Constantine #3

Juan Jose Ryp, I am not your fan.

Instead of getting snarky with no pants wearing male demons and doing drugs and cursing like a man quickly using up the final reserves of his Vitamin C, John Constantine is playing Indiana Jones and trying to save the world. He's running about the world collecting magical antiquities to store in his pet store basement apartment. I think one of the rules of The New 52 was that the title character had to be heroic in some way (not counting comics with rotating leads). So instead of using magic to find a way to clear up his anal warts, John Constantine is using magic to prevent a future mystic apocalypse. Not a specific one! He's just trying to stop any and all of them from accidentally cropping up. I think that's the main difference between this comic and Hellblazer. In Hellblazer, John would sacrifice his mother to cure a painful cavity. In Constantine, John would simply go to the dentist and send the bill to mom.

Although I really haven't lost faith that this comic book can be as bad-assed as Hellblazer was. Lemire made sure that John sacrificed Chaz Chris in the very first issue to let the fans know John was still going to be a douchebag. It's just John is probably saving his most selfish and horrible acts for matters important to the Many instead of matters important to John. I'm not going to trash this book simply because it doesn't star demon penises anymore.

Not that I know if Hellblazer ever did. But it should have!

John, dear, that isn't just magic people. That's everybody. Everyone reading this commentary thinks they're smarter than me and I know I'm smarter than they are. Um, wait a second. I think I just called myself stupid.

When John lands at the only airport in all of Great Britain, he finds he's fallen under some kind of curse that is causing London itself to kill him. He decides he has ten minutes to find some chump to take the curse for him. I think that means he has to bake a pie, will the curse into the pie, and get some patsy to eat the pie. I hope he makes Shepherd's Pie!

Did The Boy Who Cried Wolf ever have a real name? I bet he was the inspiration behind Shepherd's Pie.

That was my version of the expected Cannibalism Joke on a food item called "Shepherd's Pie." I guess the apostrophe is there to alert people to the fact that the pie is something Shepherd's love and not that the pie is made from Shepherd but fuck you, punctuation, for trying to tell me what to think. I,ll make up my own? ^rules^ t*h*a*n*k*s.

I hope all of that random punctuation doesn't fuck up the HTML Code!

A woman named Jules picks up John at the airport. I wonder if she's hungry for pie?

Oy! Maybe this is how curses get transferred in London! If so then, "Hey Ladies! I can guarantee I'm curse free!"

It seems like John has been suffering from this London Curse longer than this comic has been going on. I guess this is why he's been living in New York. Jules had some protection spells cast on the car to protect John from the Curse. But that didn't keep whoever was after John from casting spells on the world outside of the car. Eventually John and Jules and the little car that couldn't be cursed end up in a Hellish Version of London. It's probably Hell!

They're in the dirty little corner of London's mind.

John and Jules escape when John makes a deal with a creature called The Riddling Butcher and then jump down its throat. What was the deal? I don't know! It was as secret as Red Robin's deal with Amanda Waller! It had to do with Constantine somehow enabling The Riddling Butcher to also escape his chore of hanging visitor's to London's seedy undermind. But I don't now how The Riddling Butcher is supposed to jump down its own throat to escape! Maybe John told him how. It probably involves Yoga.

Back in London, John continues to die and he sends Jules on her way. He tells Jules to kiss her husband and kids for him so maybe he wants Jules to spread the Curse to her husband so that he can have Jules all to himself since he once proposed to her. Except Curses only transfer in Kisses in my stupid head. I mean, they only transfer in reality and not in comic books! So any women out there that think they're cursed, I'm willing to sacrifice my snogger to save your life! Although once I save one person, won't the Curse I accept then be transferred to the next person I kiss so that we'll just trade Curses? Maybe I can get a bunch of feeder fish from the pet store and kiss them one at a time to transfer each Curse I collect. Then I'd have the most awesome aquarium ever full of Cursed Fishies!

After Jules leaves, John walks into a pharmacy and ends up in Sargon's magic circle. Mister E is also there holding the silver cord of the proprietor and threatening to yank it clean out of him if he doesn't give up the Lens. John claims to know where the Lens is and he has the Dial, so it looks like Sargon and Mister E may be ready to strike some kind of deal. They probably think the deal will be that they won't kill John slowly if he tells. But John has probably already set up the trap that will ensnare these two idiots because they think they're smarter than he is. At this point, I imagine they have no chance of winning. Constantine is always better prepared than everybody else and nobody ever gives him credit because he's too casual and he wears a dirty trenchcoat and he's not intimidating and he loves to put on that he's five steps behind. He'll always be the first to throw himself in a magic trap to ensure that his magic trap works. He's the master of misdirection in that everybody should know that he's the master of misdirection because he always does it but still nobody seems to take him seriously! That's good misdirection!

If it's another trick, you've already fallen for it, dumb dumb.

I'm starting to believe that Constantine's main magic trick is being the title character of the comic book and having a direct line to the writer's thoughts! That's how he knows what to do and how to get the best of everybody! He knows what's going to happen before it happens. Lemire and Fawkes are feeding him information. That's hardly fair.

John reveals that the name of the proprietor is Philip Croydon, the son of Angus Croydon. And right when his ten minutes of life he had left before the London Curse kills him are up, he tells them that Philip's eyes are the lens. And then a sudden electrical fire breaks out. And then The Riddling Butcher crashes through a window and vomits on Mister E. The Butcher puts out Croydon's eyes so that nobody can have the compass and then turns his vengeance on Sargon since it was her father that imprisoned him in the Dirty Mind of London. And during John's best friend, Chaos, John simply walks away. And nobody gets the compass.

John hops back into London's Dirty Mind to save himself from the London Curse and escapes back to New York where he prepares for next issue.

I hope he destroys the Cult of the Cold Flame in this first story arc and I never have to hear about them again.

Constantine #3 Rating: No change. People should stop listening to Constantine. Riddling Butchers should stop throwing their lives away for him. Good friend Chrises should stop helping him search for lost objects. Mister Es and Sargons should stop parlaying with him when they have him trapped. The first spell anyone should cast when they encounter Constantine is a spell of deafness on themselves so Constantine's cool and collected charm can't be used against them. Bunch of idiots!