Hellblazer at Comic Art

There are many disputable facts when you talk about comics, some of them though gather around them too many supporters to be ignored. Like who’s the best comics character in an ongoing series the last 20 years, if you ask me and some more thousands of readers we’ll tell you John Constantine, the Hellblazer. Many writers and artists of the best in the field have worked with this historical character and considered it an honour (Gaiman, Moore, Azarello, Risso, Ennis, Delano, Ellis, Carey, McKean, Frusin, god I can keep up all night) offering us some of the best stories we ever read about the absolute antihero, the cynic bastard whose friends always end up badly, the magus whose soul will be claimed by Satan himself, he’s John bloody Constantine and he’s the man!

Hellblazer is something more than a comic series just like Sandman was something more than a fairy tale, but in a profoundly different way. It started in the 80’s, an era of neo-conservatism and numerous changes and it found its unique way of commenting on serious stuff like religion, politics, economics, hooligans and criminality through a satiric filter of black magic, demons, angels and magicians. It even made it to the big screen recently (Constantine, starring Keanu Reeves) in a totally different from the comic, though pretty decent edition.

After the last story arc written by Denise Mina and the one-shot issue by Mike Carey this is a new chapter in the series with a whole new creative team. Andy Diggle (The Losers, Batman Confidential, Swamp Thing) writing it and Leonardo Manco (Archangel, Doom) as the artist promise “some old-school supernatural horror with a social conscience”. In this first issue of “In at the Deep End” John wakes up cuffed to a post in the river Thames while the tide is rising, if he’s going to survive this he’ll have to do some smooth talking, and pretty fast too.