I've seen the movie Constantine that was sorta based on Hellblazer and now with the TV series coming out I thought I would give it a try. This collects the first 9 issues and I warn you that you do need to read the introduction or the last few pages really don't make much sense. The nice thing is the discussion of the last few panels in the book doesn't ruin the story arc in this collection at all.
Constantine is man of of magic that gets around solving problems that crop around him by way of people he knows or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now that I've started reading these I'll be picking up more of them. I don't think I can power through them since they are dark but don't have the humor of Hellboy to lighten them up. ( )

One of the best books I've read in a long time - I'm hooked! ( )

It's probably naive or at least uninformed of me to say that this was NOTHING like the movie (Constantine, that is), but I have to admit I was blown away with the scope of the comic book. Set in 1980s England, I thought the political aspect of the book was also appropriate and I couldn't help but cringe a little at how much things have stayed the same. Beautiful colors and illustrations. I found the text to be a bit hokey at times, but I was so distracted by the art work that I didn't mind most of the time. ( )

I really liked the Constantine parts, but I think I was expecting this to read like a graphic novel instead of a hodgepodge with Swamp Thing at the end. It's like a whole bunch of arcs started, but none of them ended. I suppose then I must continue my Constantine search elsewhere. ( )

Dark and full of British wit and style, this is a pretty cool book. It's more disturbing than the TV show with pretty gruesome demons and a good deal of politics. You can tell it's a product of the 80s, but don't hold that against it.

The Swamp Thing comics at the end, included because they cross over with Constantine, are a bit throwaway in my opinion. I'd rather have more Hellblazer! ( )

John Constantine is one of my favorite characters in literature, mainly because he manages to be such a genuine bastard at the same time has having a staunch set of morals. Not that being a nasty character is a great thing, but because it makes him more real than had he been a nice guy. Also, most of his battles are "fought" with cunning and smarts rather than with magic spells, which is a huge amount of fun to read, especially since Constantine is a master of the sarcastic remark.

This new edition of Original Sins includes Hellblazer stories 1-9 as well as a Constantine tie-in story from Swamp Thing issues 76-77.

The Hellblazer issues included are "Hunger" where the hunger demon Mnemoth has been set free, "A Feast of Friends" where Pap Midnight teams up with Constantine to trap Mnemoth, "Going for It" where Constantine must face demon Blathoxi (and is tortured by having to watch Thatcher speak), "Waiting for the Man" where a serial killer has gotten hold of Constantine's niece, "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" where Constantine wanders into a veteran's Vietnam flashbacks, "Extreme Prejudice" where the Damnation Army creates a monster and Constantine battles is with the great and mighty weapon that is ... football, "Ghost in the Machine" where Ritchie Simpson enters cyberspace to spy on the Resurrection Crusaders, "Intensive Care" where the demon Nergal heals Constantine as payment for ruining the Resurrection Crusaders' plans for Zed/Mary, and "Shot to Hell" where his subconscious self hands out some tough love and Swamp Thing manifests from cigarette-tobacco.

The Swamp Thing issues included are "L'adoration De La Terre" where Swamp Thing takes over Constantine's body and Abby goes to visit Matt (he of later raven fame in Sandman) and "Infernal Triangles" where Abby leaves the swamp to sort out her emotions, but soon returns, ironically thanks to Constantine, to reunite with Swamp Thing. ( )

The beginning is horrible. Especially the second story. And I didn't care much for the art either. It gets interesting towards the end where a story spans several issues and "the plot thickens" but overall it's not that interesting. ( )

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

DC Comics imprint Vertigo recently announced the coming cancellation of one of their flagship titles, John Constantine, Hellblazer*; and that has inspired me to finally read all 300 issues that will eventually make up the run (or at least as many of them that the Chicago Public Library carries), after reading individual issues here and there over the decades but never really becoming a regular fan. After all, this was one of the seven original comics from the late 1980s that convinced DC to launch Vertigo in the first place (and the only one still being published to this day), after coming to realize that a growing amount of their titles were starting to display a level of sophistication and edginess simply inappropriate for younger readers; and it could be argued that Constantine is the most well-loved of them all among actual comics creators, in that this grumpy, good-looking Brit with one foot always in the supernatural world is the one Vertigo legacy character most allowed to display an acerbic wit and world-weary attitude about the fantastical things going on around him, which is like catnip among an industry of writers whose jobs mostly revolve about the latest derring-do escapades of shiny happy superheroes.

