This is my first foray into the original John Constantine graphic novels - I've enjoyed some of the New 52 issues and the unfortunately cancelled NBC series starring Matt Ryan. I enjoy the writing style and seeing Constantine come to life on the page. I only wish the color palette matched up more with the tone. I will definitely be continuing these graphic novels.

Now that DC decided to kill Vertigo off for good, I wanted to go through some of the imprint's books that I always wanted to read but haven't yet gotten the chance. Chief among them is the original Hellblazer, one of the most famous Vertigo series with an incredibly impressive list of creators attached to it over the years. But it all started right here, with Jamie Delano and John Ridgway kicking off Constantine's earliest solo stories in comics. I was surprised by how well those stories hold up...

I own 56 issues of DC / Vertigo Hellblazer comics, from 1988 to 2012. The series ran from 1988 to 2013 (ending at issue 300) and was revived a few times later, the character John Constantine, one of the most successful occult / detective figures in modern comics.It was easier to read these as a single issue; the heavy, macabre themes and dark tones – demons, Hell, torture, death and other unpleasant subjects, haunt the pages and for me at least are best served up in small packages.Reading the gr...

Hunger (1-2). Delano kicks off the Hellblazer comic (300 issues ago!) with a real gut punch. We learn about Constantine, his ghosts, and his pragmatism all in a harsh, beautiful comic. Seeing Papa Midnight for the first time is just icing on the cake. Beyond that the writing is poetic and the storytelling is strong. A great start! [9/10]Going for It (3). This is another marvelous story, with its imagination of devilish stock brokers creating an infernal market of greed in the late '80s. Delano's...

This is a book which is very much the sum of its parts. Let me explain, thee stories were written in the 80s and reflect a lot of the fears and trends of that time (especially the UK). Some of them feel rather dated - not because we have grown beyond them, rather that more even more scarier and extreme events have over shadowed them.However this book is also a response to some of the more glamorised and sanitised stories that were starting to make their appearance - do not let the film or TV sho...

Usually I'm not one to fall into trends, but I've been watching and enjoying the Constantine TV show, so I thought I should give the comic a look see. It was kind of funny because the day I read the feast of friends issue was the same day it was shown on TV.I liked this collection, but I'm thinking it gets better later on. It seems like at this point they are still trying to figure out the story. It was also a pre-Vertigo era, so John is in the same world as Batman and Superman. Something I thin...

Definitely some of the strongest, most affecting writing I’ve encountered in comics from the 80’s. I think I actually bought the first issue of this when it came out, but not clearly didn’t hook me then; maybe it’s just a little adult aka “depressing and fatalistic about how powerless we are as humans” for a teenage boy, even one who thought himself very grown up. There’s a somber, pallid quality to the storytelling, as if the joy quotient in life has been sucked dry from the very pages, leaving...

This held up much better than I remember from the first time I read it years ago. I originally started buying Hellblazer off the comic book rack during the Garth Ennis / Steve Dillon era and went back to find these when I fell in love with the character. At the time, they didn't hold a candle to Ennis's run and DC didn't even bother to reprint most of Jamie Delano's comics for decades. Delano's run is important in that it sets up a lot of world building for the future. Ennis notably builds off w...

It's rare I find myself reading a book compulsively: that I can hardly resist devouring it and at the same time want much of the experience to last longer; that keep I reading bits of it through the day for breaks from other things and can't wait to get back to it. (This is probably unusual compared with most frequent GR users, who, I assume, feel like this about a lot of what they read, not just once or twice a year at most.) It's even rarer that this coincides with something I'd give 5 stars.

Good ideas but poor execution, or maybe its just me but I can't deal with this style of writing. Just a chore to get through as at points it was just missing a red line to follow. I really wanted to like this but it just feels so dated while not being that good to begin with. As I said the ideas and the characters itself aren't bad just the way they are told.Themes as well as concepts seem like they are working at first but then you realize they are lesser knock offs of other popular media from

After shuffling through a couple of pages of the weird storyline and a few disturbing images later I realised, not my cup of tea. I don't mind disturbing images but I prefer a method to my madness!

John Constantine is an a*****e ! There was a fair bit of deliberation I did to find a word that would suit this character best and finally settled on this. He is a whiner, a cry baby, a coward and someone whom you cannot really trust. An antithesis to all the factors you ascribe to a hero. He also smokes like a choo-choo train with the end result being that his lungs would inevitably be twin barrels of tar. Even with all these, he is a first class wizard and a man whose intellect is in superb co...

Well...this was different than what I expected. I've been wanting to sit down and finally read some Hellblazer. For years I heard good things. I've read other stuff with the mystical fighter in it but never his own series. So I decided to buy volume 1-5 of the Hellblazer series on sale. Is it good? Well...This is broken into a few different stories. It all mostly revolves around John trying to come to terms of what and who he is. He's done some terrible things in his life and in this story we ge...

It takes me ages to read Hellblazer strips because I find myself painstakingly doing a Liverpudlian accent for John Constantine in my head. This is one of the things that was so annoying about the screen adaptations of the character, because Keanu just plays him as American, and Matt Ryan starts off in his natural Welsh accent, then seems to think better of it and gradually adopts a sort of Liverpool-light voice. Whereas to me, I always heard him in a strong, Craig-Charles-esque brogue. (Now I w...

Earlier this year I tried Hellblazer: All His Engines by Mike Carey and absolutely loved it! That was my first Constantine comic (except for a few appearances in various DC comics) so I was really excited to try this ongoing series that is pretty much considered a classic in the world of horror comics and I gotta say... holy disappointment, Batman.What’s it about?The main character, John Constantine, goes around... um... investigating(?) monsters and demons without really being particularly help...

I must admit I prefer what they did with Constantine in the TV series. No matter how much he tries to be like this one, he always ends up decent enough.Volume 1 is a collection of good and not so good stories, but overall it left me wanting to read more. No matter the story, Constantine manages to kill almost every friend he has (indirectly, of course). He is always somewhere between good and evil but that's expected from him after all.

Fantastic series. John Constantine is very different from Keanu Reeve's portrayal of him in the movie, by the way. He is much less selfish, wittier and not such a downer. John Constantine is...well I suppose a demon hunter is the best description. He is a big player in the occult underworld and he is often involved in life threatening situations. My favorite part of this whole series is that he is on his own side. He is a total asshole, but deep down he's a good man, he will do what is right. Bu...

John Constantine’s world is full of that black magic and bleak macabre look and feel while it’s story can be a bit spotty to follow. B+ (83%/Very Good)

I was caught between 4 and 5 stars on this one. Most parts are 5 stars, but the fact that it wasn't one continuous story brought it down to 4. Not that it was hard to follow at all. Just that most issues where stand alone stories for the most part. I'm really enjoying getting to know this darker side of the DCU. Along with Swamp Thing, Sandman and Lucifer, I've been astounded at how much quality titles I have overlooked for so long. This book is full of demons, ghosts and a butt ton of supernatu...

I waffled a bit on whether or not this should be a one star story, or two. If you have eyeballs, you probably already have a pretty good idea what my final choice was. This just totally wasn't my thing. Now, to be fair, this is something like, 25 years old, so it's not exactly smart of me to compare it to more modern comics. I mean, they didn't have the fancy digital coloring or long story arcs. But damn, I had almost no enjoyment at all while reading this. Although there is a big #1 on the spin...