The Commentary!
Let's try this again! Hellblazer was going along fine and dandy over in the Vertigo world when some asshole at DC Comics decided that Constantine needed to be actively engaged in their superhero universe. Most of the people enjoying Hellblazer at the time probably thought this was a really stupid idea. And I want to point out how it wasn't a really stupid idea so that I can make those snobby elitists look like royal assholes! But I'm one of them! It was a bad idea! You cannot have a John Constantine who isn't allowed to say "cunt"! It just doesn't work. DC finally realized that it doesn't work so they dumped the awful New 52 Constantine which basically consisted of John battling magic monsters and then casting a spell which will have real horrible consequences. It always worked to drive away the monster and Constantine and his mates never really had to deal with any consequences. I guess Constantine once had to make it so Zatanna never loved him while he still loved her but who the fuck cares about that?! You don't need magic to love somebody who doesn't give a shit about you!
In the re-revamped version of Constantine, DCYou's Constantine the Hellblazer, John was now allowed to swear as much as he wanted! But the letters in the swears were all replaced by pentagrams. The series was much better for it but not perfect because he still couldn't say ⍟⍟⍟⍟! DC Comics, unaware of the real problem haunting their inability to recreate the Constantine magic, killed Constantine the Hellblazer too. It was time for John Constantine to get a Rebirth! That's the comic book I'm going to read now! And I should already point out that it's not going to be very good because it's an American comic book that isn't rated for Mature Readers Only, so no way is John going to be able to say cunt. I might as well not even bother!
The issue begins with a little two page story about how John Constantine lost his home of London and was banished to New York City. It's the usual Constantine story. John pisses off a demon. Demon gets ready to make John pay. John says some things that makes the demon rethink who might be the most powerful person in the John/Demon relationship. John lights a cigarette. Demon lets John live. John adds another vastly powerful entity to his list of immortal enemies.
Let's try this again! Hellblazer was going along fine and dandy over in the Vertigo world when some asshole at DC Comics decided that Constantine needed to be actively engaged in their superhero universe. Most of the people enjoying Hellblazer at the time probably thought this was a really stupid idea. And I want to point out how it wasn't a really stupid idea so that I can make those snobby elitists look like royal assholes! But I'm one of them! It was a bad idea! You cannot have a John Constantine who isn't allowed to say "cunt"! It just doesn't work. DC finally realized that it doesn't work so they dumped the awful New 52 Constantine which basically consisted of John battling magic monsters and then casting a spell which will have real horrible consequences. It always worked to drive away the monster and Constantine and his mates never really had to deal with any consequences. I guess Constantine once had to make it so Zatanna never loved him while he still loved her but who the fuck cares about that?! You don't need magic to love somebody who doesn't give a shit about you!
In the re-revamped version of Constantine, DCYou's Constantine the Hellblazer, John was now allowed to swear as much as he wanted! But the letters in the swears were all replaced by pentagrams. The series was much better for it but not perfect because he still couldn't say ⍟⍟⍟⍟! DC Comics, unaware of the real problem haunting their inability to recreate the Constantine magic, killed Constantine the Hellblazer too. It was time for John Constantine to get a Rebirth! That's the comic book I'm going to read now! And I should already point out that it's not going to be very good because it's an American comic book that isn't rated for Mature Readers Only, so no way is John going to be able to say cunt. I might as well not even bother!
The issue begins with a little two page story about how John Constantine lost his home of London and was banished to New York City. It's the usual Constantine story. John pisses off a demon. Demon gets ready to make John pay. John says some things that makes the demon rethink who might be the most powerful person in the John/Demon relationship. John lights a cigarette. Demon lets John live. John adds another vastly powerful entity to his list of immortal enemies.
And maybe John said cunt? Does "lie like a cunt rug, mate" make sense?
But then Donald Trump began making a run for president and Constantine decided there were some battles he doesn't want to get caught up in, so he headed back home to London and his buddy Chas who apparently isn't dead. Whether or not he had died somewhere along the way, I have no idea anymore. And since this is a Rebirth, I don't have to know anyway! Free pass for everybody! Continuity police can reset their watches after their done sitting flummoxed in their La-Z-Boy recliners pouting and covered in nacho cheese sauce. There's not time for arguing how old Constantine might be or whether or not he's had sex with Swamp Thing! Because those things don't matter anymore! Well, I guess John's age might matter, eventually. As it is now, it doesn't matter if he lived through New York's Punk Scene or if he missed it because he was way too young. It doesn't matter if he's in love with Zatanna or if he's in love with that little blonde thing from Chelsea. Also, I might have made up the blonde thing. But that's my point! It doesn't matter!
