*3.5. Another solid Constantine Trade. I still enjoy Jamie Delano’s writing but I found myself skipping certain parts. Overall I still enjoyed it but I skipped quite a few cause I felt those stories weren’t as interesting or engaging. This volume is definitely a mix up, a bit more misses compared to the previous volumes I’ve read but still enjoyable.

The main storyline here, about Constantine's face-off with a serial killer, is fascinating and kind of great -- it's really interesting to see him faced with an entirely different, human kind of fear. We've seen him deadly afraid many times, before and after, but rarely rattled the way he is here.As with so many of these early Hellblazer collections, the art is lackluster if not plain awful at times. The exception in this collection is Sean Phillips's art for the story "Mourning the Magician," w...

Good news: WAY better than The Fear Machine. The serial killer story in Family Man is well done and quite interesting in some places. If it weren't for the references to Scotland, you could almost pretend that The Fear Machine had never happened. I like how the story arc shows the buildup and aftermath in ways that are only tangential to the serial killer. The first issue reminds me of Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books, and the last issue of the arc revisits Constantine's sister and niece who

My favorite volume so far. Things start off when Constantine finds out an old friend of his is actually an escaped character from fiction novels. Sherlock Holmes and many other characters show up to take him back home. The real trouble starts later. This friend was a procurer of rare items. One of his clients collects true crime items, such as serial killer memorabilia. So a deal is made; in exchange for the items, he'll find victims for the serial killer. The serial killer is known as the Famil...

Hellblazer Book 4: "Family Man" collects Hellblazer issues #23, #24, and #28-33. Aside from a few stutters and stalled moments, this is another of the great old Hellblazer stories by Jamie Delano. (By the way, the reason issues #25-27 are skipped is probably because they were guest-written issues that aren't really part of the storyline.) This is the story of John's encounter with a serial killer who calls himself The Family Man -- how John encounters him, gets bound up in trying to stop him, an...

the best volume so far

Amazing writer

Wow, what a story. Constantine faces an all-too-human adversary in The Family Man. He's not the same on the other side of the bridge.

[It completely slipped my mind to review this volume collection last year so here we go]Comprised of eleven issues, The Family Man has to be my most favorite volume of all the Hellblazer collections so far. The reason is because Delano's story arc concerning the serial killer who targets happy families and his cat-and-mouse game with John Constantine definitely remains as one of the most chilling and memorable things I have read in Hellblazer. I'm currently in Ennis' run, but nothing in Ennis' s...

A vast improvement ovr the last collection by Delano. Some of these were very good but I enjoy storylines with more of an occult element, demons and such, as to me that is the point of the character and series. The Family Man was good but not what I expect to read with this character. My favorite issue by far was Mourning of the Magician, which was the only one with art worth mentioning, even though still not excellent.

Original SinsThe Devil you KnowThe Fear MachineAs usual, Thar be spoilers.Now before the main event (The Family Man) we have one quick issue to review:Larger than Life: Returning to London after the events of the Fear Machine, John is broke, so he tracks down an old mate, Jerry the Dealer. But something's going on with Jerry. And why are there all these strange characters floating around his house? The story for the most part makes for a good in between meals snack. It's also the first story whe...

Going to miss Delano

Link to my review of the new edition.

The strangeness of a Constatine comic is what makes you love it all the more. It takes more than a few pages to actually get a grip of the events that are unfolding. But when you do, the richness of the story is amazing! Hellblazer: The Family Man is something similar, which opens with a story that takes time to make head or tail of, but eventually moves to something more pulsating. This time, John Constantine is no longer facing demons, but rather tackling a serial-killer, a demon of another ki...

This volume is definitely of the more human horror kind. Serial killer and John mix it up. It is good to read books that are from the 80s in the 10s. It reminds me of some of the big issues that were brought by austerity and conservatism. I hated globalization. I still have problems with it but it is undeniable that companies try to keep the markets and by extension the countries they operate in, nominally peaceful. It is also true that there is more hidden poverty and underemployment now. But t...

I had never realized the connection with the Family Man in this Constantine story arc and the missing guest of honor in the serial killer con in the Sandman saga. 🤯

The Family Man has absolutely nothing to do with the Constantine you meet in the first issue, it is a classic detective comic, and while it alters Constantine's background in an irreversible way, this background was almost entirely ignored by every other writer who took over the series (which is great), hence, I don't recommend it as a cannon (nor a good) volume.Even if this story didn't age as badly as every classic crime comic, it would still deserve a bad rating, because this is not what I si...

My local library has an almost complete set of Hellblazer graphic novels, and I’m going from the beginning. The three I’ve read - Dangerous Habits, Family Man, and The Devil You Know - by Jamie Delano are amazing, and easily match more famous writers like Moore, Ennis, and Morrison. They read like gutter punk poetry, often literally in rhyme or songs. They also touch on issues that are really personal to me, like loneliness, mental illness, and being in a shitty punk band.

Larger than Life (23). A fun one-off that plays with ideas about literature and characters. It's a nice change of pace after the very long Fear Machine, but not as strong as some of Delano's earlier stories, mainly because it needs to keep hitting the same point. I'd like to think that it offers a possible answer to what might have happened at the nebulous end of Hellblazer #300 [7/10].The Family Man (24, 28-30). I've long thought that The Family Man is Delano's Hellblazer masterpiece. Part of t...

This collection is from the original run on Hellblazer. Most of this collection has John dealing with human matters than with magical ones. The best part is the section with the serial killer he helps by chance and then does everything he can to make it right. John pays for his actions in a very personal way but in the end good does triumph over evil in this collection. Overall a good collection and it can be read out of order since I read a later collection before reading this one.