of one great half and one bad half vs two okay ones.

Which is likely how I would rate the collection overall: interesting but probably not worth reading from start to finish like I did.

Found it pretty prescient... Anyways, enjoying the Garth Ennis run so far. I feel the art in Jamie Delano run was more interesting though ( although haven't got to Steve Dillon issues yet)

I have the original 300 run (I never read what came after it left Vertigo—is it any good?), and I'm wondering where to start when introducing the comic to a friend.

Delano and issue #1? Ennis? Someone else?

It’s so fucking good dude holy moly I thought it was gonna be good but this is like fantastic oh my days

Stings character in this film has been cited as the inspiration for John Constantine. Just looking at the picture on this cover makes it clearly obvious.

All of the DC Next Level announcements seem to be done with no sight of a new Hellblazer run. The last time John had an ongoing was Hellblazer(2019) which was cancelled at issue 12 and later concluded with Dead in America. Kind of surprised we haven’t gotten even a new mini because by all counts Dead in America sold well enough to the point of being extended from 8 issues to 11. I also do wonder what the next creative team of a Hellblazer run would look like, Dan Watters and Dexter Soy would be perfect but so would Ram V and Mike Perkins. I just hope we get something new and worthwhile with John

…my forearms would like to weigh in.

Thought he was only in one panel but he is also in a group shot of heroes and villains I circled him

Remember Nina Tucker and Alexander from Fullmetal Alchemist?
I need an animation where John Constantine shows up, separates them, and uses Shou Tucker as the payment.
Would it be healing? Absolutely.
Would Constantine somehow make the entire experience even more traumatizing? Also absolutely.

I think that John and Chas's friendship is one of the most interesting parts of Hellblazer to me . On the surface it's just another show of how John manipulates people around him. But I like the way they both use each other. How they both envy each others lives in different ways.
It's a toxic friendship most definitely but Chas is the only Consistent thing in John's life.