This nameless lass is my favorite character in Rebirth so far. Maybe she'll become the new Anguished Fat Man! Vapid Stoner Girl!
Since this is Rebirth, Oliver is taking the readers on a quick synopsis of the things that now matter in Constantine's life. The most important one of those is that if John spends any appreciable time in London, his soul will leave his body due to the curse placed on him by the demon he humiliated. But Constantine has a plan to break that curse so that London can get back to being his Gotham. He never really was suited to be a New Yorker, no matter how many times the reader was told that he was on the cutting edge of the punk-magic scene and how many people he fucked in the bathrooms at CBGB.
Somebody should open a mediocre restaurant franchise and call it CBGBs. Maybe all of the boarded up TGIFridays can just rebrand without doing any renovations: CBGBurgers. That would be punk, right? Instead of a restaurant with sawdust on the floor, CBGBs can be a restaurant with sawdust falling from the ceiling! And exposed insulation on every wall! And raccoons living in the ceiling! That's punk, right?
Somebody should open a mediocre restaurant franchise and call it CBGBs. Maybe all of the boarded up TGIFridays can just rebrand without doing any renovations: CBGBurgers. That would be punk, right? Instead of a restaurant with sawdust on the floor, CBGBs can be a restaurant with sawdust falling from the ceiling! And exposed insulation on every wall! And raccoons living in the ceiling! That's punk, right?
Meanwhile a woman who lives in a hobbit hole and and raises goats is...well, sticking candles in her vagina? I'm not too clear on that. All I know is that there's suddenly another female character drawn by Moritat that I'm probably going to develop a huge crush on, candles or no candles.
I know I was making jokes about the quality of a Constantine comic book relying on whether or not he can say the word "cunt" but I didn't realize you could get away with having Constantine say "circle jerk".
I don't know how you hold a circle jerk together with old chewing gum but I'm going to find out by introducing chewing gum at my next circle jerk.
I have never believed in magic until I heard Alan Moore talk about the existence of magic. And then, through the magic of Alan Moore's words, he cast a spell on me so that I suddenly believed in magic. It was really easy to do too! He just told me to look at the definition of a magic spell and I was, "Oh yeah! Spells are cast with words and they change reality. That's just fucking words! That's making a speech! That's putting together an advertising campaign! That's convincing half of the American population that the world is burning around them and the only way to make it better is to vote in politicians who only have their own selfish interests at heart and don't give a shit about anybody else! Donald Trump is a demon summoned by the incessant rhetoric chanted by multiple Republican talking heads over the course of the last twenty years. That is real life magic and we're all going to be ass-raped by the vile and disgusting incubus the Republicans have summoned into being!"
Constantine's plan to escape the demon's curse is to transfer the curse from himself to every other resident of London. It's not that he doesn't care about the other people in London (he may or may not!), it's just that he definitely cares about himself. So even if his plan to overload the demon's realm with eight million souls all gathered at once doesn't get the demon to stop the curse, at least Constantine will still be alive!
Oliver makes sure to throw in a couple of pages of some Justice Leaguers discussing how something horrible has happened in London and it's probably Constantine's fault and that maybe they should kick his teeth down his pint of Guinness. But Swamp Thing shows up to tell Wonder Woman and Shazam to maybe stand down on this one because even though everybody in London is about to die, Constantine probably has a handle on the situation. That's good enough for Wonder Woman! Especially since Swamp Thing will be to blame if everybody dies. If anybody says, "Wonder Woman! Why didn't you do anything?!" She can just say, "Swamp Thing told me not to! It's his fault!"
Constantine and the demon engage in one of those conversations that John always manages to get started which his opponents should really know by now not to be tricked into. The smart thing to do when you've got the upper hand over Constantine is to close your eyes, cover your ears, and scream "I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" until Constantine is in hell. It's because Constantine knows that the real magic is in the words. The spells are just the special effects. That's why he's more con man than magician.
This time (as with loads of other times), Constantine's speechifying was just to buy time until the hobbit, Mercury, arrived to save the day.