I started my epic read with the first two graphic novels, Original Sins and The Devil You Know, comprising the first thirteen standalone issues from way back in 1988 and '89, both of them primarily written by Jamie Delano and drawn/inked by a variety of artists; but I have to admit with a little sadness that these are really starting to show their age, including purple prose that is much too overblown simply because Delano could now get away with it, illustrations that sometimes belie the pro/am state the comics industry was still in during the '80s, and a manytimes laughable obsession with such trendy _targets as yuppies, Margaret Thatcher, London skinheads and other such instantly datable subjects. But much like my fellow CCLaP critic Oriana Leckert when she first disappointingly read Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns 25 years after it too first came out, perhaps my own disappointment with the first year of Hellblazer is actually a very good thing; because it means that the comics industry as a whole has been greatly expanding and maturing in those resulting 25 years, that it has reached such a level of legitimate sophistication that these first experiments from the start of this maturation now seem clunky and childish in comparison. I'm going to continue reading, because I'm fascinated to see how this title changes once taken over in the '90s by such industry legends as Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis and Brian Azzarello, and I also recommend these early volumes to anyone like me who's interested in seeing the long and slow morphing of both this title and comics in general as an art form; but certainly you should keep your expectations low when picking up these first collections, and understand that they were being produced in an age still dominated by campy TV Batman and throwaway titles still sold literally on spinner racks at drugstores.

Out of 10: 7.5

*Let's make it clear, however, that John Constantine as a character will still be going through new adventures, although to explain this to the uninitiated takes a few minutes. See, in 2011 DC made the unprecedented decision to literally cancel every comic their company was producing, reboot the entire shared universe where their stories collectively took place, and relaunch the "DC Universe" under a series of brand-new titles, collectively known as the "New 52." Then at the same time, they also decided to turn Vertigo into an entirely creator-owned comics line, and to take all the DC-owned characters in Vertigo titles and pull them back into DC comics; and so in practical terms that means that the character will now be appearing in a post-reboot comic put out by DC simply known as Constantine, the character itself rolled back to his early twenties in age (he had been aging in real time in Hellblazer, making him in his late fifties when the original title was cancelled), and now no longer beholden to any of the plot developments from these previous 25 years of stories. Which like all "New 52" decisions has been controversial among DC's original aging customer base (i.e. me and all my Gen-X hipster-douchebag friends), but that has had new issues selling to young people again like hotcakes, which of course was the whole point of the reboot in the first place. ( )

Atmospheric, political and ever so slightly dated urban horror that positively revels in the seedy grotesquery of late eighties Britain. Delano's Alan Moore-aping purple prose is occasionally a bit longwinded, but it doesn't detract from a great collection of stories that serve as a fine introduction to the working class magus John Constantine. ( )

I started reading Hellblazer around issue 60, and only much later was able to go back and read the first ones. I enjoyed these first few stories, but I'm very, very glad that I was able to move quickly through the interminable Dream Machine storyline that followed. That would have been a year of my life I would have found difficult to get back, and I'm not sure I would have still been reading the comic by the end. But I digress.

John Constantine remains one of my favorite fictional characters. He's not always been consistent as writers have come and gone, but for the most part he's retained his sarcastic, cynical and ultimately human self that first drew me into the series. ( )

[close] This is my first Constantine comics (it's the one the guy who sold it recommended), and the third comic (graphic) book I've ever read in my life (oh the drama).

Although it is not the volume on which the movie is based, I have found a lot of things which slightly differ from the movie. Such as Midnite's club. (Although Midnite himself looks exactly as I would have imagined him).
John Constantine himself was cute and great, and cynical like he was in the movie. The only problem was that he seemed a bit stupid every once in a while, but perhaps that straightens out in the next volumes.
The only thing which really pissed me was that the illustrators tended to colour his green sometimes for no apparent reason!

I like the world they've created there, with the demons and the monsters. But I didn't find it as rich and full as in the movie, although perhaps that too improves with the next volumes.
So when I have an extra 25 dollars, I'll buy another. :)

12.3.07 ( )

This is the first Hellblazer collection and contains Jamie Delano's full run on the Hellblazer title. These aren't my favorite Hellblazer storylines, but it's a good place to start and gives a lot of important background. This actually makes more sense now that I've read Alan Moore's Swamp Thing storylines that feature Constantine. ( )

Tradução de: John Constantine, Hellblazer, Vol. 1: Original Sins