Constantine's plan to escape the demon's curse is to transfer the curse from himself to every other resident of London. It's not that he doesn't care about the other people in London (he may or may not!), it's just that he definitely cares about himself. So even if his plan to overload the demon's realm with eight million souls all gathered at once doesn't get the demon to stop the curse, at least Constantine will still be alive!
Oliver makes sure to throw in a couple of pages of some Justice Leaguers discussing how something horrible has happened in London and it's probably Constantine's fault and that maybe they should kick his teeth down his pint of Guinness. But Swamp Thing shows up to tell Wonder Woman and Shazam to maybe stand down on this one because even though everybody in London is about to die, Constantine probably has a handle on the situation. That's good enough for Wonder Woman! Especially since Swamp Thing will be to blame if everybody dies. If anybody says, "Wonder Woman! Why didn't you do anything?!" She can just say, "Swamp Thing told me not to! It's his fault!"
Constantine and the demon engage in one of those conversations that John always manages to get started which his opponents should really know by now not to be tricked into. The smart thing to do when you've got the upper hand over Constantine is to close your eyes, cover your ears, and scream "I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" until Constantine is in hell. It's because Constantine knows that the real magic is in the words. The spells are just the special effects. That's why he's more con man than magician.
This time (as with loads of other times), Constantine's speechifying was just to buy time until the hobbit, Mercury, arrived to save the day.
Not only can she swear in pentagrams, she's also psychic! So she gets the demon's name for John so he can have some power over the bastard.
With the demon's name, Constantine ends the curse and Wonder Woman doesn't have to call a press conference to explain why she let everybody in London die.
The Review!
Since the comic book couldn't say it, I'll say it here: cunt! There, now it's a complete Hellblazer comic book. Oh, excuse me: The Hellblazer. How fucking stupid is that the?! I'm fucking choking on that piece of shit the! It doesn't have to be their, DC Comics! It's fucking stupid! As you might know, it's okay to have a new comic book with the same title as the old comic book, no matter how fucking confusing it is. You've done it countless times before! Just think how many Teen Titans #1 comic books are out there! Aside from the lack of cunts and the excess number of "the"s, this comic book was a pretty great start to a new John Constantine book. We got Chas and London and Constantine humiliating a demon and a woman who hates Constantine but is going to be forced to work with him so that he doesn't destroy the world trying to save himself. He eats some curry, he smokes a cigarette, he wears a trench coat, he has blonde hair. That's pretty much all I expect from a Hellblazer comic book! I wonder how many people are upset he didn't fuck a woman and a man in this issue and were all "How dare DC erase his bisexuality!" I suppose we all have different things about Constantine that we find are important to the character. Some people only give a shit about where he sticks his dick, and other people are into his mystical battles with the forces of hell and the trail of friends' corpses he leaves in his wake. If you're into the dick aspect, you might not like this issue because he doesn't outright state what he does with it. If you're into curries, you're going to fucking love this issue because Constantine fucking wrecks a vindaloo!
The Review!
Since the comic book couldn't say it, I'll say it here: cunt! There, now it's a complete Hellblazer comic book. Oh, excuse me: The Hellblazer. How fucking stupid is that the?! I'm fucking choking on that piece of shit the! It doesn't have to be their, DC Comics! It's fucking stupid! As you might know, it's okay to have a new comic book with the same title as the old comic book, no matter how fucking confusing it is. You've done it countless times before! Just think how many Teen Titans #1 comic books are out there! Aside from the lack of cunts and the excess number of "the"s, this comic book was a pretty great start to a new John Constantine book. We got Chas and London and Constantine humiliating a demon and a woman who hates Constantine but is going to be forced to work with him so that he doesn't destroy the world trying to save himself. He eats some curry, he smokes a cigarette, he wears a trench coat, he has blonde hair. That's pretty much all I expect from a Hellblazer comic book! I wonder how many people are upset he didn't fuck a woman and a man in this issue and were all "How dare DC erase his bisexuality!" I suppose we all have different things about Constantine that we find are important to the character. Some people only give a shit about where he sticks his dick, and other people are into his mystical battles with the forces of hell and the trail of friends' corpses he leaves in his wake. If you're into the dick aspect, you might not like this issue because he doesn't outright state what he does with it. If you're into curries, you're going to fucking love this issue because Constantine fucking wrecks a vindaloo!
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